[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 21, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S3688]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. REED (for himself, Mr. Brown, Mr. Tester, Mr. Blumenthal, 
        Mr. Kaine, Ms. Duckworth, Ms. Warren, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Franken, 
        Ms. Klobuchar, Ms. Cortez Masto, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Menendez, 
        Ms. Hirono, and Mr. Durbin):
  S. 1389. A bill to allow the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection 
to provide greater protection to servicemembers; to the Committee on 
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, today, along with Senators Brown, Tester, 
Blumenthal, Kaine, Duckworth, Warren, Baldwin, Franken, Klobuchar, 
Cortez Masto, Van Hollen, and Menendez, I am reintroducing the Military 
Consumer Enforcement Act to further strengthen consumer protections for 
service members.
  Our Nation has a strong tradition of working to protect our service 
members while they sacrifice to keep our Nation, safe. Building on 
these efforts, Congress passed the Soldiers' and Sailor's Civil Relief 
Act in 1940 to provide essential financial protections for service 
members to ``enable such persons to devote their entire energy to the 
defense needs of the Nation.'' Now called the Servicemembers Civil 
Relief Act (SCRA), this law provides such protections as prohibiting 
the eviction of service members and their dependents from rental or 
mortgaged properties and capping the interest at 6% on debts incurred 
prior to an individual entering active duty military service.
  Despite the importance of the SCRA's protections to our service 
members, enforcement of this critical law has been inconsistent and 
subject to the discretion of our financial regulators. For example, 
according to a July 2012 report from the Government Accountability 
Office, the estimated percentage of depository institutions that 
serviced mortgages that were examined for SCRA compliance varied by 
year between 2007 through 2011 at a rate of 4% in 2007, 17% in 2008, 
18% in 2009, 26% in 2010, and 15% in 2011. Without a change in the law, 
SCRA enforcement will continue to be subject to the changing priorities 
of the financial regulators, which can also change with each newly 
elected President. Simply put, prioritizing the consumer protection of 
our service members should not be discretionary; it should be 
mandatory. Our legislation ensures that SCRA enforcement will be a 
permanent priority for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB, 
which Congress created to enforce Federal consumer financial protection 
laws.
  In 2010, as we debated the authorizing legislation for the CFPB, I 
led the bipartisan effort to ensure the CFPB would play a key role in 
protecting service members through the establishment of an Office of 
Servicemember Affairs, OSA. Since that time, the CFPB, through its 
enforcement actions, has helped service members recover approximately 
$130 million in relief from unscrupulous actors in the financial 
marketplace and through the OSA's monitoring of complaints, the CFPB 
has helped other regulators provide more than $60 million in relief for 
more than 78,000 service members harmed by SCRA violations. Imagine how 
much more the CFPB could do for our service members if it could do more 
than just refer potential SCRA violations to other regulators and 
educate service members about their SCRA rights. With this demonstrated 
record of success in protecting our service members, the CFPB should be 
empowered, as it would be under this legislation, to enforce certain 
key SCRA provisions, such as the protections against default judgments 
and being charged no more than the maximum rate of interest on debts 
incurred before military service.
  We should do all we can to make sure there is a strong watchdog on 
the beat that can enforce the protections we have put in place. When it 
comes to the SCRA, that strong watchdog should be the CFPB. Our 
legislation is supported by more than thirty groups, including the 
National Military Family Association, the Military Officers Association 
of America, Veterans Education Success, Student Veterans of America, 
Consumer Federation of America, Americans for Financial Reform, Public 
Citizen, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, U.S. PIRG, 
Consumers Union, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National 
Consumer Law Center (on behalf of its low income clients), National 
Community Reinvestment Coalition, Center for Popular Democracy, 
Alliance for Justice, American Association for Justice, and the Center 
for Responsible Lending. I urge our colleagues to help honor our 
commitment to our Nation's service members by joining us in this effort 
to improve the supervision and enforcement of the SCRA.
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