Echoing one of his small-ball promises from his State of the Union Address earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden tweeted on Sunday morning that:
“We’re working to ban surprise ‘resort fees’ that hotels tack onto your bill,” Biden tweeted, explaining further that “these fees can cost up to $90 a night at hotels that aren’t even resorts.”
“It just isn’t right,” the president concluded.
While some Americans may be touched that the chief executive of our government is looking out for our vacation budgets, many millions of others are so beset by rising everyday costs, the spike in home heating oil and electricity rates and other economic woes that the prospect of visiting a resort – or even a hotel – anytime soon is a distant one at best.
Also in his report to the nation earlier this month, Biden pledged to cap credit card late fees to $8 a month. While no one loves credit card late charges, or certainly resort fees, free market advocates have been slow to critically examine what the real impact of these popular-sounding measures might be.
The Wall Street Journal bucked the trend of fawning press and pointed out how capping fees on companies is “junk economics.” The cynicism of claiming to reduce fees while knowing full well those costs are likely to pop up elsewhere is kind of like assuming no one has ever played “whack a mole” before.
Blaming the private sector for inflationary pressure on the economy is a common leftist gimmick, and Biden has been down this road before. Gas prices last year were the fault of oil companies gouging us, just as meat producers were allegedly sticking it to the consumer, his administration and its surrogates have claimed.
Interestingly, the blame is always cast on others while the federal government adds trillions in inflationary spending each year.
As Americans scramble this month to prepare tax filings for 2022, the jury is still out on how much the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate businesses into charging us less will pan out. After all, this is the same administration that promised $10,000 of student debt relief before thoroughly researching whether it actually has the legal authority to do so.
If you are planning a vacation this spring, be careful about writing those savings into your budget just yet.
