The Patriot Post® · Biden's Nonsensical Junk Fee Fixation

This author recently bought tickets to attend a concert at a local megachurch. There was a price up front, but buried in the fine print before paying online was a “ticket fee” of $7 per ticket, then a “processing fee” of $3.72. These fees added another $17.72 to the total — and that’s in a state where there’s no sales tax. It’s unlikely that the church or the bands are getting that money. Instead, the money just disappears into the pockets of some middlemen.

Such things are frustrating, and no amount of pontificating by The Wall Street Journal that a ban on junk fees will “reduce competition and harm low-income Americans” is going to convince folks that they’re not being ripped off by their ticket seller, their bank, their hotel, or their utility company.

And Joe Biden made sure in recent remarks to tell the American people that his new edict was for their own good. “Unfair fees known as junk fees — those hidden charges that companies sneak into your bill to make you pay more because they can, simply because they can,” said Biden in a Rose Garden speech. “Charges that are taking real money out of the pockets of American families. These junk fees can add hundreds of dollars, weighing down family budgets, making it harder to pay family bills.” We’ll come back to those remarks in a moment, but did the “there oughta be a law” crowd notice something missing there?

How about in the following lede from USA Today: “The Biden administration is proposing a new rule to prohibit companies across the private sector from hiding fees from consumers, the president’s most sweeping action yet on ‘junk fees.’”

USA Today continues: “The Federal Trade Commission’s rule would require all industries under its jurisdiction to show the full price up front to consumers, including for concert and sports tickets, hotel rooms, and apartment and car rentals. Violators would be subject to financial penalties and be required to compensate customers.”

Notice there was no mention of Congress either in Biden’s remarks or in USA Today’s reporting. That’s because this proposed rule is just another top-down, pen-and-phone effort by the Biden regime to dictate how businesses operate, and it’s already scared several companies like Airbnb and Ticketmaster into compliance.

Not surprisingly, Washington Post opinion writer Catherine Rampell called the junk fee crackdown “good government at its most boring, pedestrian best.” Rampell added, “This is as things should be. Companies should be competing on price and quality — not on how good they are at tricking customers.” We certainly agree with Rampell’s “price and quality” point, but there’s a process to be adhered to and not regularly abused by an overzealous executive branch that can’t wait for Congress to hammer out a compromise bill that’s fair to all sides.

But more to the point, when did government meddling ever make things better?

While Biden’s working on fees that might cost consumers a few hundred dollars a year, he’s done little to curtail inflation that’s nearly double where the Federal Reserve wants it to be, or that’s up more than 17% across the board since he took office. To put it mildly, real wages are having a hard time keeping up. Inflation’s cost to the middle class can be measured in thousands of dollars a year, not hundreds.

There’s yet another cost that can be laid at Biden’s feet, though, and this one is measured in a weary resignation. Just ask teacher and essayist Auguste Meyrat, whose trip to a local pumpkin patch with his family set him back $60 just for admission. One could call it a Millennial’s lament, but he’s not wrong when he concludes: “So long as the federal government continues to print more money to cover expenses, inflation will continue. So long as the housing supply fails to keep up with demand, housing will be expensive. So long as car manufacturing is tied up with idiotic environmental regulations, new cars will also be expensive. And so long as domestic energy production is tied up in regulation, all economic activity and utilities will cost more and more. … What we have now has been a recipe for economic decline. We’re all feeling it, some of us more than others.”

Once again, Joe Biden is missing the forest for the trees. In his nonsensical grand scheme of things, it’s far more important to fix a few dollars in junk fees with more layers of red tape than it is to restrain the government and let the people prosper with their own handiwork.

The American Dream was once very attainable, but then Biden-style government got in the way.