[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 7, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1405-S1419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




ECONOMIC GROWTH, REGULATORY RELIEF, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT--MOTION 
                               TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2155, 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 287, S. 2155, a bill to 
     promote economic growth, provide tailored regulatory relief, 
     and enhance consumer protections, and for other purposes.


                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, community banks, credit unions, and 
other small-scale lenders play a vital role in the U.S. economy.
  Research from Harvard indicates that community banks provide more 
than half of all small business loans. Let me repeat that. A majority 
of small business loans is handled by community banks. This is even 
more pronounced in rural areas and farming communities, like those I 
represent in Kentucky. A whopping 77 percent of agricultural loans come 
from community banks--77 percent.
  In this era of online banking and multinational corporations, smaller 
institutions remain uniquely able to build community connections. 
Community bankers get to know their residents and business owners on a 
personal level. That perspective lets them extend credit to small-scale 
entrepreneurs, farmers, ranchers, and other Americans who might not 
have access otherwise. So when small lenders close their doors, the 
effects on communities are very real.
  In 2014, an economist at MIT found that, on average, the closing of a 
single bank cut the number of new small business loans in the immediate 
area by more than 10 percent for several years. The problem was 
extremely pronounced in low-income areas, where a local perspective and 
personal relationships matter even more. In low-income America, a 
physical bank closure cuts lending to local small businesses by nearly 
40 percent.
  Long story short, the more vulnerable a community, the more they need 
local lenders, but since the Federal Government implemented massive new 
regulations under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, our community banks and 
credit unions have been getting squeezed. Dodd-Frank's imprecise, 
inefficient, one-size-fits-all framework dropped these small 
institutions into the regulatory maze that was intended for Wall 
Street. For 8 years, they have faced a staggering compliance burden 
that now consumes, on average, 24 percent of their net income. This has 
forced many to pare down their offerings or close their doors for good. 
That leaves out to dry would-be entrepreneurs, job creators, and 
existing small businesses that want to expand.
  Fortunately, we have an opportunity this week to begin putting things 
right. Today, the Senate continues considering a sensible solution that 
would streamline regulations and give

[[Page S1406]]

smaller lenders a fighting chance. Senator Crapo's Economic Growth, 
Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act is the product of 
thorough committee work. It is an important step toward unwinding the 
harm caused by the Obama administration's knee-jerk reaction to the 
2008 financial crisis.
  Importantly, this bill has strong bipartisan support. On both sides 
of the aisle, Members with a diversity of views on Dodd-Frank itself 
have recognized that this set of commonsense fixes deserves all of our 
support. I encourage all Senators to join them.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. President, on another matter, just 2 months in, the effects of 
tax reform are percolating through every corner of our economy. It has 
made bonuses, raises, and benefits for working families daily news in 
communities all across our country.
  Thanks to tax reform, automakers are planting deeper roots in 
America. Innovators like Apple are bringing billions back to invest 
here at home. Retailers, from corner stores to national chains, are 
rewarding their hard-working teams. There is another sector in which 
the benefits of tax reform are flowing freely--America's growing craft 
beverage industry. That is because the new 21st-century Tax Code 
included a provision known as the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax 
Reform Act, spearheaded by Senator Portman and Senator Blunt. Among 
other achievements, that piece of tax reform significantly cut the 
excise taxes the Federal Government imposes on beer, wine, and spirits.
  This was originally a bipartisan bill, with early support from my 
friend, the senior Senator from Oregon. It is too bad he and every 
other Democrat in Congress ended up voting against this historic tax 
reform that included that measure, because it is proving to be good 
news for a host of American small businesses, including the fine 
distilleries that contribute thousands of jobs and tourism in Kentucky.
  One recent wave of headlines has detailed how tax reform is helping 
entrepreneurs in the craft brewing industry as well. Across the 
country, job creators in this popular and growing line of business are 
making big plans for their savings under this new 21st-century Tax 
Code.
  Matt Matthiesen, a brewery owner in West Okoboji, IA, said: ``I am 
very excited. . . . As a small local business, those breaks help us 
tremendously.''
  Donn Martens, who owns another brewery just down the road, said: ``We 
hope to expand with this money. We would like to double our 
production.''
  Remember Matt and Donn when my colleagues across the aisle tell you 
tax reform is only helping the big guys. Together, their two businesses 
employ 15 people. They expect tax reform will save them about $15,000 
this year. Just try telling any small business owner that is no big 
deal.

  Larry Horwitz owns Four String Brewing Company in Columbus, OH. He 
expects tax reform will save his business $40,000 this year. ``We 
invest where we live and work,'' he said. ``We are the blue collar 
workers in the neighborhood.''
  In Kentucky, tax reform has a number of craft breweries excited about 
the year ahead. At Country Boy Brewing in Georgetown, production 
manager Daniel Sinkhorn says the new law is helping them plan a new 
canning line, which will ``add jobs, add equipment . . . and keep 
Country Boy growing.''
  It has been reported that later today my friends across the aisle 
will unveil a $1 trillion spending plan and propose repealing tax 
reform to pay for it.
  Repeal all these bonuses, pay raises, new jobs, and new investments? 
Talk about a nonstarter.
  At the same time, Vice President Pence will be in Central Kentucky 
today to hear from small business owners and community leaders about 
how tax reform is helping them. Daniel Harrison, the cofounder of 
Country Boy Brewing, will be on hand to meet with the Vice President. I 
am glad he will be able to share how his business, like so many around 
the country, is tapping into tax reform savings.
  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. SCHUMER. 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.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The Democratic leader is recognized.


                                Tariffs

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, President Trump's instincts on China are 
correct, but his execution is poor. He should stick with those 
instincts and not those who label anything we do to protect America 
against China's rapacious policies as protectionist. At the same time, 
he should fix his plan so it really does what he intends it to do or 
wants it to do.
  I have been one of the chief critics of the status quo on trade. 
Americans--and I share this view--resent all those academics who any 
time we try to do anything with China say: protectionist, trade war.
  The bottom line is simple. China is eating our lunch. China is 
rapacious. China, day by day, gnaws away at our economy by manipulating 
currency. They sometimes do it, they sometimes don't, but they will 
again when they can.
  By having no reciprocity, they don't let good American industries in, 
but they want to come here--and do, easily--buying our family jewels, 
our intellectual property, our leading companies in robotics, 
artificial intelligence, chips, and pharmaceuticals.
  China has a plan to take advantage of America, to surpass us 
economically by not being fair. They keep their huge market protected, 
steal our stuff, learn how to do it, then try to come sell it here and 
gain an advantage when they can by manipulating currency.
  The President should not be deterred by all of those business 
interests that are only interested in their profits, not in what is 
good for America. That is their job, their shareholders--I get it--but 
he should not be deterred by them. At the same time, he has to back off 
this plan which doesn't do what it is supposed to do. Major harm is 
done to allies like Canada and Europe, not to China.
  That is the tightrope we need to walk on. If the President walks on 
that tightrope carefully and well, we will support him.
  The President's instincts to go after China are correct, but the 
policy he proposes doesn't fit the bill. It is not well targeted, it is 
not precise and, as a result, it could cause a mess of collateral 
damage that hurts America more than it helps.
  The sweeping nature of the tariffs has already justifiably angered 
key allies in Canada and Europe and could draw reciprocal tariffs on 
American goods, raising costs on average consumers from coast-to-coast. 
A country such as Canada, with which we have a trade surplus, could 
retaliate.
  Mr. President, focus on China. Go after China and do it in a smart, 
focused but sharp-edged way. Don't create a policy that hurts our 
allies more than it hurts China and causes China to sort of giggle at 
our ineffectiveness.
  A trade war is not what we want. Making China play by the rules is 
what all Americans want, except for a handful of businesses that just 
see their interests and raising their profits no matter where the jobs 
go or where they sell goods.
  China dumps counterfeit and artificially cheap goods into our market, 
denies productive U.S. companies fair access to their markets, and 
steals the intellectual property of American companies. I am pained, 
actually pained, because I love this country, and I want to see us stay 
economically No. 1. I am pained when I go over in my mind the statement 
of retired four-star GEN Keith Alexander, who is in charge of cyber 
security in America. He called China's theft of our intellectual 
property the ``greatest transfer of wealth in history.'' American 
wealth is actually being stolen by China, and we sit here and shrug our 
shoulders or do things that are not effective.
  The Trump administration should rethink its approach to sweeping 
tariffs while there is still time and focus attention on China. China 
is our No. 1 trade problem--not Canada, not Europe. President Trump 
could do a much better job of tailoring his trade policy to address the 
real problems instead of creating new ones.


                             Infrastructure

  Mr. President, on infrastructure, a year ago last January, guided by 
what President Trump had said, wanting to

[[Page S1407]]

work with Democrats on infrastructure, Senate Democrats unveiled our $1 
trillion infrastructure plan. It was an outline.
  We sent it to the President. We said it was one of the areas where we 
could work with the President to get something done. Then we waited and 
we waited and we waited. A full year after we made our proposal, the 
Trump administration finally released one of its own. Frankly, 
President Trump's plan on infrastructure, to put it kindly, was 
underwhelming. It is going over like a lead balloon, and it is very 
simple why. After a year of bold promises about trillion-dollar 
infrastructure, a plan to build ``gleaming new roads, bridges, 
highways, railways, and waterways all across our land,'' President 
Trump's infrastructure plan proposes no new net increase in 
infrastructure funding. He put in $200 billion and then took it away by 
cutting the existing programs on infrastructure. It will not get the 
job done. Robbing Peter to pay Paul a pittance will not do nearly 
enough to rebuild our infrastructure.
  Because so much of the funding is not from the Federal Government, 
which has traditionally funded the lion's share of infrastructure--
highways, water and sewer--the money is going to have to come from two 
places, neither of which is a good option: localities, which are 
starved for cash already--they are not going to build much--or the 
private sector, which will, of course, quite naturally want a payback. 
That is how the private sector works. They are not going to put money 
up unless they are paid back. They are not going to lend money without 
being paid back. We know what that will mean--tolls, tolls, and more 
tolls. Trump tolls from one end of the Nation to the other. That is not 
what America wants. Trump's plan is already a huge flop. Hardly anyone 
is paying attention to it.
  We Democrats have a better deal to offer the American people. Rather 
than cutting existing infrastructure projects to pay for a paltry 
program that will not work, we want to roll back the Republican tax 
giveaways to big corporations and the very wealthy and invest that 
money instead in job-creating infrastructure. The overwhelming majority 
of Americans would say, they would rather see millions of jobs created 
than give tax breaks to the wealthiest. Our plan could create up to 15 
million good-paying jobs for the middle class.
  We have already seen, by the way, that those tax breaks are not 
creating many jobs. Instead, they are going to stock buybacks, which is 
a way for corporate executives to take that money, raise their own 
salaries and raise the salaries of shareholders, the vast majority of 
whom are in the top 10 percent of America.
  We are proposing something new and different. We propose to put the 
top rate back to 39.6 percent. The wealthy are doing great in America; 
they didn't need a tax cut. It is the middle class that needed more of 
one.
  We propose restoring the AMT. That AMT prevented the wealthiest of 
Americans from evading taxes. It is a tax expert's way of restoring the 
Buffet rule, which says that a rich corporate executive shouldn't pay a 
lower rate of taxes than his or her secretary.
  We restore the estate tax. After all, that benefits 5,000 wealthy 
families. We also close the carried interest loophole.
  We raise the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, which is what the 
Business Roundtable called for. But our Republican friends and 
President Trump were in a mania to just cut, cut, cut corporate taxes--
even at a time that corporations are doing well--and moved it to 21 
percent. We go back up to the 25 percent that the Business Roundtable 
suggested.
  With all that money, what do we invest it in? A modern infrastructure 
plan that would build everything from roads and bridges to schools and 
airports, to high-speed internet and more, with a focus, by the way, on 
rural internet because one-third of rural America doesn't have it.
  In addition to the traditional types of projects we have long built 
in this country, we are building 21st century infrastructure--as I 
mentioned, rural internet, high speed. In the thirties, Franklin 
Roosevelt said that every home in America should have electricity. It 
was aimed at rural homes that didn't have it. Today, we Democrats 
believe that every home should have high-speed internet, and that, too, 
is aimed at rural America--where close to one-third of the homes don't 
have high-speed internet--and at our inner cities as well.
  Only with real, direct investment of Federal dollars will we build 
the kinds of transformational projects that need to be built. Only with 
real investment will rural America see the projects it needs built. 
Only with real investment will we create millions of good-paying jobs.
  You say: Where is the money going to come from? We don't want to 
increase our deficit. The tax bill has done that enough.
  We say: Take some of those tax breaks from the wealthiest of 
Americans and put them into middle-class jobs, plain and simple.
  Americans are realizing now where that money is going. The tax bill, 
before it came out, was unpopular. It had an initial splurge of 
popularity, and now, as Americans learn what it is actually doing, it 
is becoming less popular again. It will go back to where it was, I 
believe. More Americans will dislike it than like it, but when they 
hear we can take some of that money and put it into infrastructure and 
create millions of middle-class jobs, I think Americans of all stripes 
will embrace that policy.
  We Democrats want to work with the President and our Republican 
colleagues on infrastructure, but we want to do it in a way that 
produces real results, not the chimerical proposal the President made 
that will produce very little infrastructure, almost no jobs, and put 
Trump tolls all across America. We hope the President will move away 
from his plan and come much further in our direction so that we can get 
something done for the American people, particularly the American 
working and middle classes.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The majority whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, listening to my friend from New York--and 
he is my friend--we have worked together on a number of projects, even 
though we have diametrically opposed views on many policy 
prescriptions. To listen to him talk, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a 
bad thing because it took money from the Federal Government and let the 
people who have earned it keep it and spend it the way they see fit.
  I know they made a bad bet. They bet that it would fail. They bet 
that we would not get the votes to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but 
we did, and the American people and American families are the 
beneficiaries of that.
  I have come to this floor time and again, telling those stories, most 
recently about a plumbing company in Cleburne, TX, that has seen the 
benefits in terms of bonuses and increased pay, more take-home pay, 
along with the lowest claims for jobless benefits since 1969--the 
lowest claims for jobless benefits since 1969. But when we come to the 
floor, our Democratic colleagues, who bet against the American economy 
and this resurgence, the reawakening of this great economic engine 
known as the American economy--they bet against it. They are still 
sticking with the same old story, regardless of the facts.
  I know the American people know better. They have noticed in their 
paychecks starting in February--because the tax tables were rewritten 
by the IRS--that they actually have more take-home pay. I have family 
members who are ecstatic about that. One of my daughters called and 
just couldn't be more excited, and I know that is happening to families 
all across the country.
  I guess it is just one reason we have two political parties--
Democrats and Republicans--because while we may agree in some sense on 
the outcome, we certainly don't agree on the means to achieve that 
outcome. They are the party of Big Government, higher taxes, and more 
spending. We are the party of smaller government, effective government, 
one that provides essential services to the American people, like 
defending our Nation and maintaining peace around the world, but we 
believe in the individual. We believe the people who earn the money 
ought to be able to keep more of it and spend it as they see fit, and 
they believe that government ought to keep more of that and spend it as 
Washington sees fit. That is

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the reason we have two political parties, and people have to make their 
choices, and they do each election.
  Yesterday, though, Mr. President, we voted to proceed to a very 
important bipartisan bill that would provide relief for small and 
midsized banks and credit unions across the country. This was an 
important step in what has been a long time coming.
  You might ask: Why do we care about providing regulatory relief for 
banks and credit unions, especially the smaller ones that are in our 
communities? Well, that is where people go when they want to buy a 
house and they need a mortgage, when they need some startup money for a 
new business, where they need to go borrow money, for example, to buy 
seed and equipment to plant a crop. If you are in the agriculture 
sector, that is where they get access to credit, and that is why it is 
so important.
  Unfortunately, since the Dodd-Frank law passed in 2010, we have seen 
a lot of that access to credit, particularly among small and medium-
sized banks and credit unions, dry up because what they had to do was 
hire more people, but not for the purpose of making more loans. They 
hired more people because they needed to comply with the redtape and 
regulatory burden imposed by Washington.
  We are peeling that back; we are reversing that--not for the big 
banks. The regulations stay in place, but for community banks and small 
credit unions, we are peeling that back so that it is a more rational 
and reasonable regulatory regime.
  Ever since the law known as Dodd-Frank was passed in 2010, community 
and regional banks have been trying to get their voices heard. They 
have been clamoring to get lawmakers to understand that their 
businesses are much different from the titans of Wall Street that Dodd-
Frank went after, following the financial crisis. Usually, when I am 
talking to the community bankers and the credit unions from my State, I 
say: You didn't cause the great recession of 2008. You didn't cause the 
great financial crisis, but you are the collateral damage. And they nod 
their heads sadly.
  These banks want us to know they are from Main Street, not from Wall 
Street, and they want the rules to reflect that fact. After yesterday's 
vote, we finally started on a pathway not only to listening to their 
concerns but also to acting on them.
  Dodd-Frank, the regulatory legislation that was passed in 2010, was 
almost 250 pages long. It required more than 10 Federal agencies to 
write more than 400 new rules, imposing some 27,000 mandates on 
financial institutions of every size, from large to small. In doing so, 
Dodd-Frank's rules imposed billions of dollars in new costs. Much of 
the weight fell on the backs of banks and credit unions that posed 
little systemic risk to the overall economy, and they have had a much 
harder time than Wall Street firms complying with excessive and complex 
reporting requirements.

  Here is the irony. It is actually the big banks and big financial 
institutions that have the heft and the money to be able to comply with 
all of this new spider's web of regulations. It is the smaller 
community banks and credit unions that can't afford it, so they have 
been going out of business or being gobbled up in mergers by the big 
banks. This isn't what Congress intended in 2010. That wasn't the 
focus, but that is the consequence.
  As the Senate majority leader said yesterday, based on one survey, 
compliance costs--those are the costs of dealing with the redtape in 
the financial sector--have gone up by 24 percent. What has happened as 
compliance costs have increased? Well, banks have closed in small towns 
in rural America, for one, which has led to a growing number of places 
with no bank branches at all.
  In Texas, for example, we lost about 165 bank charters, a 26-percent 
reduction. In smaller rural areas that lacked multiple options to 
access credit, this is a serious problem. It is one of the many issues 
this bill we are voting on this week attempts to solve.
  As the Wall Street Journal noted, the bill mainly ``eases 
administrative burdens'' on community banks. These banks incredibly 
``make up about 98 percent of financial institutions, but [hold] only 
15 percent of [U.S. banks' total] assets.''
  Our colleague, the senior Senator from Idaho, the chairman of the 
Banking Committee, has spearheaded this effort, which is called the 
Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. I 
heard him say yesterday that it does all three of those things. It 
helps stimulate economic growth; it provides regulatory relief; and it 
protects consumers. We all appreciate the tremendous amount of hard 
work he has poured into the difficult and elaborate negotiations. His 
leadership has been indispensable.
  As Senator Crapo has pointed out, the reforms in the bill will 
rightsize existing regulations on community and regional banks and 
credit unions while ensuring consumer safety at the same time. Anyone 
who lives and works in the real world knows that a one-size-fits-all 
approach just about never works, and banking and the financial sectors 
are no exception.
  Dodd-Frank never worked as intended, but it was especially disastrous 
for smaller financial institutions that shouldn't be subject to many of 
its provisions, which weren't meant for them in the first place. The 
bill, therefore, will relieve the burden on small and midsized 
businesses that are being treated unfairly. Again, it is not so much 
the banks and the credit unions that we are worried about; it is the 
people they lend money to, who need access to credit to live their 
lives, to build their business. That is who we are mainly concerned 
about.
  Surprisingly and gratefully, this bill is supported by Democrats who 
passed Dodd-Frank in the first place. This bill is supported by 
Democrats and Republicans, as well as the Trump administration and top 
Federal Reserve officials. This is actually a little bit of a bright 
light in an otherwise, sometimes, dark atmosphere here in Washington, 
DC, when it comes to dealing with some of these problems. This actually 
will help solve some real-world problems, and it is supported by 
Republicans and Democrats.
  One specific objective is to raise the threshold at which banks face 
the stricter Dodd-Frank oversight, but it will also--and I want to 
emphasize this--keep in place requirements for much larger financial 
institutions, like rigorous stress testing, for example.
  As I said, negotiations have been going on for this legislation for 
years; I think it is 4 years to be exact. But because of the resistance 
of the former administration, the Obama administration, as well as the 
former Senate majority leader, Senator Reid, we couldn't get these 
reforms passed before this week--and next week, if necessary. This is a 
new day, a new administration, a new leadership, and we are making 
progress.
  In the meantime, though, American families and businesses lost out. 
Some farmers and ranchers, looking to actually buy what they needed to 
bring in the crops so that they could earn a living, couldn't get the 
loans they needed. Young people couldn't find a mortgage at a price 
they could afford and purchase their starter home.
  In Texas, bankers confirmed that these reported difficulties are 
real. They recently signed a letter that urged the Senate to seize this 
opportunity and to pass this bill as quickly as possible. As the 
Independent Bankers Association of Texas has pointed out, community 
banks neither participated in nor profited from the excesses and bad 
behavior that precipitated the financial crisis, yet they are paying a 
disproportionately high price in attempting to deal with the aftermath. 
That just about sums it up.
  Another group from my State, the Texas Bankers Association, has said 
that they are pleased to see this bill has finally been brought to the 
floor for a vote. That group represents about 450 banking institutions 
in my State. Sometimes we see the credit unions and the banks as 
rivals. They often see themselves as rivals for the same line of 
business. But the banks and credit unions agree. The credit unions in 
my State say that passing this bill would allow them to more fully 
serve their members' needs, whether that be providing mortgages or 
small business loans, instead of spending so many hours and so much 
money trying to deal with the redtape--and to what purpose? It doesn't 
help grow the economy. It doesn't help access to credit.
  It is really regulatory overkill that we are trying to deal with 
here. As the

[[Page S1409]]

majority leader said yesterday, there are a ``wide diversity of views 
on Dodd-Frank. But there is widespread agreement that we should not 
continue allowing'' unintended consequences to wreak havoc on community 
banks and small credit unions.
  I hope all of our colleagues will join me in supporting the Economic 
Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. It is good for 
American families. It is good for communities across our country that 
are underserved and for people who lack access to credit. It just makes 
sense.
  I yield the floor.
  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. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Barrasso pertaining to the introduction of S. 
2507 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, when we passed the Wall Street Reform and 
Consumer Protection Act, we did so in response to a financial crisis 
that shook the foundations of our economy and devastated so many of our 
hard-working constituents. For example, the Dow Jones dropped from an 
average of 13,677.89 in July of 2007 to an average of 7,235.47 in March 
of 2009, resulting in a 47.1 percent loss. Nationally, the unemployment 
rate increased from 5 percent in January 2008 to 10 percent in October 
2009, and in Rhode Island, the unemployment rate was even higher, 
increasing from 6.2 percent in January 2008 to 11.9 percent in December 
2009.
  In short, we had to do something to respond and avoid another 
financial crisis because behind each of these harrowing numbers were 
our constituents and their families, who saw their life savings, their 
jobs, and their homes evaporate in a flash. That something was the Wall 
Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as the Dodd-Frank 
Act.
  I am proud to have drafted and supported several of its provisions, 
such as the creation of a consumer watchdog--the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau, the CFPB--whose primary focus has been on protecting 
consumers from unscrupulous financial activities; my bipartisan 
language calling for a dedicated Office of Servicemember Affairs at the 
CFPB, which helps ensure that our servicemembers and their families are 
protected in the consumer finance space in the same way these service 
men and women protect us. That is now a part of the CFPB, and it has 
done remarkable work protecting the men and women of our armed 
services, who do remarkable work protecting us.
  Also , I was able to provide an additional $1 billion in funding 
through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which provided targeted 
emergency assistance to help local communities acquire, redevelop, or 
demolish foreclosed properties.
  Frankly, in the wake of the crisis, every city and many rural areas 
were seeing foreclosed properties sitting there, reminding us all of 
the devastation. With these resources, they could be repurposed for 
families to live in, or if they were decrepit, they could be demolished 
for urban development and economic development in rural areas.
  These are just a handful of the many good and worthwhile provisions 
in the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, but, like any 
other major piece of legislation, it was not perfect.
  Years ago, the custom here was that we would come together and agree 
on technical fixes to comprehensive legislation. It was almost 
predictable that after we had a complex piece of legislation, we would 
discover unintended consequences, and we would come together on a 
bipartisan basis to fix those technical issues without having to 
relitigate the entire bill.
  Unfortunately, that moment to make needed fixes never happened, and 
while the legislation before us today makes changes to the Wall Street 
Reform and Consumer Protection Act, I am concerned that this 
legislation may actually go too far and go beyond the needed technical 
fixes. For example, I worry that this legislation may actually make it 
tougher for community banks and credit unions to compete against the 
larger financial institutions despite the regulatory relief provisions 
in this bill for smaller financial institutions. This is because the 
legislation encourages large financial institutions to grow even 
larger--from $50 billion up to $250 billion. It does so, in part, by 
removing some of the extra oversight provisions we put in place with 
the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, such as making sure 
large banks undergo strong and robust stress tests to ensure that they 
have their own sufficient rainy day fund and that any type of problem 
is not funded by taxpayer bailouts.

  In addition, this legislation may further encourage larger financial 
institutions to grow by increasing their competitive edge for the kinds 
of businesses and customers currently served by community banks and 
credit unions, which should be concerning to all who support our 
smaller local financial institutions. Larger institutions can absorb 
more costs than smaller institutions. They can have programs that cost 
them a lot in the short run but drive out the competition in the medium 
and long run. Because they can stretch costs over bigger institutions, 
they can provide services that might be better provided or more 
personally provided by smaller institutions, but these will be pushed 
out of the marketplace. So the potential net result of this bill, 
ironically, may make it more difficult for regulators to spot a threat 
to financial stability from a larger bank while increasing competitive 
pressures on community banks and credit unions.
  To address some of these concerns, I have filed several amendments to 
improve the bill and add needed protections for consumers. Let me 
describe some of these amendments in greater detail.
  One amendment seeks to prioritize regulatory relief for institutions 
with a strong history of doing right by their customers. In the 
legislation before us, Federal financial regulators are given the 
discretion to provide regulatory relief to certain financial 
institutions, and in so doing, to consider factors they deem 
appropriate. My amendment simply directs the regulators, when 
exercising this discretion, to also consider whether the financial 
institution, in the preceding 24-month period, paid any Federal fines 
or penalties and to consider whether there was any violation or 
settlement related to an alleged violation of the Servicemembers Civil 
Relief Act--the SCRA--or the Military Lending Act and if these 
violations could have been avoided. Again, that is a strong emphasis on 
protecting the men and women who protect us--our servicemembers. These 
two pieces of legislation, the SCRA--the Servicemembers Civil Relief 
Act--and the Military Lending Act, are the strongest protections our 
servicemen and women have against financial abuse by institutions.
  In short, how well an institution serves its customers, including our 
servicemembers, should help determine whether certain financial 
institutions deserve the regulatory relief provided under the bill.
  On a very strong bipartisan basis, I hope we can adopt this 
amendment. It just seems so clear to me that when we are giving relief, 
we should give it to those who have earned it--those institutions that 
have treated our service men and women well and have treated their 
customers well.
  Another amendment I filed would empower the CFPB and its Office of 
Servicemember Affairs to enforce existing SCRA safeguards--the 
Servicemembers Civil Relief Act safeguards--such as those that protect 
our servicemembers from being overcharged. This amendment is needed 
because, despite the importance of the SCRA's protections to our 
servicemembers, enforcement of this critical law has been inconsistent 
and subject to the discretion

[[Page S1410]]

of our financial regulators, which can change with each Administration.
  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 
widely, ranging from rates of 4 percent in 2007, 17 percent in 2008, 18 
percent in 2009, 26 percent in 2010, and then dropping down to 15 
percent in 2011. You can see that sort of tracked with the financial 
crisis, where at a point after 2007 and 2008, the regulators understood 
the threats that were being posed to service men and women in terms of 
their mortgage obligations. But that seems to be fading. We can't lose 
focus on protecting the men and women who serve us.
  As someone who has had the experience and privilege of leading 
soldiers as an executive officer of a paratrooper company, I spent a 
lot of time trying to explain to people who were trying to collect from 
men and women in uniform that they couldn't because the law had set 
certain interest rates that they exceeded and that they couldn't 
because they were violating--back then it was called the Soldiers' and 
Sailors' Civil Relief Act. We need an agency of the government, not 
individual members of the Armed Forces, to protect these men and women. 
I think that is what we are trying to do with this legislation.
  Simply put, prioritizing the consumer protection of our service men 
and women should not be discretionary; it should be mandatory. This 
amendment ensures that the SCRA enforcement will be permanently a 
priority of the CFPB and the Office of Servicemember Affairs. It is 
supported by more than 30 organizations, including the National 
Military Family Association, Military Officers Association of America, 
Veterans Education Success, Student Veterans of America, and the 
Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.
  We also need to do more to protect student loan borrowers. There is a 
growing private market to refinance student loans, including Federal 
student loans. I filed an amendment to require lenders to disclose the 
benefits that borrowers might forfeit, such as income-driven repayment 
plans, loan forgiveness, and deferment options, when they refinance a 
Federal loan into a private loan.

  I have also filed an amendment to clarify that the Education Loan 
Ombudsman at the CFPB should monitor and report student loan complaints 
for all education loans, including Federal student loans.
  Additionally, I support Senator Durbin's amendment to strengthen 
student loan servicing and protections for private student loan 
borrowers and to provide greater transparency and accountability for 
campus-based banking products beyond just credit cards. We have all 
read about the many abuses that have taken place, and we owe it to 
consumers everywhere to ensure that these abuses are detected and 
prevented.
  Continuing this focus on consumer protections, another of my 
amendments responds to the difficulties that Rhode Islanders face when 
trying to secure a loan modification by taking greater advantage of 
bank branches. If you are able to walk into a bank branch and get a 
mortgage, then you should also be able to walk into the same branch and 
get help to avoid preventable foreclosures. What we found in the crisis 
was that often this was not the case. They could get a loan at the 
branch, but if they needed any type of assistance, they had to call a 
servicer or go someplace else. My amendment, which is supported by the 
National Consumer Law Center and the National Association of REALTORS, 
establishes a pilot program to see whether this would be feasible--
whether we could get bank branches not only to make loans but also to 
help borrowers when they come into difficult circumstances.
  I have also filed an amendment that would direct GAO to conduct a 
retrospective study of the impact of the provisions of this legislation 
on economic growth and consumer protection. Specifically, my amendment 
asks GAO to evaluate the bill's impact on non-managerial wages, senior 
executive pay, stock buybacks, the interest paid on savings or money 
market accounts, jobs being moved abroad, foreclosure rates, and 
enforcement actions.
  In so doing, we will be able to determine whether the legislation 
actually delivers on the claims by its sponsors of economic growth and 
consumer protection. I think we always have to go back and check our 
work, and this provision would allow us, in a formal and systematic 
way, to check our work. I hope we can do that.
  Finally, I have filed an amendment supported by the former Federal 
Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker, to retain and strengthen the Federal 
Reserve's emergency safety and soundness powers. To quote Chairman 
Volcker: ``It's clear that circumstances can arise where the activities 
of some banks with less than $250 billion in assets would pose a grave 
threat to financial stability. To address such a threat, regulators 
have certain tools in their arsenal that we wish they will never have 
to use. Senator Reed's amendment wisely restores and strengthens one 
such tool, allowing it to be deployed under limited circumstances and 
only upon approval of a supermajority of the [Financial Stability 
Oversight] Council.''
  Surely, at the very least, we should agree to preserve and strengthen 
the ability of our financial regulators to avoid grave threats and 
another financial crisis.
  Before I conclude, I would like to make one further observation. Ten 
years ago today, few of us knew ahead of time that we would see an 
economy that would collapse into depths that we did not anticipate, 
that our Nation would literally recoil due to the recklessness and 
unchecked greed of too many on Wall Street. We should not forget that, 
nationally, over 8.6 million jobs were lost between January 2008 and 
January 2010, with over 33,000 jobs lost in Rhode Island alone. If 
anything, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was a 
sensible and long overdue response to the reality that people are 
nowhere near perfect and cannot always be trusted to do the right 
thing.
  We learned in the hardest and most painful ways that certain 
safeguards are necessary. Unfortunately, the bill before us today 
removes some of those safeguards. Absent any serious changes made to 
the bill during this week's debate and for all the reasons I have 
stated, I cannot support it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam President.
  (The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S. 
2509 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from Illinois.


                                  DACA

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on September 5 of last year, President 
Trump's Attorney General made an announcement. It was an announcement 
that affected the lives of about 800,000 people living in America. The 
announcement was that the President was going to abolish the DACA 
Program.
  DACA was a program created by President Obama by Executive order. 
Under that Executive order, if you were brought to the United States as 
an infant, a toddler, a child, if you grew up in this country, were 
educated in this country, and had no criminal record of any 
consequence, President Obama said that you have a chance to apply to 
stay in this country on a temporary, renewable basis--2 years at a 
time--and that you won't be deported and you can take a job.
  Eight hundred thousand young people came forward under President 
Obama's Executive order, under this DACA order. What have they done 
with their lives? Many of them went to school and had to work at the 
same time because, being undocumented, they didn't qualify for any 
Federal student assistance. A lot of them took jobs all across the 
country--about 20,000 of them as teachers in schools, and 900 of them 
volunteered for the U.S. military, taking the same oath as everyone 
else, saying that they are willing to risk their lives for America.
  The success stories of these DACA recipients are boundless. I have 
told a number on the floor in the course of discussing this issue over 
the years.

[[Page S1411]]

Today, I will tell another one. I am so proud of what they have done. 
They are amazing young people. Can you imagine growing up in America 
with all the challenges of youth and all the demands from your parents 
and peers and superiors but also knowing something that you can't say 
publicly: that at any moment, you could be deported from this country 
because you don't have the necessary legal status? That is the story of 
these DACA young people, the Dreamers.
  President Trump, if you will remember, talked about immigration a lot 
in his last campaign. Some of the things he said were very harsh. He 
talked about building this big, beautiful wall, from sea to shining 
sea, across the Mexican border, and, of course, told us the Mexicans 
would pay for it. Then he referred to those in Mexico who came to the 
United States as Mexican rapists and criminals. It was pretty harsh 
language. But interestingly, toward the end of the campaign and after 
he was elected, he started saying conciliatory, good things about these 
DACA Dreamers. He told me personally, when I first met him on the day 
he was inaugurated: We will take care of those kids, Senator.
  Well, on September 5 of last year, he announced that the program 
protecting those young people would expire as of Monday of this week, 2 
days ago. As of that date, he said, if Congress hasn't replaced the 
DACA Program with something new, something legal, something statutory, 
there would be no protection for these DACA recipients as their 
protected status expired. For 800,000 in limbo, uncertainty is their 
future.
  Well, the President challenged Congress, and a number of us took him 
up on the challenge. Six of us--three Democrats and three Republicans--
Senators sat down for months. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina 
was part of that group, a Republican; Jeff Flake of Arizona was part of 
that group, a Republican; and Cory Gardner of Colorado, a Republican. 
On our side, Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat; Bob Menendez of 
New Jersey, a Democrat. We worked out a bipartisan agreement among us 
that not one of us would have written. It was a compromise in trying to 
meet the President's challenge of replacing DACA with something that 
could be the law of the land and work.
  I reflect on that effort and believe it was a good one. It was 
certainly in good faith, and it was bipartisan. When we presented it to 
President Trump on January 11 at 12 noon--I remember the time 
very specifically--he rejected it. He not only rejected that bipartisan 
solution to the crisis he had created, he rejected five other 
bipartisan proposals to try to resolve the crisis he had created in 
eliminating the DACA Program.

  So here we are, just 2 days after his March 5 deadline, and where do 
we stand? Well, the situation has been complicated by three Federal 
courts that have been asked to review President Trump's decision 
abolishing DACA. Two of those courts have issued injunctions and said 
to the Trump administration: Stop what you are doing. You have to prove 
to us that you have the legal authority to end this program the way you 
ended it.
  There is an injunction stopping the Trump administration from doing 
what the President said he would do. The President's administration 
didn't think much of those courts and decided to file an extraordinary 
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is across the street, to knock 
down this injunction and to go forward with closing down DACA. Last 
week, the Supreme Court rejected the Solicitor General's petition.
  So here we stand. The President has abolished the DACA Program. The 
protection for 800,000 young people from being deported, the protection 
that allowed them to work, is officially--President Trump's point of 
view--abolished. It has not been replaced, the deadline has been 
reached, and it is being argued in court.
  So how much protection does that buy for the 800,000? We don't know. 
We know it is a court-based protection, an injunction that could last 
for weeks or months or even longer, but that uncertainty is what is 
hanging over this whole debate.
  So this morning I called the Secretary of the Department of Homeland 
Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, and I asked her: Explain to me what your 
Department is doing because of these court injunctions and President 
Trump's decision to abolish this program.
  She gave me a partial explanation. In fairness to her, she promised 
to get back to me and even promised to come up here to Capitol Hill 
next week and try to explain in more detail how the Department of 
Homeland Security is handling this.
  For example, if you were protected by DACA--a young person--and if 
the President's abolition of DACA did not allow you to renew your DACA 
application when it expired, what is your status? Can you be deported?
  Secretary Nielsen told me point blank: No, we will not deport those 
who have pending DACA applications.
  I then asked the next question: Do you have the authority to allow 
these same people to continue legally working, as they did under DACA?
  She didn't know the answer, and in fairness to her, she said she 
would look into it and get back to me. I look forward to that 
happening.
  It is a sad situation that this Congress can't pass a law to deal 
with this kind of emergency. Ask the American people what they think 
about Dreamers, what they think about young people who were brought to 
the United States as children, infants, and babies, and who are asking 
for a chance to be legal in America, to become citizens. Ask Americans 
what they think. Overwhelmingly, they say: Of course. Why would you 
punish these children who grew up in this country? They didn't break a 
law or commit a crime. They didn't make a decision; it was a decision 
made by others. They should have a chance.
  Overwhelmingly, the American people say that, 85 percent or more, 
including more than 60 percent of people who say they voted for 
President Trump. Can you find an issue with that kind of public 
support? For those who follow the news, there is another one called 
universal background checks for guns, which has an even higher level of 
support. But going back to the DACA issue, 85 percent of the American 
people believe Congress should pass a law to give these young people a 
chance--not punish them, not deport them. Give them a chance. Give them 
a chance to earn their way to legal status. Despite that, this Senate 
has failed to pass a measure to do that.
  Two weeks ago, we made it to the floor. We had four different 
versions of the bill. I won't go into detail other than to tell you 
that the most popular version of the bill got 54 votes. You would think 
that in a Chamber of 100 Senators, that would be enough, but not under 
our rules--you need 60 votes.
  The President had a plan, incidentally. President Trump brought his 
immigration plan to the floor of the Senate the same week we debated 
this. Now, understand, there are 51 Republican Senators and 49 
Democrats in this Chamber. On the day of the vote, one Senator, Senator 
McCain, was missing, so 50 to 49. How many votes did President Trump 
get for his immigration policy presented on the floor of the 
Republican-controlled Senate? Thirty-nine. Sixty Senators voted against 
it, including a substantial number of Republicans. So the President's 
approach to this has been rejected by even his own party.
  What has the House of Representatives, the other Chamber, done about 
this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
  Sadly, that is a commentary on many major issues facing our country. 
The Congress has not even taken up a serious debate, let alone found a 
solution, and here we sit. It is easy for us to sit here in the Senate 
Chamber, confident of our own citizenship status, but for 800,000, the 
uncertainty makes a wreck of their lives. I have met many of them. I 
have talked to them. They are outstanding people. They have succeeded 
when others failed. They have been determined and resilient when others 
gave up. They are running out of time.
  President Trump created this crisis for DACA on September 5. He has 
been unable to agree to any of six different bipartisan measures to 
solve it--not one--and today the fate and future of these young people 
rest in the hands of the courts.
  It is easy to speak of these young people in gross numbers--800,000, 
1.8 million--but over the years, I have decided it is better to get to 
know them

[[Page S1412]]

personally. As they have had the courage to come forward and identify 
themselves, I have come to the floor to tell their stories. This is the 
110th time I am bringing a story to the floor.
  This man is Alejandro Fuentes. Alejandro was brought to the United 
States at the age of 4 from Chile and grew up in San Diego. He was an 
extraordinary high school student--honor roll, AP scholar with 
distinction, and a member of the National Honor Society. He was 
involved in a lot of activities--high school cross-country and 
lacrosse, a member of the choir--and volunteered as a worship leader at 
his church.
  He was accepted at Whitman College in the State of Washington, and 
when he was there, he was a member of the campus Christian fellowship 
group. He volunteered with the local Humane Society and was the 
philanthropy chair of his fraternity. He was a student government 
representative and a mentor to other students.
  After graduation, he was accepted into Teach For America. We know 
that program, don't we? That is where some of our best and brightest 
college graduates say: I will give you 2 years of my life and work in a 
school that needs me as a teacher. Send me to a tough area to work. 
Thousands have done it. Alejandro--not a citizen of the United States--
said: I will do it. I will do it for my country.
  Today, he is a sixth grade math teacher at a middle school in Denver, 
CO. He volunteers as a mentor after school for students who need help 
with math.
  What is going to happen to this man? What is going to happen to him 
if Congress fails to replace DACA? What is going to happen if he is 
deported? And it could happen. There are 20,000 just like him, teachers 
across America who are DACA-protected and have no protection now, no 
protection in the law. Their only protection is a court order, which 
could be changed in a moment.
  If he leaves, of course, the students will pay a price, and certainly 
America will pay a price. Will we be better off as a nation? Of course 
not. This young man grew up in America. He was brought here at the age 
of 4, went to his classrooms in San Diego and pledged allegiance to the 
flag every day. This is his country. It is the only country he has ever 
known. Why would we want to throw him out of this country after he has 
gone through all of these things in life and achieved an amazing record 
of success? To me, it would be a horrible waste.
  There is a larger issue at stake here than just DACA. The issue is 
immigration in America. Are we a nation of immigrants? I think so. But 
2 weeks ago, at the immigration Federal agency, they decided to strike 
those words from their mission statement, that America was a nation of 
immigrants. They can strike all the words they want, but they can't 
strike the facts. The facts tell us that with the exception of Native 
Americans, who preceded us, we are all immigrants--some voluntary, some 
forced, but we are all immigrants in this country. We come from every 
corner of the Earth. We are as diverse as any nation could be. That is 
our history, that is our strength, and that is our legacy. That 
diversity makes us an extraordinary nation in the world.
  Those people who came here from far-reaching shores came here for a 
lot of reasons. My grandmother was one of them. She brought my mom. My 
mom was an immigrant to this country. I don't know all the reasons that 
my grandmother came here, but I know there was one reason she came. She 
had three little kids, and she carried a bag and had with her a 
Catholic prayer book from the country of Lithuania. It was written in 
Lithuanian. The Russians were in control of Lithuania at the time, and 
they had prohibited prayer books written in Lithuanian. My grandmother, 
whom I never knew, was one tough lady. She was willing to pick up this 
prayer book--this contraband in Lithuania--and bring it to the United 
States of America. I don't know if she ever took a constitutional law 
course, but she knew there was freedom in this country. Nobody was 
going to stop her from praying from her prayer book when she got to the 
United States. I am sure economics had more to do with her coming, but 
that was part of the reason my family made it to this country. It is 
something I have never forgotten, and I have told the story many times.
  All these people who have come to this country--every single one of 
us brings a story, a family story. Now we are being told it is a 
mistake--it is a mistake to continue legal immigration to America.
  The President's proposal on immigration would cut legal immigration 
to this country almost in half. Currently, our Nation of 320, 330 
million people brings in approximately 1.1 million legal immigrants a 
year--1 million legal immigrants; 320 million Americans. It is not an 
overwhelming number in comparison. On average more than sixty percent 
of the 1.1 million people are members of families of those already 
here.
  Do you just ask to come in, and we let you come to America if you 
have a family member here? Of course not. You wait and you wait. For 
example, in the Philippines, you may wait 20 years for a member of the 
family to be reunited with someone who is already an American citizen--
20 years waiting in line. The President's proposal--the one that has 
come to the floor of the Senate that got 39 votes--said we ought to cut 
the number of legal immigrants almost in half, tell those people to 
wait longer or stay where they are.
  In most cultures, in the American culture, the family unit is our 
strength--flag, family, God. How many times have we heard those 
speeches from politicians? Yet these families who are trying to be 
reunited and to be strong are being told: You are not wanted. That is a 
mistake. The last time we did that was in 1924 on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate. We decided--the Senate then--there were certain people we 
didn't need in America. Asians were excluded. People from Africa and 
Eastern Europe and other regions were severely restricted. That could 
have included my mother's family. They restricted Italians. We had 
enough Italians--that is what Congress said. They restricted Jewish 
people.
  That shameful chapter in American immigration history prevailed for 
over 40 years, until we passed a new immigration law. Now this 
administration wants to take us back to that debate. This 
administration wants to change the face of immigration in America. The 
President has been explicit about that in terms of what he would like 
to see America look like in the future--not as diverse, excluding 
people from certain places. I think that is a mistake.
  If there is one thing that has made us strong, it is the fact that 
this diversity, when it comes together under that flag, can conquer 
everyone and everything on Earth. Why would we walk away from that 
legacy? Why would we walk away from Alejandro? Why would we walk away 
from 800,000 protected by DACA? Why? Is that the legacy we want to 
leave, that we have excluded these talented, high-achieving, energetic, 
fearless young people? Alejandro's story is certainly not unique. There 
are 20,000 teachers like him who are DACA recipients and DACA-
protected.
  Teach For America, the program that pays these young college 
graduates a limited amount of money to go to challenging schools--190 
of them were protected by DACA. They are officially not citizens of the 
United States, but they are willing to teach kids in the toughest 
schools in America. They teach in 11 different States.
  There is a question now about what happens next, and I don't know. 
Right now, the President created this crisis, and only the President 
can solve this crisis. There are Republican Members of the House and 
Senate who will not vote for anything unless it has the Trump stamp of 
approval on it, and I don't know what that can be. Six different times 
we have gone to him, and six times he has rejected bipartisan 
approaches. We need the President to help us work toward a solution. It 
is up to the Republican leaders in Congress--they control the House and 
the Senate--to take yes for an answer and accept one of these 
bipartisan approaches, to save these young people, and to resolve this 
crisis that faces us.
  Congress needs to do its job. We should make the Dream Act the law of 
the land, or we will be responsible for hundreds of thousands of 
talented

[[Page S1413]]

young immigrants leaving our workforce and put them at risk of 
immediate deportation. It would be a chapter in American immigration 
history even sadder than 1924.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WICKER. 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. WICKER. Mr. President, I filed an amendment yesterday that, I 
hope, will be included in this banking bill that the Senate is 
considering today and tomorrow.
  My amendment was inspired by a bill I introduced last July, which is 
a simple bill, bipartisan, and should be noncontroversial. Here is what 
the amendment would do: It would exempt trust-preferred securities from 
a bank's capital requirements.
  Now, you ask: What is a trust-preferred security?
  It is an investment vehicle that looks a little bit like equity and, 
at the same time, looks a little bit like debt.
  How did these come about?
  Actually, the FDIC asked many banks to invest in such securities in 
previous decades. A company creates trust-preferred securities by 
creating a trust, issuing debt to it, and then having it issue 
preferred stock to investors--trust, debt, and preferred stock to 
investors. The FDIC used to like trust-preferred securities. It 
considered them sound investments before 2010. May I repeat: The FDIC 
asked many banks to invest in these securities. However, through its 
interpretation of the Basel III regulations, the FDIC is now counting 
these securities against the banks' capital holdings.
  Who is affected by this?
  It happens to be 20 small banks in the heartland of America.
  My amendment would exempt these banks from having to consider trust-
preferred securities as part of their capital requirements; therefore, 
it would promote growth in rural communities around the country as well 
as provide regulatory relief for our small banks.
  That is really what this bill is about. The Dodd-Frank legislation 
took a broad-brush approach and punished many medium and small banks 
when they had nothing to do with the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. 
Dodd-Frank has done harm to Main Street. My amendment would alleviate 
some of that harm. If we want to help banks grow the economy, we need 
to be mindful of the ways in which Dodd-Frank's excessive regulations 
are hurting small banks. This goes right in hand with the major thrust 
of this overwhelmingly bipartisan bill on which we are about to proceed 
today or tomorrow.
  These 20 small banks nationwide inject needed capital and access to 
credit in our communities--capital and credit to launch new local 
businesses or create jobs. When these small banks struggle, communities 
struggle. For one to comply with the one-size-fits-all Dodd-Frank 
regulations demands resources that some of our community banks do not 
have. Here I am arguing for my amendment and for the entire bill. 
Unlike big banks, these small banks in rural communities might be 
forced to close because of the demands that are too high or they might 
have to pass along extra costs to consumers. Neither option helps our 
local communities and the people who live there.
  These 20 small rural banks were not in the least bit responsible for 
the financial crisis. So my amendment, based on a bipartisan bill, 
recognizes, along with the base bill, the fact that the small banks are 
not part of the problem and never were part of the problem. It would 
alleviate the burdens that these banks have shouldered since Dodd-Frank 
has become law.
  I commend the chairman of the Banking Committee and the overwhelming 
bipartisan majority on the Banking Committee for working on this 
legislation. This is a red-letter achievement in a body that has become 
overly partisan, regrettably so, in the last few years, but we can work 
together to offer relief to our small credit unions and small community 
banks. In doing so, we need to take the added step of relieving these 
20 smalltown banks from an onerous requirement.
  I urge the chairman and the ranking member and Members of the 
Democratic and Republican leadership to consider making this part of an 
overall managers' amendment or accepting this amendment and moving 
forward because it has everything to do with following the thrust of 
this entire bill.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROUNDS. 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. ROUNDS. Mr. President, today I rise in support of the Economic 
Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act which is being 
considered on the Senate floor for this week. As a member of the Senate 
Banking Committee, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this 
important legislation which will provide much needed regulatory relief 
to our community banks and credit unions whose ability to serve their 
customers has been made more difficult since the passage of the Dodd-
Frank Act.
  Enacted in 2010, Dodd-Frank was an overreaction to the 2008 financial 
crisis. Rather than actually addressing the underlying issues that 
caused the financial crisis, Dodd-Frank created a massive new 
bureaucracy and saddled our financial institutions with burdensome and 
onerous new regulations. It is 2,300 pages in length and created more 
than 400 new rulemakings, which led to 27,000 new Federal mandates on 
American businesses. This limits the ability of our financial 
institutions to grow and serve their customers, especially for smaller 
banks in rural areas such as in my home State of South Dakota.
  Just last summer, the U.S. Department of Treasury reported that the 
regulatory burdens of Dodd-Frank have reduced economic growth and 
``undermined the ability of banks to deliver attractively priced credit 
in sufficient quantity to meet the needs of the economy.''
  Without question, no one wants to repeat the events that contributed 
to the economic recession that began in 2008. We are only now beginning 
to lift out of that nearly decade-long economic slump, thanks to the 
tax relief law and President Trump's focus on regulatory reform.
  Just in the last year, we have enacted historic tax reform, we have 
undone burdensome and unnecessary regulations at a record pace, and we 
are restoring the American people's confidence at levels not seen in 
decades, but we must do more, which is why our bipartisan legislation 
is so important.
  Making sure American families and businesses have access to credit 
when they need it is critical as we work to grow our economy and create 
jobs. The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection 
Act will strengthen America's financial system and expand economic 
opportunities across the entire country, especially in rural areas 
which are often the most underserved.
  Of the many fatal flaws of Dodd-Frank, perhaps most damaging was its 
one-size-fits-all approach. By taking a one-size-fits-all approach, 
Dodd-Frank imposed disproportionate compliance costs on our smaller 
community banks and credit unions, especially given the improbability 
that these smaller institutions pose a significant risk to our 
financial system. This type of approach is particularly harmful to our 
smaller financial institutions which are so vital to our communities.
  With more than 6,500 community banks throughout the country 
supporting even the remotest areas, we must make certain we are helping 
and not hindering their ability to serve their communities.
  Almost half of small businesses, which we all know are the drivers of 
job creation and economic growth in America, are supported by small 
community banks. Providing these institutions with regulatory relief is 
critical, which is what our legislation does.
  Let me go through some of the highlights, which include seven 
provisions or bills I introduced. It includes the Home Mortgage 
Disclosure Adjustment Act, which I introduced with Senator Heitkamp 
earlier this year, and will provide small banks and credit unions with 
data reporting relief.

[[Page S1414]]

  We also provide relief from Dodd-Frank capital rules that allow banks 
to count high-quality municipal bonds toward capital requirements, 
providing help to both banks and local units of government that issue 
that debt. In other words, those banks can now make a market for those 
municipal bonds once again.
  Our legislation also streamlines Federal rules to help small, local 
Federal savings associations, known as FSA's or thrifts, expand their 
ability to offer loans to more families and businesses without going 
through a costly charter conversion process.
  It also includes parts of the Community Bank Access to Capital Act, 
which would free small banks from having to complete arduous and 
expensive tests which are already mandated by Dodd-Frank, and it makes 
it easier for banks with less than $3 billion in assets to raise 
capital and grow.
  I am also pleased it includes my provision to protect the credit of 
our Nation's veterans, so veterans waiting on delayed payments from the 
VA Choice Program cannot lose their credit ratings because of it. It is 
a sad commentary when you have to make a law in the financial 
institutions section of the code to take care of veterans because the 
VA cannot pay their bills on time.
  It also protects seniors by removing liability for financial services 
institutions and professionals reporting suspected fraud of senior 
citizens to the authorities. We also provide relief to small public 
housing agencies by reducing regulatory burdens on and increasing 
flexibility for these entities.
  This bill also provides rural appraisal relief for cases when buyers 
have trouble finding a qualified appraiser. The reason for this is 
because if you want to get a home loan, one of the requirements under 
Dodd-Frank is that you have to have a qualified appraiser actually 
appraise the home, regardless of where you live. What this provision 
does is it relaxes some of those rules with regard to where the amounts 
on a mortgage can be, less than a particular amount as specified in our 
bill, and still be a qualified mortgage so banks can move them on to 
the secondary market. That helps to create a market for those 
mortgages, making it easier for a consumer to actually access that 
credit.
  Our bill also gives the Federal Reserve flexibility in designating 
banks as systemically important, exempting banks with less than $100 
billion in assets from several Dodd-Frank provisions that apply to 
systemically important financial institutions, or SIFIs, including 
reporting requirements, limits on lending, and limits on mergers and 
acquisitions.
  Also banks with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion would 
receive relief from tighter oversight applied by Dodd-Frank. This would 
exempt 15 regional and midsized banks from these more stringent rules. 
Meanwhile, more than a dozen of our country's largest banks will still 
have to comply with the SIFI requirements. These are the largest 
financial institutions.
  We also eliminate barriers to jobs by allowing mortgage loan 
originators to work temporarily in a new State or for a new financial 
institution while their applications for new licenses are pending. Our 
bill also requires the Treasury to study and report on the risks of 
cyber threats to our financial institutions and capital markets.
  Finally, our bill provides regulatory relief from enhanced 
supplementary leverage ratio for certain banks that service 
organizations like mutual funds and State and local pension plans. It 
doesn't hardly seem appropriate that we would make our banks less 
competitive than foreign banks for providing that same service. Let's 
keep that opportunity and that market within our own borders as well. 
Let's allow them to be competitive, which saves on costs for mutual 
fund purchasers.
  This benefits countless local governments across the country that do 
business with these banks. In my home State alone, this includes the 
State of South Dakota, the South Dakota Retirement System, the Rapid 
City Regional Hospital, the city of Vermillion, and the Watertown 
School District, just to name a few of them. While this provision will 
not help all banks, it will affect some banks, which benefits 
consumers, and in the future perhaps we can give the same relief to all 
banks that offer these important services.
  These provisions, along with the many others of our bill, will 
strengthen our financial system in the United States and reduce the 
unnecessary burdens on small or midsized banks so they can focus on 
serving their communities, not complying with layers of bureaucracy.
  Making sure families and businesses have access to credit when they 
need it is critical as we work to grow a healthy American economy. 
Every step we can take to provide relief to our lenders is a win for 
families and businesses that rely on them to run their businesses, to 
buy a home, or to save for college.
  Small community banks don't think of banking in terms of derivatives 
and default swaps like they do on Wall Street. They think of banking in 
terms of how they can best serve their communities, their friends, 
neighbors, store owners, and job providers. Our bipartisan Economic 
Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act will help these 
lenders focus on doing just exactly that.
  I thank Chairman Crapo and the other 24 cosponsors of this 
legislation for their commitment to working together to provide much 
needed relief that will enhance our ability to grow our economy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
the bill we have in front of us, the Economic Growth, Regulatory 
Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. That is a mouthful right there, 
but what it is, is a culmination and reaction to the Dodd-Frank bill 
that was passed in 2010 as a result of the crisis of 2008 and 2009.
  I think it is important for us to note where this is directed. In 
Dodd-Frank, so much of the focus was placed on large banks and larger 
institutions, but what has been lost in the debate and what really is 
an unintended consequence, I think, is that the massive and burdensome 
regulatory legislation would affect the smaller banks, the community 
banks, and the credit unions.
  Senator Rounds of South Dakota and Senator Blunt of Missouri and my 
State of West Virginia have more rural areas for the most part, and 
these community banks and credit unions are absolutely critical to our 
individuals but also to our businesses. They have been bearing the 
brunt of Washington's response to that in the form of Dodd-Frank.
  We know that larger financial institutions have the capital, 
resources, staff, and expertise to handle a lot of these regulatory 
requirements that are placed on them, but smaller institutions have 
really struggled under the weight of Dodd-Frank. We didn't come to this 
point today without a lot of discussion, compromise, and thoughtful 
input from a lot of different entities to figure out the best way to 
serve all our States. These smaller institutions play a critical role 
in a State like West Virginia. Our small businesses rely on them to 
open and succeed, our communities rely on them to expand, and our 
economy relies on them to grow, especially in our rural areas.
  Our community banks and credit unions really had to shift their 
attention away from what they know best, which is relationship-based 
lending and borrowing, and put it more into this regulatory environment 
to devote bank resources, time, energy, effort, and legal resources to 
make sure they are complying with regulations that were really intended 
for larger financial institutions. It has been tough.
  From 2010, which was the year Dodd-Frank was enacted, until 2016, the 
number of community banks in our country has decreased by 1,600. That 
is a significant decrease in the number of community banks. With little 
or no access to community banks, our Main Street borrowers have been 
forced to turn to larger institutions for loans. That is fine, but a 
lot of times our Main Street businesses and individuals get lost in the 
shuffle. Sometimes it is stiffer terms, and sometimes it could mean 
rejection.
  We are talking about farmers, families looking to buy a home, and of 
course our small businesses. We are really talking about the hard-
working men and women trying to live that American dream.

[[Page S1415]]

  With smaller institutions constantly forced to merge with larger ones 
to help shoulder the cost of regulation, that relationship-based model 
that has served our communities for decades is disappearing.
  I think it is time now, after much thought, to ease that burden and 
rightsize those regulations on our smaller financial institutions, and 
that is exactly what the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and 
Consumer Protection Act does. It is a balanced approach to regulation. 
It takes into account the differences--some of them vast differences--
between larger and smaller financial institutions.
  It improves access to mortgages, which is something I have been 
interested in since my service in the House when I was on Financial 
Services and I chaired the Financial Institutions Subcommittee. The 
mortgage issue was something that I introduced, and we worked on many, 
many pieces of legislation to provide rural areas with greater access 
to mortgages.
  Let's just talk about what happens. If a young couple is trying to 
get a mortgage or maybe it is even a med student coming out of medical 
school, trying to get a mortgage for a loan with no real income yet but 
in a relationship banking situation, that small community banker knows 
that is going to be a safe bet at the end of the day. A lot of our 
mortgages have been so constructed by Dodd-Frank that people haven't 
been able to get mortgages. Let's face it. The ones who face the 
biggest challenges are the ones we were supposed to be trying to help 
with Dodd-Frank, and those were in the mid to lower income range who 
maybe had a credit issue or some other extraneous issue. In a cookie-
cutter environment, one-size-fits-all doesn't fit their size, and they 
end up without the opportunity to own a home.
  There are also very critical consumer protections in this bill--
protections for our seniors. I am going to go out on a limb here and 
say that this is probably one area in which we haven't, as a Congress, 
joined together with financial institutions and other consumer 
advocates to protect our seniors from being preyed upon financially. It 
is rampant. Sometimes you are preyed upon by your own family. So the 
Senior Safe Act, which is Senator Collins and Senator McCaskill's bill, 
protects our seniors from financial exploitation--this is part of the 
bill--and fraud. This has been a consistent priority of mine.
  It also works to protect our veterans, who can be very vulnerable 
when seeking financial assistance, and also for individuals who have 
gone through tough times financially. The legislation clarifies a lot 
of the CFPB regulations to help benefit those consumers.
  Student borrowers and student loans--we talk a lot about the 
increasing debt that our students are incurring, the difficulty that 
students, after they graduate, have in paying down these debts, but a 
bill that I helped to introduce with Senator Peters is included in this 
agreement. It says that when student borrowers from private loans have 
the opportunity, they can rehabilitate their credit following a 
default. They can't do that now. If you have a government loan, you can 
do that, but if you have a student loan through a private institution, 
you can't do that. So we are seeking parity between a government loan 
and a private loan, and we think this will help those students repay 
and relook at their finances.
  Finally, in light of recent data breaches that have put many at risk, 
this legislation puts in place important cyber security standards and 
safeguards. Every committee we are on talks about cyber security. The 
financial institutions, I think, have been on the leading edge of 
trying to detect cyber invasions into information or into their 
financial institutions. We have to stay one step ahead here because 
this is very fast-moving.
  These are all priorities and solutions on which I have worked hard, 
both as a leader on the House Financial Services Committee and now, as 
I chair the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations 
Subcommittee.
  For community financial institutions, regulatory relief and economic 
growth go hand in hand. We just passed the tax relief bill, and a lot 
of our small businesses are able to increase their bottom lines, grow 
their businesses, grow jobs and wages. We want to see those financial 
institutions grow alongside that.
  Working men and women and small business owners deserve a fair shot 
at mortgages. Owning a home is the American Dream. They also deserve a 
process that takes into consideration the kind of community where they 
live.
  We deserve relief from these burdensome and unbalanced regulations we 
have been forced to contend with for too long. The Economic Growth, 
Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act does just this. It gives 
us an opportunity to send a clear message to Main Street, and that is: 
We support you. We support you.
  I encourage all of my colleagues to stand with me. I want to thank 
Chairman Crapo for his dedicated insistence that this come to the floor 
of the U.S. Senate and that we have bipartisan support. It is very well 
thought-out. It doesn't have the whole kitchen sink in it. It has the 
provisions that I think are the top priority for our financial 
institutions but also for all of us who represent Main Street here in 
the U.S. Senate.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to join my colleague from West 
Virginia, as well as our friend from South Dakota, to say how much I 
appreciate the effort that Senator Crapo has made to put this bill 
together. It is exactly how the Congress is supposed to work and how 
the Senate is supposed to work--a bipartisan bill. Frankly, I am sure 
it is a bill that everyone who will vote for it would have changed at 
least one thing in it, but if we were to change all of those things 
that all of us would have changed, suddenly we wouldn't have a bill 
that could pass, a bill that would do what this bill does, a bill that 
will roll back the Dodd-Frank regulations, which are one more attempt 
by the Federal Government to make one size fit all. If you have ever 
tried on any one-size-fits-all things, you know that one size almost 
never fits anybody, and that has been the case that we have seen now.
  Credit unions and community banks provide critical financial services 
for families and for small businesses across Missouri and across the 
country. When the Dodd-Frank bill became law, small and medium-sized 
banks and credit unions were faced with huge regulatory burdens. Big 
banks got bigger, and small banks got bought and went out of business 
way too often. There was negative impact on their ability to maintain 
service on Main Street in a small community. You couldn't put together 
a group that would just be the compliance group, and if you did, that 
had to come out of their ability to do the kind of business that you 
wanted to do and always had been doing.
  According to the Independent Community Bankers of America, despite 
holding less than 20 percent of the Nation's banking assets, community 
banks fund more than 60 percent of small business loans and more than 
80 percent of U.S. agricultural loans--all in that 20 percent of the 
banking assets of the country. Furthermore, they operate in many areas 
where other banks don't, where they are the only physical banking 
presence, frankly. One out of every five U.S. counties has only one 
bank, and that one bank is a community bank, a small bank. The more 
time, the more money, the more staff that community lenders have to 
dedicate to complying with needless regulations, the less ability they 
have to provide the kind of service they would like to provide.
  In talking about the bill that I am pleased to be a cosponsor of, the 
president of the Missouri Bankers Association, Max Cook, said: ``This 
common-sense legislation will allow banks to better serve the needs of 
customers and businesses in our communities.''
  He went on to say ``that financial regulatory reform will unleash 
America's economic potential.'' That is the end of his quote, but I 
think you could add to it that lots of good things are happening in our 
economy right now--the tax bill, the regulatory, commonsense 
regulations that are overcoming regulations that didn't make much 
sense. Access to capital is a critically important part of what you 
have to have to have a growing economy--access to capital in small 
communities,

[[Page S1416]]

as well as access in big communities. That means you have to have banks 
that can serve the communities those banks are in.
  This bill contains a number of bipartisan priorities. One of the 
priorities in here is a bill that I sponsored, the Family Self-
Sufficiency Act. Senator Rounds mentioned part of what that means to 
rural Americans, but it also means a lot to Americans who are living 
under public housing programs of one kind or another. This was a bill 
that I introduced. It was cosponsored by Senator Reed from Rhode 
Island, Senator Scott from South Carolina, Senator Menendez from New 
Jersey, and it is another bipartisan statement that this bill will make 
when we pass it. It simply makes commonsense changes in the Department 
of Housing and Urban Development's Family Self-sufficiency Program. 
That program happens to be under the Banking Committee, so it fits 
right in this bill.
  What this addition to the bill would do--and it is in the bill to 
start with now--is expand the ability of people, under the new way to 
define these programs, to improve their education, to save money for 
the future, to reach their goal of becoming more financially 
independent.
  The first thing the legislation does is streamline two public housing 
family self-sufficiency programs into one. There is no reason to have 
two family self-sufficiency programs, no reason to have two 
definitions, no reason to have one category of people in those programs 
who qualify for things and a second category who don't, just because 
they happen to qualify under the definitions of a needlessly 
duplicative program. So it eliminates that.
  This bill expands the scope of support services. It allows people who 
are in these programs to attain a GED if they don't have one, to pursue 
a postsecondary degree or a postsecondary certification, and it gives 
training for financial literacy.
  Lastly, this bill would expand the reach of the Family Self-
Sufficiency Program to families that may otherwise be technically 
excluded from the program today.
  I would like to share some of the statements from housing 
organizations in my State and around the country, such as a group 
called Beyond Housing, which is interested in more than just a place to 
live, but how you use that as a way to improve your life. Beyond 
Housing in St. Louis, which provides more than 400 affordable housing 
rental units for families throughout the St. Louis region, endorsed the 
bill because they said it would ``empower families across the country 
to achieve self-sufficiency.'' The Missouri chapter of the National 
Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials supports the change 
this bill has because they say ``it provides the Tool Box the residents 
can use to better life for them as individuals and as a family.''
  The National NeighborWorks Association says that the legislation 
would ``improve the existing self-sufficiency program to help more 
individuals and families achieve more in life for themselves and their 
families.''
  Providing families in need with affordable housing is critical, but 
it is also important that we figure out ways to move them beyond 
government support to self-sufficiency. These changes in this bill help 
make that happen. A companion bill of that part of the bill in the 
House passed in January by a vote of 412 to 5, so I hope it is a 
helpful addition to the bill. I know it is going to be helpful to the 
families that it opens new doors for.
  I am glad to be here supporting this bill and to have Senator Rounds, 
Senator Capito, Senator Enzi, and Senator Fischer here, as well, to 
talk about the importance of this bipartisan piece of legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, when we debated the Dodd-Frank bill in 2010, 
I concentrated most of my effort on talking about the third portion--
the third third of the bill; it is one of those several-hundred page 
bills again--but this was kind of hidden at the end, something called 
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, known as the CFPB.
  I opposed its creation during the debate. I opposed it because it is 
not a government agency under any way, shape, form, or rule that we 
have. There is no control whatsoever over this group. The makeup of the 
Bureau is quite unique in that a sole Director, rather than a 
bipartisan commission, is the singular decision maker of the agency, 
and it doesn't even require approval by Congress for who that person is 
or the length of their term. Furthermore, the Bureau is not subjected 
to the congressional appropriations process, having guaranteed money 
from the Federal Reserve to fund the agency's existence.

  How does that work? Well, they get a percentage of the revenue of the 
Federal Reserve that would normally come to the Federal Government and 
then be allocated. They get it before it comes to the Federal 
Government, so they are outside the control of an appropriations 
process. They have guaranteed money. Not only do they have guaranteed 
money, they have a guaranteed inflation factor built into their money. 
It is feasible that with enough inflation, they could control the 
entire revenue from the Federal Reserve. That funding source is more 
assured than Social Security. And if the agency is running amuck, 
Congress has no ability to use the appropriations process to bring 
oversight to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That is a great 
name. It seems to protect it, even if that is not primarily what it 
seems to be doing. I am only picking on a very small portion of that 
with this bill.
  You may be familiar with something called the transparent General 
Schedule for Federal employees, often referred to as the ``GS scale.'' 
It is the primary way that the government ensures that Federal employee 
salaries are appropriate and reasonable. This pay scale, however, 
doesn't apply to the least accountable agency in the Federal 
Government--you guessed it, the CFPB.
  At the CFPB, the Director has the sole discretion to determine 
employees' salaries. Government employees at the CFPB--if you want to 
call them government employees, because they are really outside any 
control by the government, either the executive branch or legislative 
branch, and it takes a court case to get it to the judicial branch--
government employees at the CFPB receive some of the highest paychecks 
of all Federal workers. According to data my office obtained from the 
Office of Personnel Management and the CFPB itself, there were over 170 
employees at the CFPB who were paid salaries in 2017 that ranged from 
$180,000 to $259,000. To put this in perspective, in 2017, the highest 
paid appointees in the White House were paid salaries of $179,000--
$1,000 less than the minimum of these 170 employees at the CFPB. Over 
170 employees at the CFPB receive more pay than the highest paid White 
House staffers, and 102 employees of the CFPB make more in annual 
salary than any of our State Governors. A Supreme Court Justice is paid 
an annual salary of $251,000. Six staff members at the CFPB were paid 
more than that, and there is no control, so it can go higher. It is 
based on what the Director approves. In 2017, approximately 47 
employees had a salary higher than the Vice President's.
  It is true that top executives at the big banks can make a hefty 
penny in their industry, but the whole of the American banking industry 
doesn't see this type of wealth. These are our community bankers and 
our credit unions and institutions that support Main Street America. 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average bank employee 
salary is $63,000. And guess who makes more than these bankers. Their 
regulators, like the CFPB.
  Last year, Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin and I introduced the 
CFPB Pay Fairness Act to rein in the CFPB's rates of pay. I am offering 
this bill as an amendment to the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, 
and Consumer Protection Act. The amendment requires the Director of the 
CFPB to set the basic rate of pay in accordance with the GS scale--the 
same fairness scale that everybody else works under. The GS scale 
provides information to the public on the credentials of Federal 
employees, with each level requiring qualification standards, such as 
education and years of experience.
  As it stands, the CFPB does not provide any qualification standards 
for its employees' pay, nor is it transparent to the American people or 
even the CFPB's own employees. This proved to

[[Page S1417]]

be an issue when in 2016 the Government Accountability Office 
investigated allegations of discrimination at the CFPB. Thirty-three 
percent of the CFPB employee respondents to the GAO--Government 
Accountability Office--indicated they believed their pay was not 
commensurate with their skills, work experience, and education.
  Because of the way the CFPB was created in the Dodd-Frank legislation 
that we are working on right now, Congress failed to impose the usual 
constitutional checks to rein in this behavior. Congress needs to bring 
accountability to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and we 
should start with the Bureau's lavish spending on employee salaries. 
This commonsense amendment would ensure that the Bureau is keeping 
employees' salaries in line with the regular government pay scale, 
which promotes transparency and equity in pay across the Federal 
Government.
  There is a lot more that I could say about this Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau, but I want to concentrate on the fact that they are 
paid substantially more than anybody else in government, and we have no 
control over it. There is only one person who does, and that is the one 
who gets the job as Director--which was taken to court since even the 
President can't fire that person, no matter which President it is. So 
this is just one of the things that make it an unusual organization.
  From my experience, they aren't doing what they said they would do at 
the time that they said it needed to be created. Instead, they are 
harassing different businesses until these businesses pay a fine, and 
that fine goes into a slush fund for them that they can give out to 
ones that we would never approve for any money from the Federal 
Government.
  They have this guaranteed revenue. In checking, I find out they are 
supposed to spend all of it. The Director can set the salaries and has 
very little firing capability to go along with that. But they are paid 
an inordinate amount compared to everybody else in government, 
including Supreme Court Justices, the Vice President, and other people 
who work around here. The highest paid people at the White House make 
$1,000 less than the lowest paid of these 170 workers.
  I hope people consider this amendment to bring a degree of fairness 
and transparency so we know what the agency is doing. It is only in the 
way of salaries, but that is a good starting place.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the bill 
before us, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer 
Protection Act. This bill is a product of a multiyear, bipartisan 
process. It is the result of stakeholder input, multiple legislative 
hearings, a committee markup, and a committee report.
  There are a lot of great provisions in this bill, but what I would 
like to focus on today is what this bill will accomplish for smaller 
financial institutions--our community banks and our credit unions--
especially in the State of Nebraska. I also want to touch on the 
important regulatory relief included for small public housing agencies 
that are in Nebraska and all across this country.
  Over the course of the past year, I received an overwhelming amount 
of positive feedback from people and businesses across Nebraska about 
this bill, but the outpouring of support from community banks and 
credit unions has been particularly notable. These institutions are the 
pillars of our local communities. They sponsor local Little League 
sports teams. They provide scholarship funds. They award grants to 
students.
  The prosperity of America's small financial institutions is directly 
tied to the success of the communities they serve. These institutions, 
from Eastern Nebraska to the Panhandle, have shared with me their 
support for this bill we have before us today. For example, Lee Potts 
from Security Bank in Laurel, NE, wrote:

       The bill is a step in the right direction to remove ill-
     fitting regulations on community banks. As a lender in my 
     community, I am not against regulations in general, as there 
     is a need for certain regulations. However, the regulatory 
     spectrum has become so burdensome that it often has affected 
     otherwise creditworthy borrowers in my community.

  Brandon Luetkenhause from the Nebraska Credit Union League cited the 
positive effect this legislation will have on seniors in America's 
communities. He wrote:

       This bipartisan, commonsense reform legislation will 
     protect seniors from elder abuse, make mortgage processing 
     easier and quicker, increase affordable rental housing in our 
     communities, and help my credit union provide better service 
     to members.

  Under this legislation, well-managed, well-capitalized community 
banks with less than $3 billion in total assets would qualify for an 
18-month exam cycle that is currently only available for banks with 
less than $1 billion in total assets.
  Furthermore, the legislation allows banks with less than $5 billion 
in total assets to use short form call reports in the first and the 
third quarters of the year. The quarterly call report community banks 
currently have to file comprises 80 pages of forms and 670 pages of 
instructions. Only a fraction of the information that is collected is 
actually useful to regulators in ensuring safety and soundness of these 
institutions. The minimal impact is far outweighed by the expense 
incurred and the staff hours dedicated to collecting it.
  The legislation also increases the appraisal requirement exemption 
for rural mortgage portfolio loans from $250,000 to $400,000. This 
provision of the bill reflects that in rural markets, it can be hard to 
find an independent appraiser. They may live hours away, and it could 
take weeks for them to come and appraise a property. This slows down 
and adds cost to the transaction, where a bank has 100 percent of the 
risk associated with that loan.
  Simply put, provisions like these in the bill help provide relief to 
Main Street lenders who did nothing to cause the financial crisis and 
have been unfairly burdened under Dodd-Frank.
  For example, Alan Emshoff from Generations Bank in Exeter, NE, told 
me:

       This bill is a solid step towards right-sizing regulations. 
     As one of the smallest banks in Nebraska, reducing the 
     regulatory burden will allow us to do what we do best, to 
     serve our community through the making of loans to help start 
     new businesses, finance agriculture, and put people in homes 
     more efficiently and at a lower cost to the consumer. . . . 
     Even with reduced regulation, we will continue to respect the 
     safety of our customers and provide all of our customers a 
     safe and sound banking environment, just as we have for the 
     past 80 plus years.

  Steve Edgerton from Centrist Federal Credit Union in Omaha wrote me:

       The increasing trend of regulation ultimately reduces the 
     availability of products and services to credit union 
     members, as well as increases the cost.

  Clearly, any claims that this bill only provides relief to big banks 
are not true.
  In addition to the great regulatory relief provisions for community 
banks and credit unions, I was very pleased to see provisions from my 
bill with Senator Tester, the Small Public Housing Agency Opportunity 
Act, included in this legislation. Our bill would address the 
overwhelming administrative burden that has been placed on the roughly 
3,800 small and rural housing authorities across the country, including 
the approximately 100 public housing agencies in the State of 
Nebraska. The provisions included from our bill will simplify the 
inspection and compliance requirements facing public housing agencies 
with fewer than 550 units.

  Specifically, it would limit HUD inspections of housing and voucher 
units to once every 3 years unless a small PHA is classified as 
troubled. The less time Directors and employees of small public housing 
agencies are required to spend complying with unnecessary reporting and 
oversight demands, the more time they can spend improving the lives of 
their residents.
  The bill we are considering today is good policy. It is a major step 
in the right direction, but there is more we can do.
  Since 2013, I have called for Congress to consider changing the 
CFPB's leadership structure. For the past three Congresses, I have 
introduced legislation to change the leadership structure of the 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from a single Director to a 
multimember, bipartisan board or commission.
  Although consumers and the industry have experienced some relief 
under Director Mulvaney, a problem remains--the Bureau's unaccountable 
leadership

[[Page S1418]]

structure. A bipartisan board of directors would increase transparency, 
provide regulatory certainty, and guarantee input from multiple 
stakeholders with various points of view.
  I do not view this as a partisan issue and neither do Americans. A 
poll in March of 2017 found that 58 percent of those surveyed support a 
bipartisan commission, including a majority of Republicans, a majority 
of Democrats, and a majority of Independents who were surveyed.
  Given our success working together on this bill before us today, I 
hope some of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle will 
consider joining my bill so we can reform that structure of the CFPB.
  I would like to close by thanking Chairman Crapo and the other 
cosponsors of the bill for their hard work on this legislation. I 
strongly urge my colleagues to join me in voting for the Economic 
Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. It is what our 
communities need to grow and to prosper.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  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. MERKLEY. 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. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the first three words of our Constitution 
are, ``We the People.'' This is the mission statement of the United 
States of America. Our government was set up not to create a government 
by and for the powerful and the privileged but by and for the people of 
the United States and, as Jefferson put it, the government would 
reflect the will of the people. It is quite a different concept from 
many of the European governments that operated directly for the benefit 
of the best-off or the wealthy and well connected.
  We have seen a corruption of the American Constitution. We have seen 
it turned on its head, with government implemented by and for the rich 
and powerful, time after time over this last year.
  What did we see in 2017? We saw much of the year spent destroying 
healthcare for 22 million to 30 million Americans and increasing the 
cost of healthcare for everyone else--certainly not reflecting the will 
of the people--and then we saw a tax bill taking $1.5 trillion from our 
children and our grandchildren and giving it to the richest of 
Americans, the largest bank heist in world history.
  Well, now we have another assault on ``we the people'' government. S. 
2155 undoes a lot of the work to create a financial system for America 
to thrive, for families to thrive, and restores the lack of regulation 
and high-leveraged bets that brought the economy down in 2007 and 2008.
  When the economy came down, the wealthy and well-off did quite well. 
They picked up properties at pennies on the dollar, but who was hurt? 
The American people were hurt. The American workers were hurt. They 
lost their jobs. They lost their retirements. Certainly, they lost so 
much in terms of the financial foundation for their families. Yet here 
we are again. We seem to have forgotten that when you let the big banks 
rampage through our economy, you are setting the stage for another big 
mess--high-risk gambling on Wall Street, destroying Americans' 
financial lives, lost homes, lost jobs, and lost retirement savings.
  When we passed Dodd-Frank, the principle was, never again will we let 
the Wall Street casino crash our economy. Well, ``never'' hasn't lasted 
very long.
  In the bill before us, section 203 exempts financial institutions--
smaller banks with assets under $10 billion--from the Volcker rule. 
What was the Volcker rule? The Volcker rule was a firewall that said: 
Take deposits to make loans but don't engage in high-risk, high-
leverage bets on the future price of stocks or the future price of 
currencies. Those are called derivatives, those bets on those future 
prices. Those are appropriate in a hedge fund. If somebody wants to 
compile money for millionaires and billionaires and make bets on the 
future prices, then go ahead and gamble in your hedge fund, but don't 
do it in our banks.
  So now we have this bill that says: Well, let's open the door to 
reestablishing the Wall Street casino but just not on Wall Street; 
let's do it on our small banks. Well, what was bad and risky for big 
banks is bad for small banks. Should they put their money into loans to 
help the rural economy thrive or should they make big bets on future 
prices casino-style? This bill opens up small banks to being casinos. 
It is the wrong way to go.
  Then there is section 401 on capital requirements. It takes 
enormously large banks up to $250 billion in size and repeals the 
requirement for living wills. It repeals the requirement for annual 
stress tests to make sure the capital is truly being set aside and the 
bank is being operated in an appropriate fashion for a depository 
institution.
  Former Deputy Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Governor Sarah 
Bloom Raskin said granting the Fed control for the stress test, rather 
than having them annually, is ``legislative fool's gold.'' That is the 
expert talking about the foolishness of eliminating stress tests.
  In addition, it lowers capital standards. So often I have heard folks 
come to this floor saying, ``We don't need so much regulation. Let's 
just increase the capital standards,'' but this bill does the opposite. 
It impacts 25 of the 38 largest U.S. banks, which together hold $3.5 
trillion in assets. This is clearly a situation that creates enormous 
risks for our economy. Who will pay the price? Working America will pay 
the price. Build the bubble, burst the bubble, and the boom goes down 
on middle-class America.
  Then there is section 402. Section 402 is related to globally 
systemically important banks. They are referred to by the initials 
GSIBs--globally systemically important banks. Then there are custodial 
banks. Those banks received $5 billion in Federal bailout money during 
the financial crisis. They want to escape the supplemental leverage 
ratio that was designed to decrease the risk. Each megabank has to have 
enough tier 1 capital to satisfy an SLR--a supplemental leverage 
ratio--but custody banks want relief so they don't have to hold as much 
common stock--common stock, which is tier 1 capital, but shoehorned 
into this are Citi and JPMorgan. CBO says the following: ``There is a 
50% chance that regulators would allow two other financial 
institutions--JPMorgan and Citibank, with combined assets of $4.4 
trillion--to adjust their SLRs under the terms in this bill.'' In other 
words, higher leverage ratios, lower capital, exactly the kinds of 
things that imperiled our economy previously, and yet that is right in 
the heart of this bill.
  What about consumer protection? Let's turn to section 107, which 
grants exemption from key mortgage lending protections for the buyers 
of manufactured homes. Manufactured homes are put on a foundation and 
sold as regular homes. Then you have modular homes. This provision 
expands it to modular homes. It would reduce consumer protections of 
the part of the market that disproportionately serves low- and very 
low-income Americans and rural America. Do we really want to strip the 
consumer protections for lower income Americans and rural Americans 
when buying a home? No, we don't, which is why this provision should 
not be in this bill. It is why this provision is a bad idea.
  One more section of the bill; that is, HMDA reporting--Home Mortgage 
Disclosure Act reporting.
  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau required expanded data 
reporting because it allows you to see where the rules might be being 
broken on predatory lending. It allows you to see where there might be 
an engagement in discriminatory lending. But this bill says that we are 
not going to get that data anymore. We are not going to get the data 
that would help us identify illegal redlining, for example, and that 
this exemption would apply to 85 percent of the reporting institutions 
that are covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.
  Most of this information is data that is already collected. Reporting 
it provides an understanding about redlining, about discrimination, 
about discriminatory practices. If you don't have the information, 
those things get

[[Page S1419]]

hidden. That is damaging to America's families.
  That is quite a list of things that are wrong with this bill. This 
bill has been presented as remedies for small banks, but, as my 
colleagues just noticed from these items, what we see are the ripping 
aside of consumer protections and a whole lot that is being demanded by 
the big banks that want less capital and higher leverage.
  Let's do a bill for smaller banks. Let's understand that more 
flexibility is appropriate in rural areas. Let's observe that more 
flexibility in the types of mortgages might be appropriate in small 
banks in small communities where those loans are portfolioed. Democrats 
came forward with a whole list of these things to help small banks, but 
what do we have from our Republican leadership? A bill designed for 
Wall Street. A bill designed for Wall Street, for the wealthy and the 
well-connected. It is not designed to help ordinary Americans.
  Ordinary Americans are plagued by the challenges of discrimination, 
and this makes it worse; or redlining, and this makes it worse; or 
predatory practices, and this makes it worse. They are also plagued by 
high-interest payday loans. What does this bill do to take on the 500-
percent interest rates that every society across the globe has 
recognized are incredibly destructive, sucking people into a vortex of 
debt and destroying families? This body right here said that they are 
so destructive, we cannot allow these high-interest loans to be given 
to our servicemembers because they destroy our service families. 
Shouldn't we stand up for all of our families in America? If something 
is so predatory and so destructive to our service families that we say 
it is illegal, shouldn't we make those same loans illegal for 
everybody?
  Do you see anything in this bill related to ``we the people''? Very 
little. The ``we the people'' bill the Democrats put forward was 
rejected, and what we have is this Wall Street bill for lower capital, 
more leverage, more predatory practices. That is just not right.
  I hold a lot of townhalls. I hold 36 townhalls a year, 32 of them in 
very red counties. Not one person in over 300 townhalls has come up to 
me and said: Get rid of the regulations on Wall Street because we want 
them to be able to do more low-capital, high-leverage bets and put our 
economy at risk. Nobody in America advocates building another bubble on 
high-risk leverage.
  So what are we doing with this bill? What we are doing is making a 
mistake. We should defeat this assault on the effort to have a 
financial system in America that is designed to serve the mission of 
the United States, the ``we the people'' mission of the United States 
of America.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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