The Durbin-Marshall Amendment Has No Place in the GENIUS Act—Or in a Free Market

In typical Washington fashion, Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall are once again trying to do by amendment what they couldn’t do by honest debate: jam the Credit Card Competition Act into unrelated legislation—in this case, the GENIUS Act, a bill designed to regulate stablecoins. This move isn’t just procedurally cynical; it’s economically reckless.

Conservatives should be especially wary.

The so-called “Credit Card Competition Act” is government price-setting dressed up in populist rhetoric. It mandates that credit card issuers offer at least two processing networks per transaction, with the goal of increasing “competition.” But what it really does is erode the free market and give a major advantage to the largest retail corporations—Walmart, Amazon, and Target—at the expense of small banks, credit unions, and everyday Americans.

The amendment’s track record—or lack thereof—should raise red flags. It has never received a standalone hearing or proper debate. And yet, its sponsors are attempting to sneak it into the GENIUS Act—a bill that has absolutely nothing to do with credit cards or payment networks. It’s a legislative bait-and-switch, and conservatives in Congress should not fall for it.

Let’s be clear: this is not about helping small businesses. It’s about consolidating power in the hands of the same corporate giants who already dominate the retail landscape. As a coalition of respected financial associations—including the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the Electronic Payments Coalition—recently wrote, “Congress should not mandate the reengineering of the entire credit card payments system just to benefit a small group of the largest merchants while causing small businesses to suffer.”

And suffer they will.

Interchange fees, which this legislation would disrupt, fund a wide array of services consumers take for granted: rewards programs, fraud protection, cybersecurity infrastructure, and affordable lending. Reducing or rerouting those fees—particularly through networks with less robust fraud controls—threatens the stability of the entire card ecosystem. It also weakens small financial institutions’ ability to serve their communities, especially in rural states like Louisiana where community banks and credit unions are lifelines.

We’ve seen this movie before. The original Durbin Amendment in 2010 did nothing to lower prices for consumers. It merely shifted revenue away from banks and card issuers and into the pockets of big-box retailers. The same thing will happen again if the Durbin-Marshall amendment passes.

Even the Federal Reserve has confirmed that “exempt” institutions were still negatively affected by the original Durbin rules. There’s no reason to believe this round will be any different—except this time, it could reach even deeper into the credit card market and undermine the very technologies that keep electronic payments secure.

Conservatives believe in competition—not mandates. We believe in innovation—not bureaucratic interference. And we believe that Congress should focus on solving real problems, not pushing ideological agendas through unrelated legislation.

The GENIUS Act is about stablecoins. If lawmakers want to debate credit card networks, let them do so openly, through regular order, with full hearings and economic analysis. That’s how good policy is made. Slipping this amendment into a digital assets bill is legislative malpractice, plain and simple.

Louisiana’s senators—Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy—have long stood for sound economics and small business. Now is the time for them to stand up again. The Durbin-Marshall amendment is bad policy wrapped in bad process. It should be rejected.