[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 69 (Monday, May 10, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3453-S3456]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          NATIONAL NURSES WEEK

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, in honor of National Nurses Week, I wish 
to recognize the more than 3 million nurses who work hard day-in and 
day-out to give patients the care they deserve. Because my wife Mary is 
a nurse, I have seen firsthand what an enormous impact nurses have on 
both patients and families. Their compassion and devotion to their 
patients give families the peace of mind that their loved ones are in 
good hands. They also play an irreplaceable role in making sure our 
hospitals and clinics run smoothly. Unfortunately, many nurses are 
overworked, underpaid, and our hospitals and clinics have trouble 
retaining them.
  Through the Health Care Reform Act Congress passed earlier this year, 
we made significant strides in addressing many of the challenges nurses 
face. We expanded the nursing student loan program to help make nursing 
programs more affordable. We also expanded the nursing loan repayment 
program and scholarship programs to students who commit to working at 
an accredited nursing school for 2 years. This will help ensure our 
nursing schools have the teachers they need to train additional nurses. 
We invested $1.5 billion over 5 years in the National Health Service 
Corps scholarship and loan repayment program for primary care 
providers, including nurses who practice in underserved areas. In 
addition, we included $50 million in grants for nurse-managed health 
clinics that offer primary care and wellness services to low-income and 
uninsured Americans.
  While we made good progress easing many of the difficulties nurses 
face, much more still needs to be done. Nurses play such a crucial role 
in the delivery of care. We need to provide them with the resources 
they need to do their jobs.
  The nursing shortage also remains a serious issue, especially in 
hard-hit rural areas. To find commonsense solutions to the problems 
nurses face, I formed the Senate Nursing Caucus with Senator Johanns, 
Senator Mikulski, and Senator Snowe. I urge all of my colleagues to 
join the caucus to help strengthen the nursing profession and advance 
the goals of the nursing community. Together, we will explore ways we 
can enhance the role nurses play in our health care system and address 
the nationwide nursing shortage.
  I ask my colleagues and my fellow Americans to take a moment during 
National Nurses Week to show your appreciation to nurses across the 
country for their hard work, commitment, and dedication to their 
patients. Their dedication is invaluable to the success of our health 
care system and, most of all, to the patients who depend on them.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I wish to join my colleague from the State 
of Oregon in speaking on behalf of nurses across America.
  We know that with the baby boom generation, we are going to need more 
nurses than ever, and with these nurses, we will have the professional 
medical care we need across this Nation, but we better get busy. We are 
falling behind. We don't graduate enough nurses now to take care of the 
anticipated needs, and we have to change that.
  Sadly, in many instances we have been poaching nursing talent from 
other poor nations around the world. Filipino nurses in Chicago play a 
major role at many hospitals, particularly inner-city hospitals, and 
nurses from other parts of the world. Many times, the Philippines, for 
example, generates more medical professionals and expects they will 
serve overseas, but some places in Africa lose their best medical 
professionals to higher and more predictable pay in places such as the 
United States, England, France, and Germany. So we have to reach a 
point where we are graduating more nursing students each year. Last 
year in Illinois, 2,000 qualified nursing applicants were turned down 
because we didn't have the capacity in our nursing schools.
  We don't have enough nursing faculty, enough clinical opportunities. 
We need to really focus on that. So in addition to lauding the nursing 
profession--I certainly echo my colleague in that regard--we also need 
to think ahead to make sure we have more nurses when we need them, and 
that day is going to be fast upon us. So I thank the Senator from 
Oregon for his words.


                      FINANCIAL REGULATORY REFORM

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, for those who are here following the 
Senate today, as announced earlier, we are resuming consideration of 
this bill, and, of course, it is the Wall Street reform bill, the 
Financial Stability Act. It is over 1,400 pages long.
  The Senator from Virginia who is presiding over the Senate now is a 
member of the Senate Banking Committee. Senator Mark Warner has worked 
on this bill, and large sections of it are his handiwork in an effort 
to try to deal with changes on Wall Street which will protect our 
economy and make certain we don't relive some of the horror stories we 
have seen over the last several years, and we all know those stories 
pretty well.
  There was a time not that long ago--about a year and a half ago--
when, under the previous President, I was brought into a meeting just a 
few steps away from the Senate floor with the chairman of the Federal 
Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry 
Paulson. They basically sat down in the first meeting and said: We 
wanted to let you know the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, 
is about to go broke. When it goes broke, it is going to bring down so 
many companies and corporations with it that it can literally crater 
the American economy. At that point, Chairman Bernanke said: So the 
Federal Reserve is giving $85 billion to AIG Corporation.
  There was a moment of silence in the room, and finally someone in the

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room--I don't remember who it was--had the nerve to ask: Where did you 
get $85 billion at the Federal Reserve?

  Chairman Bernanke said something like: Oh, we have our resources.
  Someone asked: Where did you get the authority to give it to a 
private company?
  They said: Well, there was a law passed during the Great Depression 
which said that if it looks as if the economy is going to crater, the 
Federal Reserve can step in.
  So an obscure law that was over 75 years old and a fund of money most 
Members of Congress had never seen--since they are a separate agency 
and don't go through our appropriations process--ended up propping up a 
company. And it didn't cost $85 billion; I think when it was over it 
was $180 billion or somewhere in that range. The reason, of course, we 
couldn't let that company go down was they had literally insured 
contracts and corporations all around America, that there would be no 
default. They insured more contracts than they had a reserve to cover. 
As the contracts started to fail, they didn't have the reserves to back 
up their promise of insurance.
  That was the first meeting. Only a few days later, they asked us to 
meet again, and I thought, this ought to be equally interesting, and it 
was. They brought us to a meeting, and Secretary Paulson, the Secretary 
of the Treasury, said: Now we are seeing, with the failure of Lehman 
Brothers and other companies, the potential that many large financial 
institutions in America are also going to fail. Then Secretary Paulson 
said: So we need a fund of money immediately, by Friday--and this was a 
Tuesday meeting--we need a fund by Friday of $800 billion to buy the 
so-called toxic assets, TARP funds, toxic assets relief program.
  Again, there was a stunned silence in the room because even those of 
us in Washington who deal with millions and billions on a regular basis 
were stunned to get a request for $800 billion in a matter of days.
  So the first question that was asked was: Who is going to prepare the 
legislation that actually asks for the money?
  They looked around, and no one had kind of thought of that detail, 
and we said: We think the White House should. President Bush's White 
House, with Secretary Paulson, prepared a bill and sent it to us. The 
bill was exactly three pages long asking for $800 billion. Naturally, 
many of us thought that was not adequate. We needed to put provisions 
in there about how the money would be spent, the supervisory authority 
in Congress, and so forth.
  Eventually, it was passed on a bipartisan rollcall. People like 
myself who voted for it did it out of a feeling of desperation. What 
else could we do? If we were being told by the financial leaders of our 
government that our economy was about to fail--we had seen it already 
in the stock market going down in value, and we knew people were losing 
their jobs and businesses were failing--we felt this was the only way 
to try to stop this terrible crisis from becoming much worse.
  Well, the toxic assets relief program ended up sending billions of 
dollars to these struggling financial institutions. They were 
struggling because they made bad judgments. They bought, created, and 
sold securities, derivatives, and interest which were, in fact, toxic. 
They were based on a mortgage market and the premises of that market 
which turned out to be totally wrong. They had made bad business 
decisions. Their companies were about to fail.
  The Federal Government--make that the taxpayers of this country--was 
expected to step in and save them, which we did. To show their 
gratitude for this act of mercy--rescuing them from their own bad 
works--they declared bonuses for one another. They gave one another 
bonus checks after the Federal taxpayers bailed them out. Is it any 
wonder people across this country have a bad taste in their mouth about 
Wall Street, about the TARP program, about the bonuses? Is it any 
wonder we are here this week considering a bill to make sure we never 
relive this financial crisis? It is overdue--long overdue.
  We know what this crisis cost us in real human terms. The estimates 
are that it took $17 trillion out of the American economy--$17 trillion 
in value--and it hit almost everybody. Anybody with a savings account, 
a retirement account knows what I am talking about. The value of the 
account went down 20, 30, 40 percent or more. So your net worth, your 
nest egg, your retirement plan was diminished because of this 
recession.
  In addition to that, 8 million people are currently unemployed across 
America, having lost their jobs by this recession, and another 6 
million have been unemployed long term and are not trying as hard as 
they once did. Even though those numbers are getting better--in fact, 
last week there was a good report--we know it is still serious. There 
are still too many people out of work because of this recession.
  When we tried to bring this bill to the floor 2 weeks ago, we had a 
tough time. We had three votes Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, 2 weeks 
ago, and they were filibustered from the Republican side of the aisle. 
They refused to let us bring the bill to the floor.
  While the filibuster votes were going on on the floor of the Senate, 
though, on another stage on Capitol Hill, the Permanent Subcommittee on 
Investigations of the Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Senator 
Carl Levin of Michigan, was holding a historic hearing and bringing in 
the top leaders of Goldman Sachs, including its CEO, asking them about 
their practices that had led to financial difficulties at that company 
and were being questioned now even in a lawsuit that has been brought 
by our government against that company.
  That display and that testimony was happening at the same time the 
Republican filibuster to stop this reform bill was going on here on the 
floor. Finally, several Republican Senators spoke up to their 
leadership and said: That is it. We want to engage in this debate. We 
want to get it started. We want to do it in a prompt way.
  The filibuster finally broke and we started, nominally, the debate 
last week. You could count, I think, on one hand all the amendments we 
considered in that week. We could have done much better. We wasted a 
lot of time. There are important policy considerations that have to be 
asked and answered by votes on the Senate floor--some from the 
Republican side, valid questions, and some from our side. What we are 
looking for--and I think the American people are looking for--is for 
the Senate to be the Senate, not just a dead end for debate, to 
deliberate these issues and cast a vote and move forward.
  There was an amendment--of great moment--offered by Senator Sherrod 
Brown of Ohio and Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware as to whether we 
should limit the size of financial institutions. They had a very catchy 
mantra, which was: Too big to fail means too big. They would limit the 
size of financial institutions so you could not have these big giants 
dominating the scene. There would be more competition and more 
financial institutions involved in our economy's business. That 
amendment failed. It got 31 votes. I was 1 of the 31 who voted for it. 
I was disappointed, but let's be honest, that amendment had its day in 
court, on the floor of the Senate. We debated it and a vote was taken.
  Now we are moving on to other amendments. Senator Sanders of Vermont 
will offer an amendment, probably tomorrow, as to whether there should 
be an audit of the activities of the Federal Reserve. This is a big 
amendment and one that is somewhat controversial, but I think we have 
reached a point where Senator Sanders is likely to prevail. He came up 
with a bold idea, and now I think we are going to move toward that 
idea. The Senate is doing what it is supposed to do. There are other 
things we need to take up as well.
  Senator McCain will offer an amendment about the future of Fannie Mae 
and Freddie Mac, which are two government-type entities that literally 
back up the mortgages for most of the homes across America. They are in 
trouble because so many homes across America are going underwater; that 
is, the value of the home is lower than the mortgage balance. If that 
affects one of the homeowners across the country, you can understand 
that these agencies are going to be in trouble financially. What are we 
going to do about it? If we eliminate the agencies, the housing market 
will collapse without this government guarantee. But if there is going 
to be a government guarantee,

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how much will the taxpayers be on the line for? It is an important 
policy issue.
  I am glad we are moving into that debate. I wish to offer an 
amendment on credit cards. Two years ago, we debated credit card 
reform. At the time, we passed a historic bill that changed some of the 
rules and gave consumers across America more rights and disclosure when 
it came to the use of credit cards. If there was one mistake made in 
that credit reform, it was the argument between the large banks and 
credit card companies that they could not implement the changes, unless 
they were given a long lead time before it occurred. They were given 
that lead time in the bill, and they have used that lead time 
consistently to raise interest rates on credit cards across America. It 
was a mistake. We should not have given them that much time. We should 
have anticipated they would have done the wrong thing during that 
period of time.
  There is another aspect of credit cards I would like to discuss, 
which I will offer an amendment on, which is the interchange fee. If I 
reach in my wallet and pull out my credit card at a restaurant in 
Chicago and use it to pay, I am going to be billed for the cost of that 
dinner on my monthly bill, and I have to deal with the credit card 
company about how much interest I would pay on the balance I owe, for 
example. However, there is another part of the transaction that takes 
place between the restaurant and the credit card company. If I use a 
credit card, then the restaurant is going to pay to the credit card 
company some percentage of the bill for my dinner. It turns out this 
so-called interchange fee between the retail establishment and the 
credit card companies has become a serious problem.
  Let me give you an illustration. I go to the same restaurant and 
instead of using a credit card, I pay by check. It used to be done a 
lot but not much anymore. The restaurant takes your check to their bank 
and their bank calls your bank, transfers the funds in, and no fee is 
involved. However, if you use a debit card, which would take the money 
directly out of my checking account, the same as with my check, it 
turns out the interchange fee is applied. So many restaurants and 
retail establishments are saying: Why is it with a check the bank gets 
no extra money and with a debit card the credit card company gets 
money. What is that all about? Should it be the same fee as a credit 
card?
  These are legitimate questions that aren't a minor issue. They turn 
out to be a major issue. I had the CEO of Walgreens contact me last 
week. He told me that when they look at the expenses of this national 
chain of drugstores, the No. 1 expense is compensation of employees, 
personnel costs; No. 2, mortgage and rent payments; No. 3, health 
insurance; No. 4, interchange fees. It turns out the fees Walgreens 
pays to credit card companies is the fourth largest item of cost for 
their business.
  Imagine that instead of being Walgreens, a national chain of 
drugstores, you are a small town store. Let's think it through. How 
many times have you gone to the cash register and stood behind as 
somebody handed them a credit card or a debit card for a pack of 
chewing gum or something even smaller? I saw it at National Airport. 
After the person left, I said to the person at the cash register: What 
is the smallest amount anybody has ever put on a credit card here? He 
said it was 35 cents.
  When you look at the interchange fees, it turns out that the retailer 
loses money on that sale. Most of these involve a flat fee that is 
certainly more than the profit they are going to make on a 35-cent or 
even a $5 sale and a percentage of the actual item that is charged to 
the credit card. I would say, when you look at this circumstance, you 
can understand why some smaller businesses want to say there will be a 
minimum amount you can charge--not 35 cents but obviously something 
where they are not losing money. They will lose money if somebody uses 
a credit card under the current interchange fees.
  The major card companies currently--Visa and MasterCard--prohibit 
companies that accept their credit cards from establishing a minimum 
amount that can be charged. They are going to make money, and they are 
not going to give the retail establishments that kind of opportunity.
  Of course, they also prohibit that company--that small retailer--from 
saying: I get a better deal on the interchange fee from Visa than 
MasterCard, so I will favor Visa. They used to say: If you go to the 
Olympics, so and so is the official credit card of--they can say that, 
but the retailer cannot say that. If you own a restaurant and say: I 
prefer this credit card or that credit card, you violate the agreements 
of the credit card companies.
  With this amendment, we are trying to establish that the fees charged 
to retailers for debit card usage at their establishments will be 
reasonable and proportional. It will be monitored by the Federal 
Reserve, which has that responsibility when it comes to credit card 
charges for consumers. So there is some parallel thinking here. The 
Federal Reserve will look at both sides--the retail establishment as 
well as the retail customer--in terms of the reasonable fees that can 
be charged by credit card companies.
  Secondly, we eliminate the prohibition against what I consider to be 
competitive practices, where you would say you cannot use a credit card 
or a debit card at my establishment if your bill is less than $5 or 
something of that nature. That is currently prohibited, but it would 
not be under my amendment. This amendment has the support of some of 
the largest retailers and small businesses in America. Thousands have 
come to me and said: Please give us a fighting chance with the credit 
card companies. They are killing us. I cannot tell you how many 
speeches have been made on the floor of the Senate--on both sides of 
the aisle--about small businesses. We believe--I think both parties 
believe--if we are going to come out of this recession, it will be 
because of the strength and recovery of small business. This amendment 
is the No. 1 priority of small businesses across America. I wish to 
bring this amendment to the floor for a debate and a vote.
  My colleagues can decide, do they want to come down on the side of 
retail establishments and small business or on the side of the credit 
card companies? Some will say: Wait a minute, what about community 
banks, the small banks that issue credit cards too? We specifically 
exempt them when it comes to this question of debit cards. If your 
establishment has less than $1 billion in assets--your bank--you will 
not be subject to this regulation. We are going after the largest banks 
that make the largest amount of money out of this, not the smalltown 
banks with local credit cards. We are trying to make this focused and 
fair and help small businesses.

  On Friday, I went to a press conference at a supermarket in downtown 
Chicago. Potash Brothers have been around for decades, and it is a 
great success story of a family that came and opened a store. They have 
two or three and they are well liked and respected. They came and 
testified at this press conference about what they are going through, 
the struggle they have to make it as a small business in downtown 
Chicago--a supermarket that has to pay these high fees to the credit 
card companies. All they are asking is that the fees be fair.
  We know that with the use of a credit card, the credit card company 
runs a risk that you would not pay off the balance. With the debit 
card, it comes out of your checking account or it doesn't. There is not 
a big risk factor involved.
  Many people don't realize the size of this credit and debit card 
involvement in today's economy. Those cards are rapidly replacing cash 
and checks. There are over 1 billion credit and debit cards in the 
United States. In a nation of 300 million, that is more than three 
cards per person in the United States. Last year, Americans conducted 
$1.7 trillion in transactions on credit cards and $1.6 trillion on 
debit cards.
  Credit cards and debit cards are now used in more than half of all 
retail sales in America, and the number is growing. Yet while paying 
with plastic may be a convenience for some, it turns out to be a real 
problem for small businesses. That is why this amendment is so 
important--to give small businesses a fighting chance. Individual 
businesses have no chance against the giants. Visa and

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MasterCard control about 80 percent of all the credit and debit cards 
in the United States. About $50 billion in interchange fees were 
collected in 2008, and about 80 percent of that money went to 10 big 
banks--the ones we think should be the subject of this requirement that 
the fees be reasonable and proportional, based on the amount of work 
that is being done.
  It is no surprise these 10 banks hate the Durbin amendment like the 
Devil hates holy water. They cannot wait to see it defeated on the 
floor. I wish to debate it on the floor on behalf of retailers and 
small businesses across America, and I would like my colleagues to have 
a chance to join me in this effort. I don't think it is unreasonable. 
The big banks will try to stop this amendment from coming to the floor, 
but I will fight for it, and we are going to put people on record on 
how they want to vote on this issue. This will be the first time 
interchange fees will be taken up, to my knowledge, in the history of 
the Congress. It is about time. It is a major part of our economy. I 
think a fair and reasonable fee for the use of credit and debit cards 
is something we should stand behind and unreasonable charges should be 
basically prohibited based on the regulation of the Federal Reserve.
  I will be offering that amendment this week. Those who want to 
cosponsor it are welcome to.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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