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(From CUNA News) -The FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was considered in the House and Senate last week. The House considered nearly 1,400 amendments that did not include interchange language, though Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Peter Welch, D-Vt. are expected to introduce it as an amendment to the Senate version.
CUNA joined financial services organizations Friday in strong opposition to attaching the bill to the NDAA with a letter sent to House and Senate leaders and to chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
The senators have already filed an amendment to require a report on credit and debit card user fees at military commissaries.
“These non-germane amendments will rob military families of their credit card rewards, reduce the availability of safe credit, and undermine the nation’s data security. They have been filed with the goal of enriching the largest multinational retailers and obscure payments processors and have no business being added to annual legislation designed to bolster our national defense,” the letter reads. “Both proposals are complex and flawed and in need of the scrutiny of regular order in the respective committees of jurisdiction. These highly contentious and divisive amendments directly involve the interests of various committees with judicial, federal prudential, and international trade oversight.”
The letter also notes the amendments would violate the privacy of service members and their families, as well as waste taxpayer resources and duplicate existing data.
CUNA and the American Association of Credit Union Leagues released a study this week highlighted the true costs of the Durbin Amendment in 2010, and how the current interchange bill would be even more harmful.
“The federal government’s attempt to impose price controls by regulating interchange through the Durbin Amendment is the purest example of a failed government policy,” the letter reads. “Congress should not double down on this failure in this year’s NDAA, especially considering it is not germane to this bill.”