If “Fee irks Snowe, Collins,” as the June 29 Sun Journal headline stated, then they ought to try living in the real world and not the ivory tower of Washington, D.C.

They are worried about putting a fee on banks?

Give me a break. Every week the banks come up with new ways to gouge people with new fees.

When I was young, my father told me that anyone who charged more than 6 percent interest was working for the Mafia.

With interest rates as high as 29 percent and fee rates even higher, banks should have no complaints about a fee to keep taxpayers from having to bail them out.

Perhaps our two senators need some time as normal citizens so that they can go back to having to deal with all the fees that money companies force on people. Either that, or they need to drink bottled Maine water, because something is in the water in Washington that puts them in la-la land.

Richard Fochtmann, Leeds