townhall.com By Pat Buchanan
In this administration, it’s always someone else’s fault. Inflation is now the No. 1 concern of voters, so the White House first blamed COVID. Then Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Then Vladimir Putin. Then meatpackers and the poultry industry, Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies.
Now, Democrats have identified a new inflation scapegoat: plastic. Visa, Mastercard, American Express and other credit cards hidden away in your wallet.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has had it out for credit cards for almost two decades, even though over that period, credit cards, which were once reserved for the rich, are now nearly ubiquitous in our society. Many stores don’t even take cash anymore in the post-COVID world. The benefits and conveniences of paying with a plastic card are easily in the tens of billions of dollars to retailers and shoppers. Stores benefit because shoppers don’t have to have cash on hand to make purchases. They also benefit from not having to deal with the exchange of cash, which can lead to theft by unscrupulous employees at the register.
