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BREAKING NEWS - Van Hollen Says GOP Is 'Rigging The Government' To Serve Elon Musk · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:02
  Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads, The Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company, and Neurolink. And I'm your host, Will Walden.
• 0:15
  If you want uninterrupted episodes of the Elon Musk
• 0:19
  Podcast, please go to clubelon.supercast.com to find
• 0:24
  out how. There's a link in the show
• 0:26
  notes. You, Mr. President, the bill
• 0:31
  that Senate Republicans have brought to the floor today and
• 0:36
  which we will vote on sometime soon is the latest example of
• 0:43
  the great betrayal in action on the campaign trail.
• 0:48
  Candidate Donald Trump promised that he was going to help
• 0:52
  Americans deal with their pocketbook issues, kitchen table
• 0:57
  issues. And he said that on day one, day
• 0:59
  one, he is going to bring prices down, that he was going to bring
• 1:04
  down costs for American families.
• 1:07
  Well, Mr. President, up and President Trump and Republicans
• 1:14
  are taking actions that will raise those costs on the
• 1:18
  American people even further. And today's bill is exhibit AI.
• 1:26
  Want to take a step back and put this bill that we're considering
• 1:30
  today in context. You know, one of the fury, one
• 1:35
  of the infuriating experiences that so many American consumers
• 1:41
  have is the mountain of junk fees that they face.
• 1:46
  These are hidden fees that are sometimes in very fine print and
• 1:51
  contracts. They're all these fees that get
• 1:54
  added to their bills where they really have no idea what
• 1:58
  additional value they're getting for those fees because often
• 2:02
  there is no additional value for that fee or that the additional
• 2:07
  value is miniscule in comparison to the fee that they're being
• 2:13
  charged. And so people pay these fees and
• 2:19
  grind their teeth and essentially get ripped off.
• 2:24
  We also see many predatory lending practices where
• 2:28
  financial interests prey on those who are living paycheck to
• 2:33
  paycheck. So years ago, after the
• 2:39
  financial crisis of 2008, Congress created the Consumer
• 2:44
  Financial Protection Bureau, also known by its shorthand
• 2:48
  CFPB, to help protect American consumers from a whole range of
• 2:53
  predatory practices. Now, Senator Warren was one of
• 2:59
  the people who thought of establishing that important
• 3:02
  consumer protection agency. Now she's the ranking Democrat
• 3:07
  on the Banking and Housing Committee, on which I'm
• 3:09
  privileged to serve. And since its creation, the CFPB
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  has gone after all sorts of fraudsters, all sorts of con
• 3:20
  artists, all sorts of people who try to find different ways to
• 3:24
  cheat American consumers out of their hard earned money.
• 3:30
  And they've been successful, The Consumer Financial Protection
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  Bureau, they've returned over $21 billion to American
• 3:40
  consumers who'd been cheating, cheated out of their hard earned
• 3:44
  money. In other words, they brought
• 3:45
  lawsuits to go after these fraudsters or change practices
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  in order to make sure that people could keep more of their
• 3:56
  hard earned money. And that includes $71,000,000
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  that were returned to my constituents in the state of
• 4:04
  Maryland who are ripped off along the way.
• 4:08
  The CFPB made some powerful enemies, and many Republicans
• 4:15
  have been trying to dismantle the CFPB for years.
• 4:20
  Now they have Elon Musk to help do their dirty work.
• 4:25
  And in one of the most corrupt bargains in American history,
• 4:29
  Elon Musk spent $280 million to help elect Donald Trump.
• 4:36
  And Donald Trump has turned around and given Elon Musk the
• 4:40
  keys to many federal agencies. And make no mistake, this has
• 4:44
  nothing to do with making the federal government more
• 4:47
  efficient and everything to do with rigging the government to
• 4:53
  serve people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else in
• 4:57
  America. In fact, one of the great
• 4:59
  examples of that is that they went right after the Consumer
• 5:02
  Financial Protection Bureau. I find it just gross that the
• 5:08
  richest man in the world would go after a Bureau whose purpose
• 5:14
  it is to help return money to American consumers who've been
• 5:20
  cheated out of their hard earned dollars.
• 5:23
  But that was one of the very early targets of Elon Musk and
• 5:27
  his doge cronies. Now, apparently that wasn't
• 5:33
  enough. It's not enough just to go after
• 5:35
  and try to dismantle that agency.
• 5:38
  The next step, and the one we're dealing with here in the Senate
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  today, is an effort to go back and undo some of the important
• 5:46
  consumer protections that the CFPB put in place under the
• 5:51
  Biden administration. One of those protections was a
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  rule that's in place now to prevent banks from charging
• 6:02
  consumers exorbitant fees when a consumer overdraws their account
• 6:07
  balances using a debit card. So how does this work?
• 6:13
  Well, let's say you've got your debit card.
• 6:16
  You go into the grocery store, you're going to buy some
• 6:20
  groceries for the family, use your debit card, debit card to
• 6:24
  pay, and you overdraw your account.
• 6:27
  Now, some of the biggest banks in the country will typically
• 6:31
  charge you $35 for each of those overdrafts, no matter how big
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  your overdraft amount is. So you overdraw your account by
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  1 buck $35, by 5 bucks $35. Now, the average overdraft
• 6:55
  amount is $26. So you can see on each one of
• 7:00
  those transactions, those banks are making a hefty return.
• 7:07
  In fact, it's like a loan with an APR of 16,000%.
• 7:15
  And it happens time after time. In other words, you leave the
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  grocery store, you go pick up your kids at school, you go to a
• 7:25
  local convenience shop, you get a cup of coffee, you pay with
• 7:31
  your debit card, and boom, you get hit with another $35
• 7:36
  overdraft fee, and on and on and on.
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  In fact, every year some of the biggest banks, Wells Fargo and
• 7:46
  Chase, make over $1 billion from consumer overdraft fees.
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  And some of these banks have built an entire system to try to
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  maximize the amount they get from their consumers through
• 8:03
  these overdraft fees. And if you look collectively the
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  banking system, this is a $5 billion a year RIP off.
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  So if you look at the people that are being primarily hit by
• 8:21
  this Mr. President, not surprisingly, it's people who
• 8:26
  are living paycheck to paycheck. In fact, many of the people that
• 8:31
  candidate Trump said he wanted to look out for when he was
• 8:35
  campaigning in the last election, If you look closely,
• 8:40
  you find that 79% of overdraft fees are charged on about 9% of
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  accounts. These are accounts where people
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  have an average balance of around 300 and $50.00.
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  And so these big banks are praying on the people who
• 8:59
  literally are going paycheck to paycheck.
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  And for those households, the average hit every year is about
• 9:08
  $225.00 in exorbitant fees. So you make a tiny
• 9:17
  miscalculation and you get hit hard by these predatory
• 9:24
  practices. So last year, just last year,
• 9:30
  the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the one that
• 9:33
  Elon Musk and Dozier trying to shut down as we speak, last
• 9:37
  year, they developed a rule to help protect, protect consumers.
• 9:44
  It was something many of us had pushed for for years, and we
• 9:47
  were glad to see them do it. The rule was pretty
• 9:50
  straightforward. It's would cap the overdraft
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  fees at $5 a time instead of $35 a time.
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  And it would also require banks to be transparent in their
• 10:07
  pricing and their overdraft penalty structure so that
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  consumers would know and have eyes wide open as to what
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  penalties they were going to incur.
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  So you wouldn't have people inadvertently hit with 35 bucks
• 10:24
  for a cup of coffee, 35 bucks when you go pick up some more
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  groceries. This is a, this has been come a
• 10:32
  way for some of the biggest banks to RIP off consumers,
• 10:38
  especially those who are going paycheck to paycheck, as I said,
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  to the tune of $5 billion. So that's the rule.
• 10:48
  That's what the CFPB did, Pretty simple measure, make sure that
• 10:54
  consumers don't get ripped off and not even know they're being
• 10:58
  ripped off sometimes until they know about the overdraft fee.
• 11:02
  And what Republicans have brought to the floor today is a
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  proposal to override that consumer protection bill to
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  allow those banks to continue to collect $5 billion from American
• 11:19
  consumers, so many of them who are living paycheck to paycheck.
• 11:24
  So everybody should know that that's what's going on here.
• 11:28
  We got the richest man in the world trying to shut down an
• 11:31
  agency that was created to help protect consumers.
• 11:33
  And here in the Senate, we have Senate Republicans trying to
• 11:38
  overturn a consumer protection rule that saves working people a
• 11:43
  little bit of money and make sure that they don't get slammed
• 11:48
  for making a small overdraft on their accounts.
• 11:52
  So I urge my colleagues to vote to uphold the consumer
• 11:58
  protection law that was adopted. So I vote them vote.
• 12:04
  If you want to vote yes to protect the rule, you vote no on
• 12:07
  this effort to overturn it. And I urge my colleagues to vote
• 12:12
  no, Mr. President. Hey, thank you so much for
• 12:19
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 12:21
  support. If you could take a second and
• 12:23
  hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
• 12:26
  platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly
• 12:29
  appreciate it. It helps out the show
• 12:31
  tremendously and you'll never miss an episode.
• 12:34
  And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you
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  caught up quickly. And please, if you want to
• 12:40
  support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero.
• 12:46
  And please take care of yourselves and each other.
• 12:48
  And I'll see you tomorrow.