If Democrats Cared About Affordability, They Would Be Pushing for 10% Credit Card Caps
Last August I published a piece, “How We Got 20% Credit Card Rates and Why You Should Care” — how the Supreme Court’s 1978 Marquette ruling destroyed state usury caps overnight, how South Dakota and Delaware raced to eliminate consumer protections to attract bank headquarters, and how Congress has done nothing about it for nearly half a century. The math alone should make you angry. A $1,000 purchase at 29.99% APR, making minimum payments, costs $8,125 and takes 27 years to pay off. Banks employ teams of PhD behavioral scientists to engineer these debt traps. Every major religion in human history has condemned this kind of exploitation.
But this piece isn’t about the banks. It’s about the party that claims to fight for working families — and what they’ve actually done about this devastating affordability crisis those families face.
The answer is: nothing. For forty-seven years.
The Windows They Had — and Didn’t Use
The Marquette decision came down in 1978. Jimmy Carter was president. Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. They could have made a federal usury cap a legislative priority and forced a vote. They didn’t.
Since then, Democrats have had unified control three times: under Clinton, Obama, and Biden. That’s six years of total control. They found a way to pass the ACA, climate provisions, and the CHIPS Act. They never once made credit card rates a priority — never forced a vote, never attached it to must-pass legislation, never spent a dime of political capital on it. And even when they didn’t have solid majorities, they could have made this a major public issue — forced it into the news cycle, shamed Republicans into supporting a bill that 88% of Democratic voters and a majority of all Americans want. They didn’t do that either. The choice not to even try tells you everything.
In 2009, with 60 Senate seats and public outrage at Wall Street at historic levels, they passed the Credit CARD Act — which required better disclosure but explicitly left interest rates untouched. Banks could still charge 29.99%. They just had to tell you about it more clearly.
The Senator from MBNA
The reason isn’t a mystery. Follow the money to Delaware and South Dakota — the states that eliminated their usury caps to attract credit card companies after Marquette.
Delaware’s senior senator for 36 years was Joe Biden. MBNA employees were his largest source of campaign contributions for two decades. His son Hunter was hired by MBNA straight out of law school, eventually becoming a consultant during the same period Biden was shepherding the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act through the Senate. That bill, which the credit card industry spent $100 million lobbying for, made it harder for struggling families to discharge their debts. Biden was one of only four Democrats who voted with Republicans against key amendments that would have softened the bill’s impact.
Elizabeth Warren called Biden out by name: without his sponsorship, a bill that favored big banks over families in financial trouble would have been dead.
Biden’s response: “I’m not the senator from MBNA.” He was, though.
Where We Are Right Now
There’s a bill sitting in committee today — the 10 Percent Credit Card Interest Rate Cap Act (S.381/H.R.1944). Sanders and Hawley in the Senate, Ocasio-Cortez and Anna Paulina Luna in the House. Over 55 national organizations urged its advancement in February 2026. Vanderbilt researchers estimate it would save families $100 billion a year.
Trump called for a one-year 10% cap at Davos in January 2026. Whether he’s sincere is an open question. But watch what happened: House Speaker Mike Johnson immediately pushed back. JPMorgan’s CFO predicted people would “lose access to credit on a very extensive and broad basis.” The banking lobby trotted out the same apocalypse warnings they’ve used every time anyone proposes limits — and it has never been true. The Credit CARD Act didn’t kill credit. The Military Lending Act’s 36% cap for service members didn’t either. America had usury caps of 6–10% for most of its history, and the republic survived. The “access” argument is the banking industry repackaging exploitation as a favor.
Unified Republican government found a way to pass $4 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and deliver everything the donor class wanted in the One Big Beautiful Bill. But when all-powerful Trump asked for a one-year 10% credit card cap for 80 million struggling Americans? Sycophant House Speaker Mike Johnson told his master to take a hike. Why? Because if the earth doesn’t stop spinning on its axis from a one-year cap, it could become permanent. The argument about armageddon from lower rates collapses. Most likely Trump was just looking for brownie points before the midterms and didn’t think through the consequences — that a one-year cap, once in place, could easily become permanent.
And Democratic leadership? Warren wrote a letter to the CFPB acting director. That’s it. No floor fights. No shutdown threats — though they were ready to shut down the government over ICE enforcement. The bill has four Senate cosponsors. Four. In a chamber with 47 Democrats.
Why? Because the financial services industry is the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates in America. In the 2019–2020 cycle, the financial sector gave 53% of its nearly $1 billion in party-specific contributions to Democrats. The party knows where the checks come from.
The Selective Outrage Problem
Democrats will threaten a government shutdown over ICE accountability. They’ll hold endless hearings on Jeffrey Epstein files and corporate greed. But a bill that would claw back $100 billion a year from banks for 80 million Americans carrying $1.28 trillion in credit card debt? Radio silence.
To be fair: progressives like Sanders and AOC have fought for this. But leadership won’t elevate it. Democrats know how to go to war — they’ve shown it on ICE, on impeachment, on the shutdown. They choose not to on this. That’s not an oversight. That’s a decision.
Both parties are captured by the interests that profit from the dysfunction. Democrats market themselves as the party that cares about you while doing nothing. Republicans market themselves as the party of free markets while doing nothing. The only difference is the branding.
What This Means for You
Stop waiting for either party to solve this. The only thing that has ever moved Congress on consumer protection is organized, loud public pressure that makes the political cost of inaction higher than the cost of losing donor money. Call your representatives — both parties — and demand a vote on S.381.
Sixty percent of Americans can’t cover a $1,000 emergency without borrowing. When they put it on a credit card at 29.99% — a common rate — they end up paying over eight times the original amount. Neither party has lifted a finger to stop it. But only one of them has the audacity to call itself the party of working families while cashing checks from the banks that are bleeding those families dry.
Sources referenced in companion piece: How We Got 20% Credit Card Rates and Why You Should Care
Additional sources: S.381/H.R.1944 (119th Congress); Protect Borrowers coalition letter, Feb. 2026; Vanderbilt University analysis, Sept. 2025; OpenSecrets financial sector data; ProPublica, “Biden’s Cozy Relations With Bank Industry”; Warren letter to CFPB Acting Director Vought, Jan. 2026; CFPB Dec. 2025 Credit Card Market Report (25.2% avg. APR)