[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 187 (Wednesday, November 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7247-S7251]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Healthcare
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, our Constitution starts with those three
beautiful and powerful words: ``We the People.'' Our Founders
envisioned a nation with a form of government that wouldn't result in a
government by the powerful and the privileged but instead would really
deliver for the American people a form of government that is the
foundation for every American to thrive. What a contrast that is to
many of the governments of Europe that they had seen function on behalf
of the privileged and the powerful.
Well, we have an issue before us that certainly is about government
of, by, and for the people. It is the issue of the Children's Health
Insurance Program, often referred to as CHIP. This program has been
expired for 46 days--46 days--putting children's healthcare at risk
throughout our country.
Why isn't this bill on the floor right now? Why isn't it being passed
by unanimous consent right now, or at least being debated and amended
and passed? We have five States--five States--that are running out of
money in this quarter. Oregon, my home State, is one of them. We are
going to be out of money next month. We have another 25 States that are
going to be running out of money in the first 3 months of 2018,
disrupting the continuity of essential services for our little ones.
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For 20 years, the Children's Health Insurance Program has ensured
that no children fall through the cracks of our healthcare system. It
has covered checkups, immunizations, dental visits, and doctors'
visits, assisting our struggling and low-income families who make too
much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to be able to actually
purchase health services or healthcare for their children. Every single
State in America--50 States out of 50--has a program. Now, they tend to
operate at different levels. Forty-six States cover children up to or
above 200 percent of poverty. We have 24 States that cover families up
to incomes of 215 percent of poverty. So 24 States go a little further.
We have a handful of States that expand coverage up to 300 percent of
coverage. In my home State of Oregon, 140,000 children rely on the
Children's Health Insurance Program.
It is just not acceptable that Members of this body come to this
floor to talk about how to do trillions of dollars of tax benefits for
the very wealthiest of Americans while we are failing to get a bill on
the floor for health insurance for America's poor and struggling
children. There is a lot I could say about that tax bill. It is really
a bank heist. It is designed to deliver trillions of dollars to the
richest 1 percent of Americans, while doing virtually nothing for the
middle class and absolutely nothing for the bottom third of Americans.
But doesn't there seem to be something wrong in a ``we the People''
democratic republic when we have a bill on the floor that is a bank
heist on the Federal Treasury to deliver benefits--trillions of
dollars--to the richest Americans and we can't have a debate on this
floor on healthcare for the poorest children in America? Well,
certainly, I think it is a perversion of the principle of a government
that serves the people to put the privileged and powerful ahead in
line.
We have seen, certainly, many renditions of this. We have seen a
broader bill, a set of bills, including the TrumpCare, zombie
healthcare bill that came to this floor. It was going to wipe out
healthcare for 22 million Americans. Then it came back in a different
form that was kind of the fake insurance form, and it was defeated
again. Then it came back as the skinny bill, and it was defeated again.
All of these bills wiped out healthcare for millions and millions of
America's families.
Well, now we have a tax bill coming to the floor that, once again,
has a provision put in it to wipe out healthcare for millions of
American families. That is why we call it the zombie bill--the fact
that we kill this thing, try to put a stake through its heart, knowing
that we are supposed to be here serving the people--not the most
privileged, the people. That is what is in our Constitution. That is
the vision of this Nation, but apparently it is not the vision for
those who control the bills that come to this floor because this bill
has been waiting for 46 days to be addressed.
There is a bipartisan bill ready and waiting to be brought to the
floor right now. Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden have worked together.
They passed this bill out of their committee. It would extend the
Children's Health Insurance Program through 2022. We could take up that
bill right now and pass it. It had the full support of the committee.
The Republicans and the Democrats were on board. So why isn't it here?
Why are we disrupting healthcare for America's children?
To my colleagues: Set aside your ambition of ripping off the Federal
Government to deliver benefits to the top 1 percent of Americans and
pay some attention to America's children. That is our responsibility.
That should be our mission. That is the purpose of our Constitution.
Let's get it done. Nine million American children are waiting.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the
nomination of Joseph Otting to be Comptroller of the Currency.
I appreciate Mr. Otting's willingness to enter public service. That
said, he is not the person we need in this very important financial
watchdog roll. We have learned lessons from the quality, the attitude,
and the work of the person in this office, and I am virtually sure he
is not the right person. We have made a lot of progress in the last 7
years since we passed Wall Street reform. The last thing we need is
someone leading the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency working
to weaken or eliminate important safeguards, instead of looking out for
workers, borrowers, and the stability of our financial system.
The financial watchdogs, including the previous Comptroller, Thomas
Curry, took significant steps to right the wrongs that led to the 2008
financial crisis. It is important that we not have this collective
amnesia that seems to permeate this body about what happened to this
country 10 years ago. Working together, Comptroller Curry and other
financial watchdogs strengthened rules for the largest banks.
Independently, the OCC enhanced the supervision and examination of
these banks, took enforcement actions against bad actors, and took
steps to address concerns that the agency had been captured by the
industry. There was clear evidence of that by previous people in this
job.
This administration is putting the banking industry back in charge of
policing itself. We should have learned from that a decade ago. Mr.
Otting is yet another bank executive who profited from the financial
crisis and is being rewarded by the Trump administration with a
powerful job overseeing our Nation's banking system. This is a man who
worked at OneWest and made a fortune kicking military servicemembers,
seniors, and working families out of their homes, all while pocketing
$2.5 billion--that is billion with a ``b''--from the FDIC to protect
his bank from any losses.
The bank, OneWest, in this behavior, in this money from FDIC, in this
action of kicking military servicemembers and seniors and working
families out of their homes--this all might sound familiar to my
colleagues; it certainly sounds familiar to the people in the Finance
Committee and the Banking Committee. It is the same place that Mr.
Mnuchin--now-Secretary of the Treasury--worked, doing the same kinds of
things and work that Mnuchin did.
Mr. Otting and his former boss, Secretary Mnuchin, refused to provide
Senators State-by-State data on OneWest's foreclosures on seniors,
servicemembers, and other borrowers. They refused to answer questions
about OneWest loan modifications. I think Ohioans--and I hope enough of
my colleagues to constitute a majority--would like to know what they
are hiding.
It was pretty amazing to sit in the Finance Committee and listen to
Secretary Mnuchin and watch Secretary Mnuchin--then-Secretary-Designee
Mnuchin--refuse to release information, refuse to disclose information.
In fact, he had forgotten about a $100 million investment he had when
he testified in front of the committee. We found out later that he had
this investment that he forgot to disclose; $100 million is a lot of
money. Even to Secretary Mnuchin I think that is a lot of money. Even
to this administration, that is a lot of money.
What we do know, thanks to important work by our independent press,
is not pretty. What we do know about what OneWest did is not pretty. In
January, the Columbus Dispatch--the most conservative newspaper in my
State, the second largest paper in our State--ran a front-page story on
that bank's abuses. Their investigative journalism found that OneWest
used so-called robosignings on mortgage documents. According to the
Dispatch, in its fine investigative work, under Mr. Otting's watch from
2009 to 2015, nearly 2,000 Ohioans in our six largest counties were
foreclosed on by OneWest. The abuses were so bad that Mr. Otting signed
an OCC consent order--a legal agreement that a bank and its regulator
enter into when illegal practices at the bank force the government to
step in.
If you are signing an OCC consent order, it is a pretty serious
problem. In any other administration, this would
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have been disqualifying. In any other administration, Mr. Otting--or
for that matter, Mr. Mnuchin, who was engaged in the same kind of
practices--would have withdrawn their name. In any other
administration, if the nominee didn't withdraw their name, the
administration would have told them to withdraw their name, but not in
this White House. Frankly, when you walk into this White House, it
looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives and people like OneWest
executives and people who foreclosed on home after home and, frankly,
have almost no contrition and paid almost nothing, suffered almost no
consequences for their action.
The consent order documented OneWest's breathtaking list of
foreclosure abuses, gouging borrowers with excessive fees and unfairly
evicting servicemembers on Active Duty. Think about that. They not only
evicted servicemembers, they evicted servicemembers on Active Duty. In
some cases, I assume the wife was serving overseas and the husband was
evicted because he couldn't make the payments, partly because his wife
is paid so little as a member of the Armed Forces.
Mr. Otting was held accountable for one of the major abuses,
robosigning, by the bank's regulator in 2014. But during his Senate
Banking Committee confirmation hearing, he continued to deny
wrongdoing, even when faced with a legal document proving otherwise.
One of the things that amazes the American public is that nobody went
to jail for what they caused in the last decade, what they caused in
2007, 2008, and 2009--the pain and the hardship, the pain of plant
closings and lost jobs, the hardship of losing your home, the terrible
consequences of losing much of your retirement savings. The people who
caused this suffered almost no consequence. The American public, first
of all, can't believe none of them went to jail. Maybe they are not so
surprised anymore that there is no contrition. Then, we reward these
people by making them Secretary of the Treasury or Comptroller of the
Currency.
Mr. Otting was held accountable. In all of these legal proceedings--
and I am not a lawyer so maybe I don't exactly understand this, but
these people signed some document, but they never really admitted they
did anything wrong. Mr. Otting followed that process. Even though we
had this documentation, he continued to deny wrongdoing, even when we
presented him with that legal document.
Instead of helping families recover from the financial crisis as CEO
of Secretary Mnuchin's--not Secretary then--OneWest Bank, Mr. Otting
contributed to devastation. So this administration has chosen him to be
in charge of one of the key agencies protecting ordinary Americans from
Wall Street. I will say that again. He was a big part of the problem,
as CEO of OneWest Bank. He has committed wrongdoing; we presented him
with a legal document proving that. Yet the administration chooses him
to be Comptroller of the Currency.
It is a job most of America doesn't know much about. I didn't either
until I came here. I acknowledge that. It is a job that most Americans
don't think much about. It is a job that most Americans don't think has
a great impact in their lives, but Americans know what happened 10
years ago. I live in ZIP Code 44105, Cleveland, OH. My ZIP Code in 2007
had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of
America. I can't leave my house, if I go more than about 300 yards,
without seeing the devastation caused by people like Mr. Otting--people
who lost their homes, people who lost their jobs, people who have
suffered and lost their life savings because of Wall Street
malfeasance, because of companies like OneWest. I am guessing that Mr.
Otting doesn't think about this, and I am guessing that most people
here don't think about this.
Pope Francis, soon after assuming the Papacy, admonished parish
priests to go out and smell like the flock. It wouldn't hurt all of us
to do that a little more around here, to talk to somebody who has lost
a job. It typically happened, in my neighborhood near Slavic Village,
Cleveland, OH, where the spouse lost her job, and then the husband's
plant closed, and then they couldn't keep up with the payments. Then
they had to tell their teenage daughter: Honey, we are going to lose
our home. First, they had to give away their family dog, probably,
because owning a dog costs money, and they were squeezed. They knew
they were in trouble. Then they had to explain to their daughter that
she is going to go to a different school district--and all the things
of life have turned upside down. Your life turns upside down if you are
foreclosed on or if you are evicted.
I am guessing Mr. Otting doesn't think a lot about that. I am
guessing Secretary Mnuchin doesn't think a lot about that, as he
travels on private planes and his wife brags about her expensive
clothes. I am guessing very few in this White House think about that,
but maybe they should. If he is confirmed--and I assume he will be
because the Republicans in this body generally do whatever Wall Street
and whatever companies like OneWest want them to do in confirming
nominees like Mr. Otting, but I wish Mr. Otting would think about a
little bit more about the devastation to which he contributed.
Right now at the OCC, Keith Noreika--previously, a big bank lawyer--
has spent his time rolling back rules to protect Americans from
predatory payday lenders. He has worked against a Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau rule that would have allowed customers to take their
banks to court when they were cheated.
Mr. Noreika has done all this as Acting Comptroller. He wasn't
confirmed by this body. Get this: His temporary role as a special
government employee means he doesn't have to live up to the same ethics
or conflicts of interest rules as everyone else. He takes this job as
Acting Comptroller while we wait for Mr. Otting; he takes this job as
Acting Comptroller, and he does the bidding of all of these financial
service interest groups, all of the payday lenders, and all of the
people who are preying on working families and preying on low-income
people. He leaves and joins some of these companies, and he is very
amply rewarded, and he doesn't have to live under any ethics rules.
The people who run watchdog agencies are supposed to be independent
voices who protect workers in the economy from financial crisis, not
banking industry lapdogs who help their former boardroom buddies on
Wall Street. If his record is any guide, certainly Mr. Noreika didn't
serve the public. He served as a lapdog. He served the banking
industry. If his records are any guide, I am concerned that Mr. Otting
will be no different, that the OCC's independence will be compromised
under his leadership. He worked side by side with Secretary Mnuchin at
OneWest Bank. Mr. Mnuchin hand-picked Mr. Otting for this job.
We are already seeing signs of Wall Street influence at some of the
agencies, consistent with Secretary Mnuchin's agenda. They have pulled
back on Wall Street reforms. They have attacked other agencies for
doing their jobs.
For wealthy bank executives and private investors like Mr. Otting,
the crisis wasn't a life-changing event. Think about that. The crisis
for Mr. Otting wasn't a life-changing event, but those people who live
in ZIP Code 441, in Slavic Village in Cleveland, for those people whose
homes I drive by every day, people who lost jobs because of the
financial crisis, people who lost homes because of the financial
crisis, people who lost their life savings because of the financial
crisis, those weren't just life-changing; those were life-destroying
kinds of events. Yet Mr. Otting and Mr. Mnuchin go forward, and they
pocket their tens of millions of dollars, and then they are appointed
by the President of the United States to watch over these financial
watchdogs.
They saw the crisis. The crisis was life-changing to my neighbors.
They saw a crisis as an opportunity to profit by flipping failing banks
bought at rock-bottom prices, but not before foreclosing, as the
Columbus Dispatch said, all while raking in taxpayer dollars.
If confirmed, Mr. Otting will be in charge of ensuring that all
national banks, including Wells Fargo--we certainly heard about Wells
Fargo's abuse of millions of its customers. His job will be to ensure
that all national banks, including banks like Wells Fargo, are
complying with the law, that they operate in a safe and sound
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manner, and that they protect customers.
To be real, do we think we can trust him to do that after the worst
financial crisis since the Great Depression, the financial crisis that
devastated Ohio, Colorado, and Massachusetts families? After people
lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, Mr. Otting clearly
isn't the right person for this job.
Yesterday, the Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
Marty Gruenberg, said:
I confess to having a certain sense of deja vu. Banking
conditions today are strong and the possibility of a serious
downturn anytime soon is generally viewed as remote. That was
certainly true during the pre-crisis years as well. If I have
one key point to make today, it is that we should guard
against the temptation to become complacent about the risks
facing the financial system.
I would comment on Mr. Gruenberg's comments that 11 years ago or so--
10, 11, 12 years ago--it didn't seem all that likely to many, at least
to those in the Bush administration, that there would be an implosion
of the economy and an implosion of the banking system, a crisis; that
there was, in fact, the new head of supervision at the Federal Reserve
who pretty much said, as late as 2007: We really shouldn't be concerned
about a housing crisis. It is only going to hit the higher, upper end
of homeowners, and it will not affect the economy. Those are the people
this President has put in charge to be the watchdogs of our financial
system.
Again, Mr. Gruenberg said: If I have one key point, it is this. We
should guard against the temptation to become complacent about the
risks facing our financial system.
We need to take Chair Gruenberg's warning seriously. Confirming a
banker to the OCC--a banker who will give Wall Street its wish list--is
a high price for working families to pay who are still feeling the
impact of the last financial crisis.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on Mr. Otting.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Ohio for his
leadership in impressing on the American people to take a look at Mr.
Otting, who has been named to be the head of the OCC. I rise and join
my voice with his in saying that this is a bad nomination for America.
Donald Trump promised during his inaugural address to fight for the
``forgotten men and women of our country.'' Yet, even before his bags
were unpacked at the White House, he started bringing Wall Street to
Washington, importing the worst of the worst bankers who had gambled
away the economy, putting them in charge of regulating the same
companies they once worked for. It is a long list.
It is the former Goldman Sachs president, Gary Cohn, to lead the
National Economic Council and Wall Street fat cat Wilbur Ross to lead
the Commerce Department. Randal Quarles went straight from his private
equity fund to the Federal Reserve, where he is now responsible for
regulating our biggest banks.
Maybe the most important and most ridiculous of all of the Wall
Street imports is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin spent 17
years at Goldman Sachs. As the financial crisis was sweeping across the
country, Mnuchin organized a team of billionaires to purchase IndyMac
Bank out of Federal receivership. He rebranded the bank as OneWest and
put himself in charge. Then Mr. Mnuchin and OneWest acted swiftly and
decisively to boot more than 36,000 families out of their homes all
over the country.
The Senate should never have confirmed that kind of person to run the
Treasury Department, but it did. Now, among other things, he leads the
Council that is responsible for making sure Wall Street does not blow
up our economy again. I know it actually sounds like a joke, but the
risks for the rest of us are way too serious.
Republicans don't seem to have any problem with any of this. In fact,
they are doubling down. Today, they plan to confirm Mnuchin's former
OneWest business partner, Joseph Otting, to lead the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency and take another seat on that same Council.
The OCC is one of the most important regulators you have probably
never heard of. It is the main bank overseer of the United States. It
charters, regulates, and supervises more than 1,400 banks. The OCC
writes rules to make the economy more secure, and it puts examiners
inside the big banks in order to catch new tricks and scams before they
harm consumers or, worse, before they crash the economy, and when banks
mess up, it is the OCC's job to enforce the law.
Mr. Otting is buddies with the Treasury Secretary from their days of
leading OneWest Bank. I guess that is why he got this nomination, but
if you care about making sure regulators watch out for families,
businesses, and our economy, it is hard to think of anyone worse for
this job other than Steve Mnuchin. We all know a segment of the banking
industry specialized in squeezing American families, particularly after
the financial meltdown, but OneWest may have been the worst of the
worst, especially when Otting was president and CEO from 2010 to 2015.
What happened on Mr. Otting's watch?
OneWest ran a notorious foreclosure mill that threw thousands of
families out of their homes and illegally--underline ``illegally''--
foreclosed on dozens of servicemembers. The OneWest crew didn't just
hurt families; it destroyed whole communities when it foreclosed on
dozens of properties in the same neighborhoods, making it even harder
for families to start over and rebuild. OneWest stole homes out from
underneath families, lying to homeowners who were legally entitled to
modify their mortgages and keep their homes under a government program
and telling them the only way forward was through foreclosure.
OneWest treated all of its homeowners like garbage, but its treatment
of minority homeowners was particularly disgusting. OneWest was nine
times more likely to foreclose on a homeowner who was in a community of
color than to offer him a mortgage.
All of this went down while the bank was busy vacuuming up more than
$1 billion in taxpayer bailout money during the financial crisis. These
scams at OneWest devastated a lot of American homeowners and, at the
same time, put Mr. Otting in the same room with a lot of regulators.
After an investigation by the Treasury Department found that OneWest
systematically cheated in foreclosure proceedings, including by lying
in sworn statements to judges, cutting corners, and failing to check to
make sure they had the right documents before foreclosing on families,
Mr. Otting signed a consent decree with the government to agree that
OneWest would pay more than 10,000 people for improperly throwing them
out of their homes, but that is not all. In 2015, OneWest forked over
more than $89 million in fines to the Department of Justice for
defrauding the government and illegally putting taxpayers on the hook
for the loans if they went bad.
So what happened to Mr. Otting after hurting all of those families,
after lying to judges, after admitting to defrauding the U.S.
Government? He got a nice $12 million severance check and a call from
Donald Trump, asking if he wanted a corner office right here in
Washington.
It is crazy to expect a banker who has broken the law to turn around
and fight to enforce it. It is like putting criminals in charge of the
police station and expecting them not to look the other way while their
buddies keep stealing. There is nothing in Mr. Otting's record to
suggest he would protect consumers from financial fraud or take the
steps needed to rein in the banks or avoid future financial meltdowns.
You may not have heard of the OCC, but I promise you that when this
agency refuses to stand up to the big banks and enforce the law,
American families get hurt. It is as simple as that. Before the
financial crisis, the OCC buddied up with the banks they were supposed
to regulate, and everybody knew it. The result was the 2008 financial
crisis that cost our economy $14 trillion. Millions of families lost
their homes. Millions lost their jobs. Millions lost their savings and
their retirement money. Nearly a decade later, many American families
are still hurting. Now the Trump administration is ready to take us
back to the bad old days, in which banks made gobs of money off risky
bets while the regulators just looked the other way.
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Confirming Mr. Otting is kicking dirt in the faces of every one of
OneWest's victims. It is a gut punch to every American who was hurt in
the financial crisis. Even if none of that matters to you, it is a
terrible idea because leaving Mr. Otting in charge of bank regulation
will endanger our economy. American families and businesses need and
deserve a cop on the beat who will fight hard to keep them safe.
Everything we know about Mr. Otting says he will be out there fighting
for the big banks.
I will be voting no on Mr. Otting's nomination, and I urge all of my
colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.