When he called Whistleblower today from his home in the Bryn Mawr Health Care Center in Minneapolis, Dave Amies didn't know anything about the brewing anger in Washington. Amies, 76 and fighting cancer, was coughing with rage about three $35 overdraft fees assessed by his bank, including one for an auto-drafted life insurance premium for $2.27.

"It's a little bit ridiculous, don't you think?" he asked me. Fifteen or 25 dollars, maybe, he said, but 35 bucks?

Amies hoped I could do something about it. I told him Congress might already be on the case.

The Washington Post reports today that "congressional Democrats, who pushed through new restrictions on credit cards this spring, now are promising a crackdown on overdraft fees, using words like 'criminal' and 'rip-off' to describe the practice of letting people overspend and then charging them fees without warning. Most overdrafts are now incurred on debit card transactions."

Members of Congress are clearly reacting to the outrage factor of banks bailed out by taxpayers for their own financial mistakes zapping individuals with higher fees for doing the same thing. But it's a $38 billion revenue stream for banks, which are looking for cash anywhere they can, the Post reports.

One proposal is to give consumers the right to stop a transaction if they're notified they don't have enough in the bank to cover it.

From the perspective of the American Bankers Association, given time, overdraft fees might wither away on their own. Here's the view of Nessa Feddis, ABA senior federal counsel and retail banking expert.

Amies isn't waiting around for Congress to act. He's planning to change banks. Chances are the new one isn't much different from the old, though. The Federal Reserve has these handy hints for avoiding overdraft and bounced check fees. No. 1 on the list:

"The best way to avoid overdraft and bounced-check fees is to manage your account so you don't overdraw it."

Hard to argue with that.