President Joe Biden will call on Congress to act to curtail what his administration calls “junk fees” on everything from concerts and sporting events to resort hotels.
The president will announce the calls for congressional action as part of Wednesday’s meeting of his Competition Council, an interagency group that has focused on ways to try to reduce consumer costs in a number of industries.
“The call for legislative action in these areas is not meant to imply that there is no administrative authority here,” Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council, said Tuesday. “As you all know, the rule-making process can take quite a long time. And so what we are calling for here is fast congressional action in these areas, because we think that these are each areas in which consumers, as each day goes by, are paying hundreds, thousands, millions of dollars and fees each day that they shouldn’t pay and congressional action can fix that faster than administrative action.”
