Though almost all of the sponsors are from almost 6 months ago, so it might die in committee anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
> Operation Choke Point was an initiative of the United States Department of Justice beginning in 2013 which investigated banks in the United States and the business they did with firearm dealers, payday lenders, and other companies that, while operating legally, were said to be at a high risk for fraud and money laundering.
There's a whole list on the Wikipedia article of the kinds of legal businesses that were targeted by this. Some of them make sense, but others look like very serious 1A and 2A violations.
You can read the bill's author (Kevin Cramer) discussing that bill and his motives for writing it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250715113010/https://fedsoc.or... ("Debanking: The Newest Threat to Free Speech and Religious Liberty?) (2024)
> [Senator Kevin Cramer] "...I've heard that one from some pretty big bank presidents - but they get a lot of noise in their left ear and you have activist investors and whatnot that are saying, hey, you know what? We don't like coal. We don't like oil, we don't like natural gas. We don't like private prisons, or we don't like ammunition shops or gun manufacturers or whatever the case might be, the entire category or industry and says, "Well, so we're not going to bank them. We're going to debank them. We're not going to bank them. You're disqualified from getting money from us.”, and they're starving these industries out. And all this really is, in my view, you guys is this is a political agenda where they're utilizing the leverage of the financial services sector to accomplish policy goals that they can't accomplish any other way."
Had to look into it a bit.
From looking at the text of the bill, it looks like the sponsor did not like Operation Choke Point [0], which was specifically targeting banks that did business with Payday Lenders, Ponzi Schemes, and other shady vendors.
This also included pornography, but I'm willing to bet that's not what Sen. Cramer was upset about. More likely, he's simply serving the interest of his donors.
He also might have extremist "small business" constituents that are perhaps selling racist/sexist/homophobic merch, and they don't like being told that their bank/credit card processors are refusing to process payments on that swag.
ammunition sales
ATM operators
cable box de-scramblers
coin dealers
credit card schemes
credit repair services
dating services
debt consolidation scams
drug paraphernalia
escort services
firearms sales
fireworks sales
get rich products
government grants
home-based charities
lifetime guarantees
lifetime memberships
lottery sales
mailing lists/personal info
money transfer networks
online gambling
pawn shops
payday loans
pharmaceutical sales
Ponzi schemes
pornography[5]
pyramid-type sales
racist materials
surveillance equipment
telemarketing
tobacco sales
travel clubsIt seems to me like if you thought something was good and then switched to thinking it was bad based just on who proposed it, you need to stop being prejudiced. Evaluate ideas (or bills) for their merits, not based on who originated them.
Ideas? Sure. Bills? No.
So much of how a piece of legislation affects society has to do with the agendas of the people behind it (no matter what it says in text) and the means by which the executive implements it (often hand-in-glove with the agendas of the legislation’s originators).
https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/understanding-the-cascade-of-...