[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 34 (Monday, February 26, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1209-S1211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

  Mr. President, this month, the toy company Hasbro announced that it 
is introducing a new version of the board game Monopoly. In this 
version--imagine this--players get rewarded, not punished, for 
cheating. It is Wall Street 2018.
  It might be fun to be the banker in this new, rigged version of 
Monopoly when you are playing with game pieces and pretend money, but 
it is not so fun when you are a Wells Fargo employee. It is not so fun 
if you have been victimized by Equifax. It is not so fun if you are one 
of the millions of people who have had to go through the process to get 
restitution from their banks. Families get ripped off by shady payday 
lenders and by big banks. Families lose real money, not Monopoly money.
  When you think about getting away with cheating and even rewarding 
cheaters, pretty soon, you might not have to use much imagination at 
all. There have always been shady corporations trying to get away with 
ripping off consumers. The difference is that now they have an ally in 
charge of the watchdog that is supposed to be policing them. It is 
called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--a bureau that has done 
yeomen's work to protect consumers, to get restitution for consumers 
when they have been cheated by Wall Street, when they have been cheated 
by a payday lender, and when they have been cheated by some shady 
financial service operator.
  In his short time heading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 
Mick Mulvaney has done the opposite of what we used to see and the 
opposite of what we should expect of the person whose job it is to look 
out for consumers. It is called the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau, not the ``let's protect Wall Street in one more way'' bureau.
  This month, NPR reported that in a new memo, Mulvaney laid out a 
``revised mission and vision of the consumer bureau.'' What is that 
vision? That vision is to dismantle it and stop all the work it does to 
hold banks accountable. These are NPR's words: He is ``making radical 
changes to deter the agency from aggressively pursuing its mission''--a 
mission designed to protect hard-working people from banks and payday 
lenders who look to cheat them.
  In his memo, Mulvaney actually said that the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau should be ``acting with humility and moderation.'' He 
is saying that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be 
acting with humility and moderation, but does he ever admonish Wall 
Street to act with humility and moderation? It would be laughable 
because of the way Wall Street so often acts. We shouldn't want 
moderation when it comes to going after big banks and corporations who 
are cheating consumers. We should want aggressive actions.
  Those two words, ``humility'' and ``moderation,'' are not the first 
two that come to mind when you think of the administration. To the 
surprise of many, the White House now looks like a retreat for Wall 
Street executives. When you talk about humility and moderation with 
regard to this administration, when translated in this context, it 
seems as though they mean to go easy on the fraudsters who are ripping 
off the American people.
  This is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This isn't a Wall 
Street regulator who is captured by Wall Street, where you see people 
from Citibank and other big Wall Street entities--the $1 trillion, $2 
trillion, $2 trillion-plus banks--going in and out of the revolving 
door, working for the regulators, and working for the banks.
  This is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Its job was created 
8 or 9 years ago to fight just as hard for American families as Wall 
Street lobbyists fight for their big banks. Believe me, these lobbyists 
don't exactly act with humility and moderation. The Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau can't afford to.
  Since it was created, this consumer bureau has returned $12 billion--
that is $12,000 million--to 29 million Americans who were cheated by 
banks and who were cheated by payday lenders, and moderating that now 
is literally taking money out of the pockets of working families. 
Because the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been so effective, 
the administration has now put the fox in charge of the chicken coop--
the chicken house.
  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which helped 29 million 
Americans return $12 billion because the banks were cheating them, is 
now run by Mick Mulvaney, who clearly doesn't even think the Bureau 
should exist. Nothing in this memo that he wrote should surprise anyone 
who has watched Mr. Mulvaney over the past few months or, frankly, his 
career. Although he has been running the CFPB on a part-time basis, he 
is supposed to be overseeing the Federal budget, so I am a little 
curious that the full-time Budget Director--my friend from my State of 
Ohio, Senator Portman, used

[[Page S1210]]

to run that, so he knows it is a full-time job. The administration 
scooped up Mr. Mulvaney and said: Well, you keep doing that, but you 
are going to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
  Mr. Mulvaney had no real interest, apparently, in running the 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but he has managed to do a lot on 
behalf of Wall Street cheaters. His first action was to freeze payments 
from the Civil Penalty Fund to families who were scammed by big banks 
and other financial institutions. Think about that. The Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau has levied these actions against people who 
cheated consumers. Mulvaney walks in the door on the first day, 
assembles a staff, and says: Freeze those payments. We are not going to 
pay them. These were actions taken by people who were looking out for 
consumers. They were actions they took to penalize these banks and to 
get restitution from these financial institutions that had cheated the 
public. So on his first week on the job, on his first day, he took back 
the hard-earned money of Americans who had been ripped off. He followed 
that by delaying a rule that protects consumers from predatory payday 
lenders, dismissing a lawsuit against those shady loan sharks.
  Senator Jack Reed was out in Ohio the other day. Senator Reed and I 
sit on the Banking Committee. He is a West Point graduate. He is the 
senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. He talked about what 
happens at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base right outside of Dayton, 
where the payday lenders prey on these men and women who are young and 
perhaps not as experienced as some in having the financial 
sophistication to deal with some of these loan sharks, and he knows 
that payday lenders and others prey on these generally low-paid and 
underpaid men and women who have sacrificed for their country. 
Sometimes they initiate foreclosures on the homes of people who are 
overseas serving our country. But the new Director of the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau doesn't seem all that interested in any of 
this.
  After delaying the rule that protects consumers from predatory payday 
lenders, after dismissing a lawsuit against these shady loan sharks--we 
are talking about lenders who have been accused of deceiving customers, 
sometimes with payday lenders charging 9 percent interest and trying to 
collect debts people don't even owe. Those people should be protected. 
You don't protect Wall Street; you protect people who have been 
defrauded by Wall Street.
  It is not that complicated, but apparently at the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau, it is now. Most payday lenders are getting an even 
better return on their campaign donations than they are on their 
predatory loans.
  Mulvaney has put on ice another case that has been pending against 
Wells Fargo, this time for wrongly charging borrowers fees when they 
took out a mortgage.
  At his day job running another Federal agency, Mulvaney proposed a 
budget earlier this month that would defund the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau entirely for a year--defund it--basically saying: We 
are spending no more money on this Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau.
  Philosophically, he just doesn't like the idea of somebody standing 
up for customers, standing up for consumers, standing up against Wall 
Street, standing up against the payday lenders, and standing up against 
the loan sharks that he seems to be in alliance with.
  We shouldn't be surprised by any of this. Mr. Mulvaney, the person 
heading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now, is a man who 
doesn't even think the Bureau should exist. He said some time ago that 
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is ``a sick, sad joke.'' He 
sponsored legislation to repeal it.
  How do you explain to 29 million Americans who have gotten $12 
billion in restitution because they were cheated that this is a sad, 
sick joke and it shouldn't exist? It is no joke to the servicemembers 
who rely on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to fight for them 
against bank abuse. It is no joke to the 3\1/2\ million--3\1/2\ 
million--victims of Wells Fargo's fake account scam or the 145 million 
Americans, with 5 million in my State alone--145 million Americans, 
that is pretty much half the adult population in our country--who had 
their data breached by Equifax. The Equifax executives had little 
contrition and didn't apologize much, and they are skating free. What 
is Mick Mulvaney doing to help roughly half of the adult population in 
this country who were the victims of the Equifax breach to make sure it 
doesn't happen again? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was investigating this 
massive breach, but Mulvaney ordered them to close the investigation. 
This is malpractice or worse. We are talking about a data breach that 
exposed birthdays, Social Security numbers, and addresses. People's 
identities could be stolen and their credit scores ruined. Did Mr. 
Mulvaney care? Apparently not. He was on the side of Equifax when he 
wasn't on the side of Wall Street, when he wasn't on the side of payday 
lenders, when he wasn't on the side of scam artists--and maybe he is on 
the side of all of them. But apparently he thinks it is more important 
to protect the corporations that let it happen than it is to protect 
the American people he is supposed to serve. I guess we shouldn't be 
surprised.
  Once again, Mick Mulvaney and this administration are making it clear 
whose side they are on. Over and over, they side with Wall Street. They 
side with the largest corporations. They side with companies that shut 
down production in Gallopolis, Mansfield, and Zanesville and move their 
companies overseas. They side with them instead of with hard-working 
Americans who are struggling. We see it at the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau with Mulvaney's determination to protect corporate 
special interests. We see it with other bank watchdogs who are putting 
Americans at risk of another financial crisis just to help Wall Street 
pad their pockets.
  Mr. President, as you know, America's financial system has had a 
really, really, really good couple of years, even though we bailed them 
out. Ten years ago, this Congress bailed out these huge banks--$1 
trillion, $2 trillion banks. We bailed them out.
  Congress passed a tax bill in which 81 percent of the benefits go to 
the richest 1 percent of people in this country. It is believed that 
the financial services industry did better under that tax bill than 
anyone else in the country--any other industry. Now we see Mick 
Mulvaney and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doing even more 
for the banks by representing them instead of representing workers and 
consumers.
  As I said, it is increasingly clear whose side the administration is 
on. We have seen it with the rollback of rules that protect Americans 
from the fine print in contracts, the fine print that few of us read 
and even fewer of us could understand. When we sign up for a credit 
card, when we sign up for a car loan, when we get a job and we sign a 
contract with our employer, these fine print, forced administration 
clauses--you know what they did? They denied customers and employees 
who were cheated their day in court. So when you sign up for a credit 
card and you sign a bank document and then you want to sue because they 
did something to you that you thought was against the law, you are out 
of luck. You have lost your right because you signed that document.
  We see it right here in the Senate with bills to dismantle Wall 
Street reform, to make it easier for big banks to take big risks that 
could wreck the economy all over again.
  At the 10-year anniversary of the biggest financial crisis since the 
Great Depression, there is already a collective amnesia that has 
settled over this town. The Republican leaders in Congress, people down 
the hall in the office of the majority leader, Senator McConnell--over 
and over, they side with Wall Street instead of with workers.
  Ten years ago we saw what Wall Street and the financial services 
industry, particularly Wall Street, did to our country. My wife and I 
live in Cleveland, OH. Our ZIP Code is 44105. Our ZIP Code 10 or 11 
years ago had more foreclosures in the first half of that year than any 
other ZIP Code in the United States of America. I still see the blight 
because of the Wall Street abuse in the loss of retirement

[[Page S1211]]

savings, the lost jobs, the closed factories, and the foreclosed homes. 
I see all of that in my neighborhood. I see all of that throughout my 
State. We all see it in all 50 States. Yet there is this collective 
amnesia in this body, as if none of that ever happened to this country. 
This administration and Republican leaders, again and again and again, 
side with Wall Street over workers, side with Wall Street over 
customers.
  The lessons of a decade ago are clear. You don't grow the middle 
class by letting big banks take massive risks or by letting shady 
lenders prey on hard-working Americans. That is why we passed Wall 
Street reform, and that is why we created the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau--to hold big banks and other bad actors accountable 
when they cheat, to deter them from bad and risky behavior in the first 
place.
  We need a new permanent Director of the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau who will protect the consumers instead of handing big 
corporations a ``get out of jail free'' card. A cheater's version of 
Monopoly might sound like fun on game night, but we have already seen 
what it looks like in real life. Powerful special interests on Wall 
Street win big every single time, and everybody else loses.
  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. BOOZMAN. 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. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.