ICYMI: AFFM Opposes South Carolina’s Bad Debanking Bill, Encourages Support for President Trump, Sen. Scott Fix

Executive Director David Ibsen Testified Before South Carolina House Lawmakers Last Week

In case you missed it, Americans for Free Markets Executive Director David Ibsen testified before the South Carolina House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, Banking & Insurance Subcommittee last week in opposition to South Carolina House Bill 5538 and in support of efforts by President Trump and Congress to ensure fair access to banking for all Americans.

SC’s Guarantee Banking Act Would Increase Costs & Red Tape: In his testimony, Ibsen stressed that this legislation would adversely impact South Carolinians and the financial industry due to increased compliance costs, regulatory burdens and additional government oversight.

“Unfortunately, as we know for years, under the Obama and Biden administrations, government regulators did weaponize the financial system to close accounts for people and for groups and for charities, industries they didn’t necessarily like or agree with or favor. But unfortunately, the proposed solution here 5538, would impose extra compliance obligations and red tape on financial institutions.”

The Trump Administration & Congress Are Already Working Toward A Solution: Ibsen highlighted ongoing federal efforts to combat government-driven debanking and ensure fair access to financial services for all Americans, led by President Trump and Congress, including South Carolina’s own U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC). Ibsen also pointed to other states, including Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, whose legislatures are looking to this Administration to address the issue rather than enacting their own conflicting state laws.

“…several federal regulatory bodies, including the OCC, FDIC, the Federal Reserve recently, in the past few weeks, have taken action to address this issue […] I think the state-level action here while well-intentioned, is unnecessary, creates added compliance costs, reduces South Carolina competitiveness, increases red tape.”

His testimony also addressed the ambiguous language in HB 5538 that opens the door to “frivolous” complaints and lawsuits that will fall onto small business owners and consumers. Additionally, Ibsen emphasized that a patchwork of conflicting state laws will be burdensome to the financial industry and consumers.

South Carolina Lawmakers Should Look to Federal Lawmakers on Government-Driven Debanking: Ibsen concluded his testimony by calling on the South Carolina legislature to reject the Guarantee Banking Act and instead calling for the issue to continue to be addressed through a uniform federal process.

“I think, rather than duplicating that work and potentially adversely and unintentionally complicating the work that’s there, we would hope that states would instead support the work that’s ongoing…”

Ibsen’s testimony can be found on the South Carolina Legislature website here.