[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 109 (Tuesday, July 14, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5058-S5059]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              EVERY CHILD ACHIEVES ACT OF 2015--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader.
  I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


          5th Anniversary of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, next Tuesday, July 21, is my wife's 
birthday, and it is also the 5-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall 
Street Reform Act becoming law.
  Nearly two decades before that, Barings, an international bank, was 
destroyed by fraud committed by a single one of their traders. In 
reality, there were no profits, unbeknownst to many at the time, just 
big losses that this trader managed to conceal until the firm 
collapsed.
  When writing about his actions later in his memoir, the trader said:

       Luckily for my fraud, there were too many chiefs who would 
     chat about it at arm's length but never go further. And they 
     never dared to ask me any basic questions, since they were 
     afraid of looking stupid about not understanding futures and 
     options.

  This helps illustrate how we got to that financial crisis.
  Wall Street so often speaks its own language--one most Americans 
can't understand and one that prevented consumers and taxpayers and 
sometimes even participants from asking questions and from challenging 
Wall Street.
  September 2008 was preceded by a decade of deregulation, after 
furious lobbying by the financial industry--lobbying buttressed by 
obfuscation and deceit, always underscored by greed. Risky behavior was 
rewarded with gargantuan profits for the firms and multimillion-dollar 
bonuses for the traders and the executives. Questions were not asked. 
People often looked the other way. So many were confused and tricked, 
if you will.
  Regulators didn't do their jobs. Congress was too--putting it 
mildly--bought and sold by Wall Street, and look what happened to the 
American public. Most Americans didn't fully appreciate the connection 
between Wall Street and our lives until 2008. That is when the biggest 
banks' recklessness led to the loss of 9 million jobs. The unemployment 
rate reached 10 percent, 5 million Americans lost their homes, and $13 
trillion, with a ``T''--that is 13,000 billion; that is what a trillion 
is, 13,000 billion dollars--in household wealth was erased.
  My wife and I for 2 years have lived in the city of Cleveland in ZIP 
Code 44105. I mention the ZIP Code because that ZIP Code in 2007, I 
believe--it was around that time--that ZIP Code had the highest rate of 
foreclosures of any ZIP Code in the United States of America. It wasn't 
because people in Slavic Village, Cleveland, OH, in my neighborhood 
were trying to game the system. It was not because there were all kinds 
of con men and women in the neighborhood. It was mostly because of job 
loss due to the decline in manufacturing. It was also because firms 
that were rewarded by turning over homes and fees came into those 
communities offering something more than people could really think they 
would get, and so foreclosure after foreclosure after foreclosure 
happened.
  The financial crisis created 9 million people who wanted to work for 
a living, contribute to society, and support their families but could 
not. And behind the millions of foreclosures were 5 million painful 
conversations.
  Think about this. We in this body talk about numbers, we talk about 
statistics, we talk about foreclosures, we talk about derivatives, we 
talk about banks, we talk about fees, we talk about all of this, but 
think about what a foreclosure means. We don't dress the way we do, 
making good salaries and benefits, hanging out more with people of 
means rather than people without much means; we don't think a lot about 
what a foreclosure might mean to a family. Think about this: A mother 
and father both have sort of middle-income jobs, working-class jobs. 
They have a daughter who is 12 and a son who is 13. The mother comes 
home one day and says: I lost my job. The family scrapes things 
together, figures they can keep going. Six months later the father 
comes home and says he lost his job. The kids and the father have a 
conversation.
  It is pretty clear they are going to have to move out of their house 
because they are going to be foreclosed on. They sit down with the son 
and daughter and they try to explain what this is going to mean.
  The daughter says: What school are we going to go to?
  The parents say: I don't know. We are going to have to move out of 
this house and leave our school district.
  The son says: What happens to our friends?
  And the parents say: We don't know because we are going to move.
  Then they have another painful conversation.
  What happens to our dog?
  We don't have the money to feed the dog, and in that new apartment we 
are not going to be allowed to have a pet.
  Think about that. They lose their home and their neighborhood and 
their friends. They even have to give away their family pets. They are 
cutting back.
  These are the stories that aren't really told around here--what 
actually happens to these families when they are foreclosed on. Those 
conversations happened--I don't know how many conversations, but I know 
there were 5 million homes foreclosed on where conversations took place 
such as that night after night after night, as parents explained to 
their children what was happening to their way of life. Parents were 
sometimes telling their children, We are going to have to share a house 
with relatives. Families leaving neighborhoods, leaving schools, 
leaving friends behind, parents trying to find a new home for the 
family dog that the child had grown up with since the child was 3 or 4 
years old, that is why we passed Wall Street reform.
  Despite doomsday predictions from the Republicans--almost all of whom 
opposed Dodd-Frank reform, almost all of whom opposed Dodd-Frank 
because Wall Street opposed Dodd-Frank reform--despite those 
predictions, it has been a huge success.
  In 2011, as the law was beginning to be implemented, we heard 
Republicans running for President, people such as Newt Gingrich, a 
historical figure who has, by and large, been forgotten now, who used 
to be the Speaker of the House down the hall, who used to be one of the 
most powerful people in Washington, who stood toe-to-toe with President 
Clinton and shut down the government in the 1990s. He said Dodd-Frank 
will kill small banks, kill small business, kill the housing industry. 
He was wrong.
  Since Dodd-Frank has been implemented over the past 5 years, the 
private sector has created 13 million new jobs, household wealth has 
grown by $13 trillion, exceeding precrisis levels, and business lending 
has climbed 30 percent. Wall Street reform didn't ruin the economy, 
Wall Street reform stabilized and strengthened it.
  Polling that Americans for Financial Reform released last week shows 
that Americans agree with this assessment. They overwhelmingly support 
strong financial regulations and they overwhelmingly support the goals 
of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
  But this month--and for the rest of the year--we have seen 
Republicans try to undermine Wall Street reform, try to do the bidding 
of Wall Street itself, and try to do all they can to weaken the 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We have seen it in the Budget 
Committee and in the Agriculture Committee and in the Banking Committee 
and in the appropriations process.
  Last week, in the Senate Banking Committee, Republicans held another 
hearing with representatives from the financial industry advocating for 
legislation to undermine parts of Dodd-Frank. Week after week, it 
seems, we hear from people who come in front of the Banking Committee--
people who seem oblivious to the fact that Wall Street caused this 
damage to our society, people doing the bidding for Wall Street banks, 
people who have excused the greed and the overreach of Wall Street and 
what Wall Street has done to the men and women, done to children, done 
to families, done to neighborhoods in our society.
  My ZIP Code is doing better than it was, but we can still see the 
ruin and

[[Page S5059]]

the devastation brought to ZIP Code 44105, in part, because of Wall 
Street greed. We can see it all over this country.
  Tomorrow, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rich Cordray, 
who I can proudly say is from my State of Ohio, will testify again in 
Congress. This will mark his 54th appearance--either him or someone 
else from the CFPB. As Republicans claim, the CFPB is unaccountable to 
Congress--hauled in front of Congress one, two, three, four-plus dozen 
times, and they still say it is unaccountable. Figure that out. It is 
all about the politics. Again, they are doing Wall Street's bidding.
  This past weekend, two Republican Commissioners on the Securities and 
Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission--
agencies whose job it is to police Wall Street, to prevent another 
crisis--these two Republican Commissioners wrote an op-ed denouncing 
regulation. They wrote: ``One of the greatest potential risks to the 
financial markets is the work of the regulators themselves.'' They are 
not saying regulators should have been tougher on Wall Street. They are 
saying these regulators are overreaching and not doing what they 
should. In fact, these regulations shouldn't have existed many times. 
This is the attitude we are up against. We know they will keep fighting 
to tear down this law just as hard as they fought to keep it from 
passing.

  Now, when Dodd-Frank was passed back in July 5 years ago, in 2010, 
President Obama signed the bill only a few hours later. The chief 
lobbyist for the top financial services, the top lobbyist in 
Washington, proclaimed: ``Now it's halftime.'' What did he mean by 
``now it's halftime''? It was that, Wall Street lost that battle in 
Congress on Dodd-Frank, and now it was time to turn to the agencies and 
to try to weaken, obfuscate, blunt these rules, delay, and do whatever 
they could. There were 3,000 lobbyists during the Dodd-Frank act--6 
lobbyists for every Member of Congress. Even then they couldn't win 
because enough of us here had the guts to stand up to Wall Street and 
do the right thing. Many of those 3,000 lobbyists are back.
  In 2012, lobbyists for banks outnumbered consumer protection 
advocates 20 to 1--1 consumer advocate to 20 bank lobbyists spending 
hundreds of millions of dollars trying to weaken the law. We must stand 
firm. We must push back on efforts that roll back the reforms. We 
should stand up for the CFPB. Nobody is arguing that we can't improve 
and strengthen Dodd-Frank. We want to do that. But if improve and 
strengthen means doing Wall Street bidding, that is not what improve 
and strengthen should mean.
  There are enormous challenges we have to tackle. Today's typical 
American consumer obviously has no union to demand a defined pension or 
a fair wage and no dependable retirement savings account. The average 
borrower has left college with a diploma and $33,000 in student loan 
debt. Nearly 60 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds now live with their 
parents, largely due to staggering student loan debt and stagnant 
wages. Five million Americans have mortgages that are under water, 
meaning they owe more than the house is worth, which represents nearly 
$350 billion of negative equity. That means if you total up all of the 
debt of those 5 million Americans--how much they owe on their homes--
and subtract what their homes are worth, it would amount to $350 
billion of negative equity.
  One in five Americans has an error on her credit report that might 
prevent her from accessing a traditional banking system. It is not due 
to a mistake they made, but they have an error on their credit report 
that they, for whatever reason, have not been able to fix. One in three 
American adults has debt in collections, the majority of which is 
medical debt. Fifty-seven percent of Americans say they are not 
financially prepared for the unexpected. A financial crisis only makes 
these trends worse.
  Where do we go? Some sectors of our economy have done better than 
others. When times are good, we return to discussions about regulatory 
relief, which I support, for small banks and credit unions. I think we 
need to make some changes in the midsized regional banks, such as the 
Huntington in Columbus or the Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, to help 
make them competitive, particularly with the large banks.
  What about relief for the average American? All of us in this body 
need to broaden our focus beyond so-called regulatory relief. The 
answer to everything, according to my friends on the other side of the 
aisle, is to cut taxes on the rich and deregulate and weaken consumer 
laws, weaken safe drinking water laws, weaken clean air laws, and 
weaken Dodd-Frank laws. That is their answer to everything.
  What about relief for average Americans? What about increasing the 
minimum wage? What about helping Americans who are making $30,000 or 
$40,000 but are denied overtime because they have been put in a salary 
or management category even though they are only making $30,000? They 
may be running the night shift at a fast-food restaurant and have been 
classified as bosses so as salaried workers, they don't get overtime 
even if they are working 60 hours a week. How about relief for that 
average American?
  How about relief for Americans who don't have sick leave and go to 
work when they are sick and take the chance of infecting somebody else, 
because if they stay home, they will not receive any pay?
  How about if their child is sick? Do they send their child to school, 
because they can't take a day off because they don't get a personal 
leave day to take care of their child? So their child may end up going 
to school, doesn't do as well and may get other children sick, which 
means less productive students or less productive workers if the parent 
ends up going to work sick--all of those things. Why don't we have 
relief for working-class and middle-class families--minimum wage, 
overtime pay when they have earned it and help those families get the 
kind of sick pay and sick leave as the people who work here have who 
dress up and are well paid and have the advantage of working in the 
Senate? Why are we not doing that?
  We shouldn't be afraid to ask questions that will lead to the reforms 
we need. We shouldn't be afraid to challenge the status quo, and we 
should never be afraid to make Wall Street accountable.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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