Senate Hearing Goes Off The Rails When Elizabeth Warren Gets Into Heated Exchange With Thom Tillis

[0:00] senator tillis uh thank you mr chairman uh miss johnson um have you looked at the uh what i [0:09] consider to be largely failed attempts um to cap uh credit card rates and other jurisdictions we [0:17] certainly have give me an idea of how the movie ended yeah look it never works we have a ton of [0:23] data we've got a ton of history to learn from illinois is a great example i was about to ask [0:28] you about illinois um give me uh what i what i've seen in the illinois example they uh at least one [0:35] i believe uh senator marshall's the other co-sponsor of the the amendment on credit cards so this is not [0:39] just a democrat republican thing we have an honest disagreement among republicans go through a few of [0:44] the things that happened when illinois did the arbitrary rate cap look they they even had a 36 [0:50] all-in rate cap uh and what ultimately happened was nearly 40 percent of subprime borrowers simply lost [0:57] access 44 percent um let's see loans to subprime bars decreased by 44 percent loans to deep subprime [1:06] bars decreased by 57 percent um 40 percent let's see financial well-being sentiment dropped by 40 [1:15] 11 reported an improvement so doesn't look like it's something that you'd consider to be a best [1:20] practice does it no this has been implemented in any uh in any international jurisdictions or other [1:25] countries that you've studied look there's uh how are the results there again remarkably similar right [1:32] terrible it's like my god time and time again it just doesn't work i don't care which release it is [1:38] whether it's toy story one or toy story five you know it's my god it's not going to end any differently [1:45] i don't even know why we're having this discussion the whole and then the whole concept of not being [1:50] able to rate for risk yes anything is so important i mean you're helping people from themselves i get [1:58] that it used to be an overdraft fee used to be a courtesy and you know what but last time i checked [2:03] a lot of the banks still give you one or two passes but when it becomes a chronic problem at [2:08] what point are you expected to actually know how much is in your bank account before you write a check [2:12] that's what this is there's nothing more than that it's financial literacy i'll put money into [2:20] financial literacy i'll put money into real-time don't write this check because you're about to [2:24] get money and you've over you've gone over the customary limit that banks will actually write off [2:30] everybody's talking about like banks get you it's a profit center i don't know of any bank that doesn't [2:36] give you a forbearance on the first two three four or five overdraft fees but folks at what point do [2:41] you actually have to own responsibility for a bank account i mean it's it to me it's that simple but [2:48] maybe uh maybe i just don't get it um we talk about affordability as if it's something new [2:56] and that's bogus too affordability is always a problem folks it's just a matter of who where [3:01] it is on the margins i've said this repeatedly in this committee i know i know when i had an [3:07] affordability problem is when we weren't living in a house anymore we were living in a trailer and i saw [3:11] the overreach of regulatory and environment and the card administration put me back in a trailer park [3:18] because they were well-intentioned but bad poorly implemented policies every time we try to [3:24] artificially gloss over some of the problems that we have here with financial literacy making sure [3:31] that people really understand to spend within their means government tries to help me out and [3:36] i'll be damned if it's not the times that sends me back into that trailer park when we start paying [3:41] attention to the people who are really on the bubble there and i'll tell you right now we got a real [3:46] problem because we got some rich people making a lot of money but we've got some people on the [3:50] bubble that are hurting and instead of talking around all this stuff and coming up with all these [3:55] artificial constructs that have been empirically proven to fail point to one in fact i've got a [4:03] minute left if somebody's got an example of one of these arbitrary rate caps that have worked i will [4:08] yield my time you can explain it to me right now i got 45 seconds left i want somebody who has [4:18] expertise in this field to explain it to me right now so when did it succeed i i've got a list of [4:24] facts all i've asked was a simple question point to the one time in the whole history of the world [4:31] credit cards globally where it's worked once i got it and that is when the giant corporations no you [4:38] didn't answer no no i'm not i all i asked was i'm sorry i'll reclaim my time mr chairman i just want [4:44] one one i'll go for a second round if somebody needs more time one example of where this precise [4:52] policy worked it's going to be a short discussion as a matter of fact i've got five seconds left now [4:58] and there's still no one here that's going to be offering up one successful example my time has [5:04] expired mr chair mr chair i will i just can't bear regular regular regular regular president let's [5:25] listen let's abide by the rules mr chair rules by the chair mr i've got uh uh senator smith if you [5:33] are willing i i will give yes the ranking member 30 seconds and i'll give you a 30 second rebuttal [5:39] and then we'll go to you i'm happy to hear that that would be my example i want to hear the example [5:43] i was going to defer to the ranking uh the ranking member to answer this question and then i would [5:48] love to have my five minutes to talk about affordability in small towns we are being civil by [5:54] the way this is great a public discourse a public discussion where there's strong disagreement is [6:00] actually good for the public to hear right so i just thank you i just wanted to remind my colleague [6:16] that back during the covid crisis the financial institutions all were given free access to [6:25] overdraft their accounts at the fed it saved them literally billions of dollars because they could get [6:33] free access to money when they didn't have money in their accounts and the government politely asked [6:40] them to extend the same courtesy to their own customers which they refused to do and they raked [6:48] in billions more in profits so it worked for the big boys it just didn't work for the little guys so [6:54] it's never worked before but i look forward to somebody presenting the first successful implementation [6:58] thank you mr chair all right senator smith it's your time but senator smith is still your time