Hillary Clinton said a lot of things on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert this week about her economic proposals.
But
it was one comment, which her campaign aides say was unscripted, that
might have the best potential to catch political fire: a call to rein in
galloping ATM fees.
The
Democratic presidential frontrunner checked several progressive boxes
in the Tuesday night appearance. She enthusiastically expressed support
for letting big banks fail in the event of another financial meltdown
(“yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” she said when Colbert floated that
possibility). She promised to do more for the middle class. She touted
her husband’s economic record in the 1990s. She insisted that “the
wealthy need to pay more” in taxes. She promised to expand on President
Obama’s record.
She knocked Republicans.
And she name-dropped Paul Krugman — “you know, the columnist for the
New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist?” — and cited his support
for
her plan to reform Wall Street.
“Can
you at least just get back from them the $3 they charge us to take $20
out of an ATM machine,” Colbert said, drawing laughs from the audience.
“You know what, we need to go after that too, don’t you think, yeah, yeah, it’s
usurious,” Clinton replied.
Yahoo
News contacted several Clinton campaign aides, none of whom expressed
familiarity with the comment, making it clear that it was off-the-cuff.
And her economic plan does not call for any specific steps to tamp down
the ATM fees that consumers pay when they complete a transaction at an
out-of-network machine.
If
she were to follow through, though, a push to hold down ATM fees could
put her sharply at odds with big banks, with private companies that run
ATMs, and with other financial institutions, perhaps even more so than
anything else she has proposed.
American
Bankers Association officials would not comment on the record. But
David Pommerehn, senior counsel and vice president of the Consumer
Bankers Association, told Yahoo News by telephone that the public has a
distorted perspective on ATM fees.
“What
gets lost in the mix is that a lot of ATMs are privately owned,” and
not run by banks, he said. Moreover, “ATM networks are expensive to
maintain,” and fees help banks “cover the cost of maintaining those
networks,” he said. Consumers who go to out-of-network ATMs are paying
for convenience, Pommerehn said.
The
idea would, however, line Clinton up neatly with her closest rival,
self-described Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Sanders has been battling banks on that turf for decades in speeches and
legislation dating back to his days in the House of Representatives.
“Sen. Sanders has been
fighting against sky-high ATM fees since 1996,”
his policy director, Warren Gunnels, told Yahoo News by email. “As
president, Sen. Sanders would make it a priority to stop big banks from
charging these outrageous fees.”
Whether
they are outrageous or merely the price of convenience is a matter of
debate. But they are certainly soaring. A survey of 25 major markets
released in early October by the financial services company Bankrate
found that the fees have climbed 21 percent over the past five years, to
a national average of $4.52 per transaction.
In
Clinton’s adoptive home state, New York City comes in as the
second-priciest, at $5.03, just behind Atlanta at $5.15. Washington,
D.C., comes in at $4.64 while the liberal bastion of San Francisco was
the cheapest of the 25 markets at $3.85. (The amount combines what ATM
managers charge and what a person’s home financial institution charges.)
There’s no data for the states that host the first two primaries: Iowa and New Hampshire.
But
it’s possible that Clinton is taking a page from one of her most
prominent backers in Iowa, Democratic former Sen. Tom Harkin, who led
the charge in 2010 to cap ATM fees at 50 cents. His amendment to what
became the Dodd-Frank law to reform Wall Street never got a vote —
undone by bipartisan opposition.
“The
most shocking part of this fee is that, on average, the real cost of
processing a transaction today is only 36 cents or less. Where does the
rest of the money go? It is going to the big banks, the big card
networks and independent machine owners,” Harkin said during that fight
