[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 7, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1423-S1432]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




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

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I have been very encouraged by the reaction 
of my colleagues and their support for the Economic Growth, Regulatory 
Relief, and Consumer Protection Act over the last few days.
  We have heard many stories about how the regulatory burden on our 
financial institutions has had a direct impact on Main Street. 
Yesterday, Senator Moran talked about the ranchers who couldn't get a 
loan because they lacked collateral in an emergency. Senators Heitkamp 
and Perdue explained the benefits of relationship banking and the 
advantage of lending based on a personal knowledge of the customer. 
Senator Corker talked about Dodd-Frank's unintended consequences for 
small financial institutions. Senator Tester discussed bank 
consolidation and the real impact it has had on communities in Montana. 
Senator Donnelly went through the various important consumer protection 
items included in this bill. Senator Kennedy also talked about some of 
the important consumer protection provisions and about the lack of 
access to credit for small businesses in Louisiana. Senator Warner 
spent a good amount of time defending this robust bipartisan bill 
against its critics and some of the false information being shared 
about the bill.
  Today, we have heard even more Senators come to the floor with 
similar stories and expressions of similar sentiments about the need to 
help free up our small community banks and credit unions around this 
country from the overpowering burdens they are facing right now in the 
regulatory world.
  Many of my colleagues who are not on the Banking Committee have asked 
if they could have the time and opportunity to speak about the bill, as 
well, and we will see them coming to the floor, as we have started to 
see today, to discuss these kinds of issues. Senators McConnell, 
Cornyn, Portman, Lankford, and others have been very supportive of 
these efforts to enact pro-growth, pro-jobs legislation.
  We also heard from the bill's critics yesterday. But the resounding 
message from Congress was that our constituents have asked for 
regulatory relief and consumer protection and economic growth, and we 
stand ready to deliver it.
  We and our neighbors have noticed that many of our community 
financial institutions have closed their doors over the last decade. In 
fact, we have seen almost no new community financial institutions 
chartered or new branches being opened over the last few years.
  These financial institutions, of all sizes and forms, provide 
critical services in our communities. They help businesses manage 
operations, help entrepreneurs get funding to start their businesses, 
help families buy a home, help all of us save for our kids' educations, 
and help us deal with financial emergencies.
  Community financial institutions are the pillars of towns and 
communities across America, particularly in rural States like my own, 
Idaho. They have certain advantages compared with their larger 
counterparts, operating with an understanding and history of their 
customers and, therefore, a willingness to be flexible.
  Unfortunately, increased regulatory burdens and one-size-fits-all 
regulations have limited their ability to help customers. The operating 
landscape of these institutions has changed dramatically over the last 
few years, and community banks and credit unions across the country 
have struggled to keep up with the ever-increasing regulatory 
compliance and examiner demands coming out of Washington.
  I regularly hear from small banks and credit unions in Idaho about 
how one-size-fits-all regulatory approaches are impacting their 
businesses and product offerings and hindering their ability to serve 
their communities.
  For example, Koreen Dursteler from the Bank of Commerce in Idaho 
Falls, a small bank with just over $1 billion in assets, has written 
about the avalanche of regulation over the past 8 to 10 years. Due to 
excessive regulations related to qualified mortgage loans and the cost 
of hiring extra compliance staff to help keep up with additional 
regulation, her bank has had to stop offering consumer mortgages and 
real estate loans. That is a big deal. This is not an isolated 
incident. I hear stories like that all the time.
  Another example: Val Brooks works at Simplot Employees Credit Union, 
which serves Canyon County, ID. She noted that Simplot has long been 
proud to serve this area, where some folks come from lower income 
households and may be underserved. Simplot worked to obtain the 
necessary education, compliance certification, and licensing standards 
to better serve its customers and the community. However, after the 
CFPB increased already burdensome mortgage regulations, such as the 
qualified mortgage and HMDA, Simplot credit union had to make the very 
difficult business decision to stop offering mortgage loans altogether. 
It was just too cost prohibitive and resource-draining.
  When these small financial institutions are not able to offer certain 
products within the communities they serve, it is a direct hit to the 
citizens of Idaho and to all of our States.
  To be absolutely clear, it is not that folks are against all 
regulation, but rather, to the people outside of Washington, it seems 
as if regulatory changes are made without much thought as to how they 
will truly affect customers and financial providers.

[[Page S1424]]

As policymakers, we have a responsibility to diligently and frequently 
study the state of our economy, our regulatory framework, and how these 
things are impacting our communities and citizens, including people's 
access to financial services.
  We must encourage regulations that not only ensure proper behavior 
and safety for our markets but also are tailored appropriately to the 
size and risk type that is being regulated. This means making sure the 
burden on financial institutions is not so large that consumers, 
businesses, and our communities are deprived of financial services and 
suffer as a result.
  This has been an important issue to Members on both sides of the 
aisle. Congress has held numerous hearings in prior years exploring 
many of these issues, including a series of hearings in the Banking 
Committee in 2015. Then, in March of last year, the Banking Committee 
issued a request for legislative proposals that would promote economic 
growth. We held bipartisan hearings and briefings and meetings with 
stakeholders across the spectrum, vetting potential ideas for right-
sizing the regulatory dynamics. We began the process by holding a 
hearing on the role of financial companies in fostering economic 
growth, which included former regulators, stakeholders, and the chief 
economist of the AFL-CIO.
  At our next two hearings, we examined proposals that would tailor 
existing laws and regulations to ensure that they are proportionate and 
appropriate for small financial institutions and midsized regional 
banks. Then, in June, the financial regulators provided feedback on 
their Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act, or 
EGRPRA, report and the proposals discussed in previous hearings. As a 
result of this process, we introduced the Economic Growth, Regulatory 
Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which is now S. 2155.
  I repeat that often there are those who say we are dismantling the 
regulatory system. This legislation focuses on the smallest financial 
institutions in our country. The legislative system that was put into 
place was marketed as being aimed at Wall Street excesses, but I held a 
townhall meeting when we were debating this legislation on Main Street 
in Boise, ID, and said then that although the justification for some of 
these regulations was focused on Wall Street, the crosshairs were on 
Main Street. Unfortunately, that has turned out to be all too true. 
Large banks have profited tremendously in the last 6 to 10 years. Small 
banks and credit unions have suffered dramatically. We have lost many 
of our banks and credit unions across this country. As I indicated 
earlier, very few new ones have started up because they simply cannot 
meet the compliance burdens of being required to meet regulatory 
requirements that are designed, in the first instance, for huge banks.
  What we need is a regulatory system that recognizes there is a 
difference between a community bank or a credit union in a small 
community and a megabank on Wall Street that is doing its business 
globally. We need to have our regulatory system tailored so the risk 
posed by a particular financial institution is taken into consideration 
in the regulations applied. That is what this legislation seeks to 
accomplish. Like I said at the outset, I am very glad we have had broad 
support for this.
  I would like to take a minute and go over some of the specific 
provisions in the bill. The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and 
Consumer Protection Act is aimed at rightsizing regulation for 
financial institutions, including community banks and credit unions, 
making it easier for consumers to get mortgages and to obtain credit.
  As I have often said, the real victims of what I am talking about are 
not really the community banks and the credit unions but the people, 
the small businesses--those who need to have access to credit and need 
to have the ability to get a loan to purchase a house or to start a 
small business or to expand a small business or other important needs.
  This bill also increases important consumer protections for veterans, 
for senior citizens, victims of fraud, and those who fall on tough 
financial times. The provisions in this bill will directly address some 
of the problems I frequently hear about from the financial institutions 
in Idaho. Community banks and credit unions are simple institutions 
focused on relationship lending and have a special relationship 
providing credit to traditionally underserved and rural communities 
where it may be harder to access banking products and services or to 
get a loan.
  Dodd-Frank instituted numerous new mortgage rules and complex capital 
requirements on community banks and credit unions that have hindered 
consumers' access to mortgage credit and lending more broadly. On July 
20, 2016, the American Action Forum attempted to estimate the number of 
paperwork hours and final costs associated with the Dodd-Frank rules. 
In total, the forum estimated that the bill had imposed more than $36 
billion in final rule costs and 73 million paperwork hours as of July 
2016.
  To put those figures into perspective, the costs are nearly $112 per 
person, or $310 per household. Additionally, it would take 36,950 
employees working full time to complete a single year of the law's 
paperwork based on agency calculations.
  Our bill is focused on providing meaningful relief to community banks 
and credit unions, helping them to prudently lend to consumers, home 
buyers, and small businesses.
  I have more I want to say. I want to take a brief break right now, 
and I will come back in a few minutes.
  At this point, I yield back my time until I return.
  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. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  The legislation we are considering today has been portrayed as 
modest, not that big of a deal, that it doesn't matter that much, that 
it is something narrow to help community banks and credit unions and 
regional lenders like the three institutions in my State--Huntington, 
Key, and Fifth Third--all pretty much things I support. Unfortunately, 
that is really not the only thing this bill does.
  I tried for months to work with Chairman Crapo, whom I respect and 
admire--and I mean that. People say those things on the floor, but I 
actually mean that. I tried for months to work with Chairman Crapo on a 
commonsense package of reforms aimed at community banks and credit 
unions and small and midsized financial institutions. We had a lot of 
agreement on that. Then the creep began. Then the expansion began. Then 
leaking into this process were all kinds of help for all kinds of 
bigger banks.
  These are the local lenders that we want to help to fuel home 
ownership and small business in our community. I get that. These are 
the community banks in Lakeview, Cleveland, Milford, Parma, and West 
Chester, the banks that we lost when the big banks crashed the economy 
a decade ago.
  I know people in this institution--especially those who get lots of 
money from Wall Street--like to blame Dodd-Frank for so many community 
banks going out of business, but it was really what led up to the 
crash, including the crash, that caused so many community banks to go 
out of business.
  Here is how this place works. I think most Senators understand this. 
If they don't understand it, they don't want to understand it. When the 
big banks and when Wall Street and the lobbyists--and there are 
hundreds of them for big banks in this town--when the big banks spot 
some legislation crawling through this body, when they see a bill in 
front of the Senate or the House that might help some small 
institutions, do you know what they do? They see an opportunity. They 
see an opportunity to grab more for themselves. It is the history of 
this country. We know what happens whenever Congress listens to Wall 
Street and listens to the big banks and Wall Street and the big banks 
get their way. Inevitably, the economy stumbles or, worse, crashes 
because we have given too much to the big banks. They put too much risk 
on the system, and in places like my ZIP Code in Cleveland, OH--ZIP 
Code 44105--my ZIP Code in 2007 had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code 
in the

[[Page S1425]]

United States of America. That is not because people in my ZIP Code 
have anything about them that they deserved this; that is just what 
happens in an economy when the big banks get too powerful, when Wall 
Street runs Congress, and we see what happens.
  Now we see Wall Street moving in, trying to grab more for themselves 
despite the fact that some of these big banks wouldn't exist today 
without taxpayer bailouts of a decade ago. We remember what happened. 
This body bailed out the biggest Wall Street banks, which didn't 
deserve it, to be sure. But we didn't bail out the big banks--at least 
most of us didn't--to help the big banks, we bailed out the big banks 
to help Main Street, to help the economy.
  So these Wall Street lobbyists have swarmed into this institution to 
grab more for themselves despite the fact that they wouldn't exist 
today without taxpayer bailouts, despite the fact that Wall Street 
banks are now making record profits, and despite the fact that the tax 
cut this body just jammed through Congress--81 percent of the recent 
tax cuts from the end of last year, 81 percent of that bill over time 
will go to the richest 1 percent of the people in this country.
  You have taxpayers bailing out the big banks, then you have this huge 
tax cut go to the big banks, and now they want more. They want this 
legislation that will weaken rules and make the big banks even more 
profitable. They always want more. Understand, it is American history. 
It is what we have seen in the last 10 years. It is what we have seen 
since the Great Depression seven decades ago. The big banks always want 
more, and it is always at the expense of everyone else. This 
legislation gives them exactly what they want.
  Listen to this. Not long ago, a bank lobbyist--one of the top bank 
lobbyists working for the American Bankers Association--said: We don't 
want a seat at the table, we want the whole table. They are about to 
get it under this bill--the whole table.
  This bill weakens stress tests for the 38 biggest banks in the 
country, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, 
Citigroup. You know these banks. These banks in the aggregate are 
almost half of the assets of banks in our country--banks that together 
took $239 billion in taxpayer bailouts. Now, $239 billion--that is 239 
thousand million dollars. That is a whole lot of money.
  Stress tests are the best tool we have to make sure another bailout 
never happens again. This bill weakens these tests. It changes the 
requirement from present law--semi-annual stress tests. So instead of 
having these tests twice a year, they are now going to be periodic. 
What does periodic mean? Well, we don't know. The bill doesn't define 
it. Former Fed Governor Dan Tarullo, the architect of many of these 
post-crisis reforms, has called this provision ``quite vague, with 
little indication of what kind of test is contemplated for these 
banks.''
  We also know something else. When Congress writes vague laws using 
words like ``periodic''--vague, versus specific--``semi-annual''--when 
Congress writes vague laws, bank lawyers, who are really good, very 
smart, and very well paid, can drive a truck right through those 
loopholes. We know that.
  Do we really want to give the current crowd in charge more leeway--a 
White House that looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives? We 
are talking about an administration stocked with former bank 
executives. Are these really the people we want to give the 
opportunity--are these the people we want to trust to interpret vague 
words like ``periodic''?
  This legislation weakens oversight of foreign banks operating in the 
United States, many of which have a track record of breaking U.S. laws. 
Think about that. We are not only deregulating a number of these large 
banks in this country, we have singled out that we are going to give a 
break to foreign banks.
  Let me talk about the rap sheet of some of these foreign banks. 
Santander, a Spanish bank, illegally repossessed cars from members of 
the military who were serving our country overseas. Think about that. 
We have somebody from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base who is serving 
overseas. Santander repossessed her car or his car when he or she was 
serving overseas. Yet we are going to give a break to that Spanish 
bank?
  Deutsche Bank, the President's favorite--President Trump, the 
businessman Trump's favorite bank--Deutsche Bank manipulated the 
benchmark interest rates used to set borrowers' mortgages. So we are 
going to give Deutsche Bank a break? We are going to deregulate part of 
Deutsche Bank?
  Barclays, a British bank, manipulated electric energy prices in 
Western U.S. markets. My constituents don't live in those areas that 
were hurt by that, but a whole lot of people do in this country.
  Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, illegally did business with Iran. I know 
what the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Arkansas, thinks about 
Iran. Yet we are going to vote--he is going to vote--all of us are 
going to vote for a bill that rewards a Swiss bank that illegally did 
business with Iran? Is that the message we want to send? I guess it is.
  UBS, another Swiss bank, sold toxic mortgage-backed securities. It 
goes on and on and on. We are rewarding these foreign banks that have 
defrauded our constituents and our government and clearly don't have 
much regard for U.S. law, and we are going to give them breaks.
  Again, we have heard from Governor Tarullo, we have heard from former 
Fed Chair Volcker, we have heard from former Deputy Secretary of the 
Treasury Sarah Bloom Raskin on this. They don't want to loosen foreign 
bank oversight, and they are joined by Republican former regulators, 
like Sheila Bair, Tom Hoenig, and others, who think this bill doesn't 
make sense.
  The bill also requires the Fed to further weaken the rules just for 
the dozen or so banks with $250 billion in assets. It subverts the 
Fed's independence; it subjects the Fed to pressure from FSOC and the 
Treasury Secretary--the same Treasury Secretary who foreclosed on 
40,000 Americans at OneWest. We are giving more power to help the banks 
to a Treasury Secretary who, before he became Treasury Secretary, 
played a major role in foreclosing 40,000 homes, including hundreds of 
homes in my State of Ohio. It opens the door for more lawsuits when 
banks try to avoid the rules they don't like.
  The former Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair, Gary 
Gensler, wrote to the Senate last week that this change ``may subject 
the government to additional lobbying and possible litigation from 
individual banks seeking specially tailored rules.''
  Back about 10 years ago, when President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank 
law, that same day, the top financial service lobbyists in this town--
the day Obama signed the bill, the day the President signed Dodd-Frank, 
the head of the top financial services lobbyists in this town said: 
Well, folks, now it is halftime.
  What did he mean? He meant, OK, we lost the first half, but we are 
going to go to work to do everything we can to block and misinterpret 
and reinterpret and eventually scale back and repeal as much of this 
law as we can. They went to work on the agencies. This is the 
culmination of their efforts. They now have a pro-Wall Street majority 
in the Senate, a pro-Wall Street majority in the House, a President 
whose office looks as if it is a retreat for Wall Street executives, 
and they are ready to go to help Wall Street, even though--I don't know 
when; maybe the Senator from Massachusetts knows--1 year, 2 years, 5 
years, 10 years, 20 years from now, it makes a bailout more likely.
  In fact, the Congressional Budget Office recently said that this bill 
will make a bailout more likely and that it is a $672 million giveaway 
to Wall Street.
  This bill makes another change to big bank rules that now stops them 
from borrowing more money than they can afford. The New York Times 
described this provision as weakening rules ``aimed at keeping banks 
from being able to take big risks without properly preparing for a 
disaster.'' Just let that sink in, because Ohio families know how bad a 
disaster can be; ``aimed at keeping banks from being able to take big 
risks without properly preparing for a disaster,'' isn't that what we 
want?

[[Page S1426]]

  Don't we want bank regulators, don't we want bank rules to stop the 
big banks from taking risks that could end up in a disaster? As I said, 
my neighborhood knows what disaster is. As I said, in 2007, there were 
more foreclosures in my ZIP Code in the first half of that year than in 
any other ZIP Code in America.
  Families in my State were hurt by this. People lost retirement 
accounts, people lost their homes, people lost their jobs, plants 
closed--all of that.
  Wall Street lobbyists came out of that last disaster just fine. I am 
thinking that probably none of them had their houses foreclosed on. I 
know that nobody who tanked the economy went to jail. So folks in New 
York and Washington, most of them are doing fine. They might not 
appreciate what disaster means when we talk about the economy, but Ohio 
families who lost their homes and their life savings know what that 
means.
  Do you know what else? For 14 years in a row, there were more 
foreclosures in my State each year than there were the previous year. 
OK, that is a statistic, and maybe you don't know any of those people. 
Well, the fact is that every time that happened, people lost their 
possessions. Their lives were turned upside down. Their kids may have 
had to go to a different school. They probably lost their family pet 
because they couldn't afford it. It was one thing after another for 
those families. We don't think much about them.
  Here is how to think about this rollback. Bank capital requirements 
are like a dam that keeps the risks inside the bank. It keeps the risks 
from flooding out into the rest of the economy. So if the banks are 
going to take risks, you want to keep them contained in the bank so 
that only the bank gets hurt, but this bill punches a hole in that dam 
by loosening the rules on five of the biggest banks. Once the dam 
starts to leak, it is more likely that bad decisions by those banks 
could spill out and harm taxpayers and retirees and bank customers.
  These banks have $5 trillion in combined assets. Should we feel safer 
with a weaker dam around a potential $5 trillion flood of banking 
assets? If that weren't bad enough, we have a team of lapdogs at our 
financial agencies who think this bill is just a starting point. Think 
about who they are. I don't come to this floor and attack individual 
people, but I do come to this floor and point out the history of some 
of these regulators.
  Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin was a bank executive who ran a bank 
that foreclosed on thousands of customers, many of them unfairly or 
possibly illegally. One of his top people, Mr. Otting, is the new 
Comptroller of the Currency. Mulvaney is the new Director of the 
Consumer Bureau, and he thinks the Consumer Bureau shouldn't even 
exist. Those are the kinds of regulators we see. Randal Quarles is the 
head of supervision at the Federal Reserve, and he said as late as 2006 
or 2007 in the Bush Treasury Department that things were fine in our 
country. These are the people we have entrusted to do the regulations, 
to hold back this dam that they have weakened legislatively. They are 
the ones who are charged with holding it back.

  If we want to help community banks, let's help community banks. Let's 
not try to sell it the same way this majority sold the tax cut bill. 
They said that it was a tax cut for the middle class, but 81 percent of 
the benefits over time went to the wealthiest 1 percent, so it wasn't a 
tax cut for the middle class any more than this was a bill for 
community bankers.
  The community bankers will get some help. I want to do that. I know 
Senator Warren wants to, and I know all of us on the floor want to do 
that, but that is not what this bill really does. If we want to help 
community banks, let's help community banks. If we want to help credit 
unions, let's help credit unions. If we want to help regionals like 
Fifth Third and Huntington and KeyBank in my State, let's help the 
regionals like that.
  Why do the biggest banks have to say: Give me more; give me more; 
give me more.
  Let's take Wells Fargo. What has Wells Fargo done to deserve an ounce 
of leniency? This is a bank that created more than 3.5 million fake 
accounts, including hundreds in my State. It is a bank that illegally 
forced unwanted auto insurance on its customers and charged homeowners 
improper fees to lock in their mortgage rates. So why would we want to 
help them with this bill? Just last week, the bank disclosed yet more 
problems with its money management unit. So why do we want to help 
Wells Fargo with this bill? It is a bank that outsources jobs. Six 
hundred call center jobs have been sent overseas by Wells Fargo just in 
the last year. So why do we want to help that bank in this bill? For 
those lucky enough to keep their jobs, it is a bank that mistreats its 
workers, punishing them with a high-pressure sales culture, and some of 
them lost their jobs as a result. Yet this bank, like the other big 
banks--they want more, more, more. I don't know why, but this Congress 
wants to give it to them, apparently.
  What has the Senate done to respond to Wells Fargo's misbehavior? 
Well, first of all, Republicans a couple of months ago passed a $1.5 
trillion--that is 1,000 billion--tax cut, and one of the biggest 
beneficiaries was Wells Fargo. What did they do with that money? They 
say that they gave a little bit to employees. They say that maybe they 
will invest a little more. What they really did--they announced that 
they are going to buy back $22 billion of stock this year. When they 
buy back stock, the price of the stock goes up, and executives and 
shareholders are enriched. So the stock buyback investment--the $22 
billion they are spending to buy back stock--is 288 times what Wells 
Fargo will spend on pay raises for its workers. So it gives a little 
bit to its workers. Whatever it gave to its workers, multiplied by 
almost 300--that is what the executives and the shareholders are going 
to get. So why are we doing favors for Wells Fargo in this bill?
  I don't mean to pick only on them. It is not just Wells Fargo.
  What has HSBC done to deserve special treatment? Since the crisis, 
the Department of Justice prosecuted the bank for laundering money on 
behalf of the Sinaloa drug cartel. In the midst of an addiction crisis, 
we are going to reward a bank that illegally laundered money for a drug 
cartel?
  Why are we doing any favors for Citigroup? Last month, Citigroup 
announced it had systematically overcharged almost 2 million of its 
customers on their credit cards.
  Why are we giving a single ounce of help to these big banks? They are 
repeat offenders. Not only are they repeat offenders--and as we help 
these big banks in this bill, we say we want to help the community 
banks--these repeat offender big banks are banks that compete with our 
local lenders and probably will put more and more of them out of 
business as these bigger banks get more and more powerful.
  The four biggest banks held 6 percent of industry assets in 1984. In 
1984, 33 years ago, 34 years ago, the four largest banks in the country 
held 6 percent of industry assets. Today, the four largest banks hold 
51 percent of industry assets. So what we are doing is giving them 
more--what we are doing is giving them more. Think about that. Thirty-
plus years ago, the biggest banks held $1 of every $16 of banking 
assets. Now they hold $1 out of every $2. Think about how many 
community banks these big banks have been able to gobble up. This bill 
will lead to more consolidation, more concentration, fewer customer 
choices, less investor choice.
  One article from American Banker talking about this bill said it 
could ``kick-start bank mergers and acquisitions.'' What that means in 
plain English is that big banks will get bigger. So we are helping the 
big banks get bigger, and we are falling over ourselves this week to 
help these banks because they just don't have enough. But we are doing 
nothing for consumers this week. We are doing nothing for workers, 
nothing for those tipped employees that the Department of Labor is 
cheating out of their tips and basically legalizing wage theft. We are 
doing nothing for middle-class workers. We are doing nothing for those 
supervisors making $30,000, $40,000 a year, who are having their 
overtime taken from them. We are doing nothing for them.
  If we are trying to help our community banks and credit unions, why 
give favors to their big competitors--to the big banks?

[[Page S1427]]

  This isn't the weather. We can do something about the challenges Ohio 
faces. We can stop these crises that tear apart families and entire 
communities. We can do that by stopping this bill, to begin with.
  Don't take my word for it. The Congressional Budget Office says that 
the risk of another financial crisis is very low right now because of 
the rules we passed in Dodd-Frank. Just dwell on that for a moment. 
They said that the risk of another financial crisis right now is very 
low because of the rules we passed in Dodd-Frank, but they went on and 
said that this bill increases the risk of another bank failure and 
another bank bailout.
  All of my particularly conservative friends in this body always talk 
about how they hate bailouts. They are always against bailouts. They 
are against bailouts for middle-class families. Their voting record 
doesn't really show that they are against bailouts for the rich, but 
that is a whole other subject.
  This bill that we are about to vote on this week, this bill that the 
banking industry is salivating over, this bill that they just can't 
wait to pass and get to the President's desk--and we know all the 
advisers sitting around the President, all the people in the Oval 
Office, all the people in the Cabinet room are all whispering in the 
President's ear: Mr. President, you are going to sign this bill, and 
this is going to be great.
  The President said in his campaign: We have to go after Dodd-Frank. 
All the big bankers in the country know this is going to be a great 
thing.
  We are spending all this time doing this to help the big banks but, 
again, nothing for workers, nothing for middle-class employees, nothing 
for consumers, nothing for infrastructure--all the things we ought to 
be doing.
  I am just not willing to ask taxpayers to take that gamble of 
increasing the chances of another bank bailout. We don't have to. We 
could amend this bill just to help the small community banks and credit 
unions that we all agree should be helped. We could amend this bill in 
a modest way to help the regional banks that have generally been good 
actors in this equation. I am offering amendments this week that would 
do just that.
  We don't have to give the big banks more just because they come here, 
just because they have the best lobbyists, just because they ask for 
it. We don't have to be at their beck and call. Let's do this right 
this week.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I want to commend Senator Brown for 
leading the fight to oppose rollbacks for Wall Street banks. He has 
been tireless in the fight on behalf of Ohio families and on behalf of 
families all across this country, and I thank him very much for his 
work.
  This is a tough fight. This week, nearly 10 years to the day after we 
first discovered that big banks crashed our economy, Washington is 
about to take many of those same giant banks off the government watch 
list. I doubt that this makes any sense to any of the millions of 
Americans who experienced firsthand the economic horrors of the 
financial collapse. Oh, but it makes perfect sense in Washington, where 
swarms of lobbyists seem to have the power to erase politicians' 
memories.
  The Senate is debating a bill that would roll back the rules designed 
to protect consumers and prevent another economic meltdown. Yesterday I 
talked about how this bill scraps a lot of important consumer 
protections for American families buying homes. In addition to 
squeezing consumers, this bill also loosens our hold on some of the 
very same giant banks that wrecked our economy.
  Ten years ago, a bunch of enormous banks got giant bailouts, while 
American consumers got a punch in the gut. The excuse in Washington 
was, well, these banks were so interconnected with one another and with 
the overall economy that the failure of one could bring down the rest 
of the system too. Too bad, they said, we have to bail them out. 
Individual families, however, could be crushed underfoot; they weren't 
big enough to be worth saving by Congress.
  Congress passed a huge bailout, but to keep this from ever happening 
again, Congress decided to put the small number of American banks that 
control more than $50 billion in assets--this is about 40 of the 
largest banks in the country--on a watch list. Those banks would be 
subject to tougher Federal oversight and would be subject to some 
stronger rules to stop them from bringing down the economy again. A 
small bank in Adams, MA, would be regulated one way, and a giant bank, 
with offices around the country and around the globe, would get a much 
closer look. That makes real sense.
  If this bill passes, Washington will scrap those rules for 25 of 
those enormous banks. Under this bill, a bank that controls up to a 
quarter of a trillion dollars in assets and has offices around the 
country and around the globe will follow the same rules and regulations 
and have the same oversight as a tiny little bank in Adams, MA. That is 
great if you are a quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar bank but not so great 
for anyone else.
  This bill isn't about restrictions on asset measures and investments. 
It is not about appropriate leverage ratios and proprietary trading. It 
is about keeping hard-working American families from getting crushed by 
another financial crisis. It is about a Congress that isn't here to do 
the bidding of quarter-trillion-dollar banks. It is about a Congress 
that is supposed to be working for the American people.
  Right after the financial crisis, before I ever thought about running 
for the Senate, Congress put me in charge of an independent panel that 
was supposed to police the bailout money. We held hearings around the 
country to talk to people who had been punched in the gut by the 
financial crisis.
  I will never forget one witness I met at a hearing in Las Vegas. His 
name was Mr. Estrada. He was a father of two little girls, and he wore 
a jacket over his T-shirt. He had on a red U.S. Marine Corps baseball 
cap. He and his wife both worked. They stretched their budget to buy a 
home that would get their girls into a good school, and the house was 
right across the street from their school. He was very proud of his 
house. When payments on their mortgage jumped, Mr. and Mrs. Estrada 
fell behind. He tried to negotiate with the bank, thought that the bank 
had arranged a settlement, and then, poof, the house was sold at 
auction.
  ``So at the end,'' he said, the bankers ``tell me that I have 
fourteen days to get my children out of the house.''
  Mr. Estrada explained what happened next:

       My six-year-old came home the other day with a full sheet 
     of paper with all of her friends' names on it. And she told 
     me that these were the people that were going to miss her 
     because we were going to have to be moving. And I told my 
     daughter, I says, ``I don't care if I have to live in a van. 
     You're still going to be able to go to this school.'' I'm 
     trusting in God that we're going to be able to be back into 
     this home again.

  Several times while he testified, Mr. Estrada paused to try to get 
control of himself, and his pain and desperation seemed to push all the 
air out of the room.
  I am here today to ask who in the U.S. Senate will fight for Mr. 
Estrada? Who will fight for the millions of other Americans who paid 
the price because big banks gambled with the economy and lost? I am 
here to fight for everyone who in 2008 had to tell their children: Pack 
up your toys because we have to move. I am here to fight for every 
American who worked a lifetime, did everything right, saved for 
retirement, only to watch their savings go up in smoke. I am here to 
fight for every small business owner who had to shut their doors after 
years of long hours and sweat and hope and tell their employees not to 
come back the next day. I am here to fight for those hard-working 
employees who lost their jobs. I am here to fight for all those 
Americans who kept fighting through the crisis, no matter how hard it 
was, who kept pushing, and who, years after corporate profits rebounded 
and the banks were riding high on Wall Street again, finally got their 
families back on their feet. They are who I am fighting for.
  On the other side, there is an army of bank lobbyists who are 
fighting for some of the biggest banks in this country. Now, that is 
not what they are telling you. They will tell you: Oh, this isn't about 
big banks at all. The lobbyists swear up and down that they are 
fighting for small banks--banks that aren't risky and didn't cause the 
financial crisis--and they will make up all

[[Page S1428]]

sorts of false claims about how the banks are struggling under these 
new rules, never mind that banks of all sizes are literally making 
recordbreaking profits. Give me a break.

  This bill is about goosing the bottom line and executive bonuses at 
the banks that make up the top one-half of 1 percent of banks in this 
country by size--the very tippy, tippy top. Your local community bank 
doesn't have a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets. Your local 
community bank doesn't own the naming rights to a stadium or a 
ballpark. This bill is designed to help a handful of giant banks that 
together control more money than the nominal GDP of more than 100 
independent nations on planet Earth. These are not small banks, and the 
idea that these wealthy and powerful banks need Congress to step in and 
protect them from having to follow some commonsense rules would be 
downright laughable if it weren't so dangerous.
  How big and important are these banks to the financial system? Just 
look at what happened in 2008. During the financial crisis, some of the 
very same big banks that will be deregulated by this bill sucked down 
nearly $50 billion in taxpayer bailout money. That is taxpayer money--
money that could have gone to building roads or building bridges or 
building schools or medical research, but that money instead went to 
propping up big, failing banks. Now the Senate wants to turn loose 
those big banks again.
  It is not just the bailouts. Banks with less than a quarter of a 
trillion dollars in assets helped cause the financial crisis in the 
first place. Remember Countrywide? In its 2006 annual report, right in 
the heart of the housing boom, Countrywide reported that it had $199 
billion in assets, which would put it right smack in the middle of the 
pack of banks that would be taken off the watch list.
  Countrywide made billions of dollars by scamming consumers. At its 
peak, it was the biggest mortgage lender in the country. It was also a 
subprime specialist--an expert on trapping people into tricky loans 
that they didn't understand and couldn't afford. Countrywide was 
obsessed with making as many loans as possible and squeezing out the 
competition. They gobbled up fees and downpayments and then sold those 
risky loans before they blew up. Wall Street gobbled up those loans, 
packaged them, and sold them on down the line just as quickly as 
Countrywide could make them.
  How could this happen? How could it happen? One reason is the Feds 
had been really easy on Countrywide. In fact, Countrywide was allowed 
to pick its own regulator--the Office of Thrift Supervision, which 
cuddled up so close to these banks that it was supposed to be policing 
that after the financial crisis, Congress actually abolished the 
regulator.
  Eventually, Bank of America bought the bank at a bargain price, and 
its owners lost money on the Countrywide deal. Poor Bank of America. Of 
course, that was nothing--nothing--compared to what people with 
retirement accounts lost when their investments tanked. It was 
certainly nothing like what Mr. Estrada and his little girls suffered 
because banks like Countrywide pushed off mortgages with hidden fees or 
exploding payments on their little family.
  Countrywide's scam mortgages were one of the main causes of this 
financial crisis. If Countrywide were still around today, this bill 
would make it easier for them to escape government oversight, and that 
is just plain reckless.
  We know banks of this size can help bring down the financial system. 
We know banks of this size demand billions of dollars in taxpayer 
bailouts when things go wrong. That should be the end of the 
conversation, but it isn't, not here in Washington.
  Consider this: The banks that are being deregulated under this bill 
have done nothing--nothing--to earn our trust and deference since the 
financial crisis. Instead, these banks have engaged in breaking the law 
left and right. Let's talk about a few of them.
  Take SunTrust. SunTrust has $208 billion in assets and so would be 
deregulated under this bill. They would be cut loose. In 2014, SunTrust 
agreed to pay $320 million to settle claims that it misused bailout 
money that was supposed to help distressed homeowners. The law 
enforcement agency that led this investigation said that the bank 
literally took homeowners' applications to modify their mortgages, 
tossed them in a room, and ignored them. There were so many 
applications that the floor in that room buckled under the weight of 
the documents. Think about that. They got almost $5 billion in taxpayer 
bailout money, they promised to help homeowners, and then they just 
tossed application forms for that help onto a pile that was so big that 
it made the floor buckle. And now this Congress is offering to help 
loosen the oversight on that bank.
  How about Santander Bank. Santander has $132 billion in assets. They 
could be cut loose by this bill. Less than a year ago, Santander was 
nabbed by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and Delaware for 
funding auto loans it knew its customers couldn't repay, using 
paperwork they knew was doctored--pretty brazen fraud. Now this 
Congress is offering to help loosen oversight on Santander as well.
  Then there are the financial institutions that have been caught 
discriminating against customers.
  Ally Financial has $164 billion in assets. They would be cut loose by 
this bill. In 2013, Ally Financial paid $98 million to settle charges 
that it discriminated against minority borrowers in providing auto 
loans. The scam was actually pretty straightforward: Charge African 
Americans and Latinos more than White people. The scale was huge--
235,000 non-White borrowers on average paid 200 to 300 bucks more than 
White borrowers with similar credit profiles. Now this Congress is 
offering to help loosen oversight of this bank as well.

  Then there are the banks that cheated investors. Barclays U.S. has 
$175 billion in assets. They could be cut loose by this bill. In 2015, 
Barclays was among the handful of banks that were charged record fines 
by the Federal Reserve for manipulating foreign exchange markets. 
Barclays traders colluded with traders from other banks to share intel 
and to push the market up or down in whatever direction profited them, 
and now this Congress is offering to help loosen oversight on Barclays.
  Last year, the Fed caught BNP Paribas USA in the same game. BNP 
Paribas has $146 billion in assets, and they could be cut loose by this 
bill. Now Congress is offering to help loosen oversight on BNP Paribas.
  Finally, there are the banks that got caught violating sanctions. The 
Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi has $155 billion in assets. They could be cut 
loose by this bill. In 2013, the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi settled with 
the New York Department of Financial Services for $250 million over 
charges that it cleared tens of thousands of transactions. DSF 
estimated that the bank wired more than $100 billion to countries that 
were under U.S. sanctions, including Iran, Sudan, and Burma. The bank 
specifically tried to evade sanctions by telling employees to leave 
destination information out of the wire instructions of money going to 
those countries so they could fool the regulators. Now this Congress is 
offering to help loosen oversight on the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi.
  Let's pause on this one. Washington thinks this bank needs less 
oversight. A year after it got caught funneling money to dangerous 
regimes and then trying to cheat rather than fix the problem, a State 
banking regulator was so alarmed by this that they actually put an 
independent monitor inside the bank to keep an eye on them. Now 
Republicans and Democrats have decided this is a bank we can trust.
  This is nuts. These are banks that taxpayers bailed out 10 years ago. 
They have cheated customers, cheated communities, cheated markets, and 
endangered our national security, and still Republicans and Democrats 
are joining together to loosen oversight over these banks.
  So what is this all about? What is it really all about? You will not 
hear this coming from the supporters of this bill, but it is the truth. 
It is about letting these banks snap up smaller banks. It is about more 
consolidation in the banking industry. It is about goosing banking 
profits and expanding executive bonuses.
  It sure as heck is not about increased lending. These banks are 
sitting on

[[Page S1429]]

mountains of cash that they could lend at any time. Just look at their 
profits. BB&T made more than $2.25 billion. SunTrust pocketed a cool 
$2.3 billion. M&T clocked in at $1.3 billion. I could go on and on.
  In fact, instead of lending more money, these banks have been plowing 
their massive earnings into stock buybacks. Just last month, M&T Bank 
announced it was spending an additional $745 million to repurchase 
stock. A few weeks later, Fifth Third authorized buying back $3 billion 
in stock. Every single one of those dollars could have been put to new 
small business loans or it could have been put to home mortgages. 
Instead, they went to goosing the banks' stock price and putting bigger 
bonuses in executives' pockets. Does anyone really think that if the 
banks have even more money to burn they will completely change course 
and pour that money into lending? To ask the question is to answer the 
question.
  These banks aren't exactly acting like they are starving for cash, at 
least not when they send their executives' paychecks. In 2016, the head 
of Regions made $14 million all in. The CEO of Huntington, almost $9 
million, not including almost another quarter of a million dollars that 
the company spent to cover the CEO's personal use of its jet. The CEO 
of Keycorp made $7.1 million. The CEO of CIT Group made the same--up 
from $3.2 million the previous year.
  That is not all. The good times are rolling at these banks. Zions 
Bank held a swanky party to kick off the Sundance Film Festival this 
year with a cute little hot chocolate bar. American Express just opened 
a shiny new regional headquarters building which cost $200 million.
  If this law passes and if these bankers, sitting around a shiny new 
table in their gorgeous new headquarters, decide to gamble just a 
little bit more, just like they did in the lead-up to the financial 
crisis, regulators may not even know it. If lying back in their plush 
seats of their corporate jets they cook up some kind of risky, 
complicated investment that nobody understands until after it goes bad, 
regulators probably will not catch it in time. If their bets fail, 
these more dangerous banks are more likely to crumble and more likely 
to bring the rest of the economy with them.
  This is madness. This is greed run wild. These rules have kept us 
safe for almost a decade, even as the same banks have chomped at every 
regulation and tried to evade every rule. Now Washington is about to 
make it easier for the banks to run up risk, make it easier to put our 
constituents at risk, and make it easier to put American families in 
danger, just so the CEOs of these banks can get a new corporate jet and 
add another new floor to their shiny corporate headquarters.
  Despite everything they have already done to cheat their customers 
and endanger the financial system, those big banks will always have 
their advocates here in Washington. What about Mr. Estrada, and what 
about the millions of working Americans like him who want Washington to 
think about them for a change? Mr. Estrada can't afford to hire a 
lobbyist and he can't cut a $1,000 campaign check and he can't host a 
fundraiser at a DC steakhouse. The result, it seems, is that every 
Republican in this Chamber--and far too many Democrats--will lie down 
with the banks and ignore Mr. Estrada and his two little girls.
  We should be working for people like Mr. Estrada and not for the big 
banks. Mr. Estrada earned it; the big banks did not.
  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. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the reason ``I came to speak on the 
floor [right now is to talk] about an issue that many in Washington 
would prefer to ignore; that is, [the] climate changes that are being 
caused by our carbon pollution.''
  That is how I began these speeches, with that sentence, on April 18, 
2012, from this desk. I have returned week after week to try to make 
sure there would not be silence in the Senate on the climate crisis. 
This is my 199th weekly foray; next week will make it an even 200.
  Back on that April Wednesday in 2012, debate about climate change had 
all but died in Congress. Just a few years prior, the House of 
Representatives had passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, led by 
our colleague, now the Senator from Massachusetts. In this body, 
Republican colleagues had openly acknowledged the existence of climate 
change and called for legislative action to cut carbon emissions. Since 
John Chafee, climate change had been a bipartisan concern.
  In 2010, came the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United 
decision, which allowed the fossil fuel industry to unleash limitless 
dark money on our elections. The polluters' money and threats cast a 
shadow across any Republican who might work on carbon pollution, and it 
ended that bipartisanship.
  When I gave that first speech, even the White House had thrown in the 
towel on climate change, after letting Waxman-Markey die on the vine. 
You couldn't get them to put the words ``climate'' and ``change'' in 
the same paragraph, at least not until the President engaged on this 
issue in his speech in June of 2013. Washington had gone dark on 
climate.
  I knew I couldn't match the financial muscle of the big polluters, 
but I believed if anything was going to change around here, we would 
need to shine a little light on the facts and on the sophisticated 
scheme of denial being perpetrated by the polluters. I decided to put 
at least my little light to work, and I started these speeches.
  The last 6 years, unfortunately, have offered no shortage of bad 
climate news and dubious milestones. This chart shows the 4 hottest 
years ever recorded have occurred since I began giving these speeches. 
Global warming is, of course, driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide 
and other greenhouse gases.
  When I gave the first ``Time to Wake Up'' speech in April 2012, the 
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 396 parts per 
million. Today, it is at 408. It has never been so high in the history 
of the human species. It is not just the carbon dioxide in the 
atmosphere that has been rising. So has the sea, as warming seawater 
expands and glaciers melt, making our coasts--particularly in my Ocean 
State--ever more vulnerable to flooding and storms. The oceans are 
becoming more acid, as ocean water reacts chemically with the 
heightened carbon concentration in the atmosphere.
  During the 6 years I have been giving these speeches, the United 
States has experienced more and more extreme weather events, many of 
which scientists tell us are linked to climate change: from deadly 
storms, including 2012's Hurricane Sandy and 2017's Harvey, Irma, and 
Maria, to California's record drought and wildfires, to temperatures so 
warm in the Alaskan Arctic that the computer algorithms thought the 
thermometer had broken.
  In 2017 alone, the string of U.S. extreme weather disasters--six 
major hurricanes, wildfires in the West, catastrophic mudslides, 
temperature records breaking all over the country--caused well north of 
$300 billion in damage and killed more than 300 people. The last 6 
years provide us with a menacing preview of things to come.
  Scientists, including scientists at all of our home State 
universities, say these changes are driven by carbon pollution. Our 
national security leaders warn of the increasing danger of 
international strife caused by climate change, as well as the threat to 
U.S. military facilities and force readiness.
  Faith leaders urge us to protect creation and those less fortunate 
than we are, led by Pope Francis, who, on this, has been magnificent. 
The insurance and credit rating industries, whose business models 
depend on accurate and responsible assessment of risk, warn us, as do 
major American corporations and leading investors--folks who can't let 
climate politics interfere with their bottom lines. I have spoken about 
them all.
  I also visited States across the country to see for myself and to 
talk to people firsthand--folks who know climate change is real because 
they see it

[[Page S1430]]

where they live, because they study it. In North Carolina, business 
leaders were organizing to protect the local coastal economy from 
climate change and associated sea level rise. In South Carolina, tide 
gauges in Charleston were up over 10 inches since the 1920s. In 
Georgia, I went out on the water with a clammer who showed me how 
changes in climate are hurting his livelihood. In Florida, the Army 
Corps of Engineers officials in Jacksonville gave a dire presentation 
of what the sea level rise portends for the Sunshine State. In Ohio, I 
saw the ice cores from faraway glaciers that record our looming climate 
catastrophe.
  In Utah, the ski resorts fear climate change will ruin their 
``greatest snow on Earth.'' I know the Presiding Officer takes pride in 
Utah's greatest snow on Earth. In Pennsylvania, child health 
specialists from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia see climate 
change worsening children's asthma. In Iowa, Des Moines Water Works was 
busy preparing the city for more frequent and severe climate-driven 
flooding. In Arizona, they are changing the staffing for emergency 
responders facing summer temperatures the human body cannot sustain. 
New Hampshire is forecasting that its State bird may no longer be seen 
as its range moves ever northward out of New Hampshire on our warming 
planet.
  I traveled on to Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Delaware, and more. I brought 
stories to this floor from every corner of the country, hoping 
colleagues would heed the warnings from their own home States, to match 
what I was hearing from Rhode Island, from Rhode Island's coastal towns 
and scientists and fishermen: ``Sheldon, it's getting weird out 
there,'' I was told. ``It's not my grandfather's ocean.''
  Many Democratic colleagues joined me to discuss the changes they see 
in their home States, including 30 colleagues who held the floor all 
night long in 2014.
  In July of 2016, 18 Senators and I took to the Senate floor for days 
to expose the fossil fuel-funded front groups that were behind the 
campaign to deny climate science and stymie legislative action. There 
is a whole carefully built apparatus: phony-baloney front groups that 
are designed to look and sound like they are real; messages honed by 
public relations experts to sound like they are truthful; scientists on 
the fossil fuel payroll whom polluters can trot out as needed.
  This industry-fueled misinformation campaign has been a theme of 
these speeches. I relayed the findings of researchers who study the 
flow of money through the climate denial network and the journalists 
who uncovered Exxon's coverup of what they knew of the climate dangers. 
I compared the fossil fuel polluter playbook to the fraudulent tactics 
of the tobacco industry to bury the truth about the health effects of 
cigarettes.
  I listened to conservative economists and offered market-based 
solutions. Back in March 2013, I described the market failure of carbon 
pollution's not being baked into the price of the product. Market 
economics doesn't work when corporations can just offload their costs 
onto the general public. It is called a negative externality in 
economics jargon, and we see it all around us in storm-damaged homes 
and flooded cities, in drought-stricken farms and raging wildfires. The 
big oil companies and the coal barons have offloaded those costs onto 
society.
  Virtually every Republican who has thought the climate change problem 
through to a solution comes to the same place: put a price on carbon 
emissions; let the market work; and return the revenues to the American 
public. This concept is supported by a who's who of former Republican 
Cabinet officials and Presidential economic advisers. I listened, and, 
in November 2014, I introduced with Senator Schatz the American 
Opportunity Carbon Fee Act to establish an economywide fee on carbon 
dioxide, return all of the revenue to the American public, correct the 
market failure, promote energy innovation, and, of course, dramatically 
reduce carbon pollution.
  I have seen over the years of these speeches that the landscape is 
shifting. The Senate has actually held votes that show that a majority 
here believes climate change is real, not a hoax, and is driven by 
human activity. It took years, but I guess that counts for progress 
around here.
  Outside of Congress, the Paris Agreement in 2015 committed the 
nations of the world to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by 
reducing carbon emissions. America's part was the Clean Power Plan--to 
reduce carbon emissions from the power sector by one-third by 2030 from 
2005 levels.
  Automakers adopted new fuel economy standards for cars and light 
trucks in 2012. Vehicles would get nearly 55 miles per gallon by 2025, 
saving consumers billions of dollars while eliminating billions of tons 
of carbon emissions.
  The EPA issued new rules in 2016 to limit the flaring of methane--a 
much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide--at oil and gas 
wells, and the Obama administration helped negotiate the Kigali 
Amendment to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which have 
powerful greenhouse gas heat-trapping properties in the atmosphere. 
Secretary Kerry convened wildly successful international oceans 
conferences, which are still ongoing and are scheduled for years ahead, 
to address the warming and the acidification of the seas.
  In sum, up through 2016, even if Congress had been trapped in fossil 
fuel muck, the United States had still been making slow but steady 
progress on climate policy. Then Trump was elected President, and he 
decided to see if he could reverse all of this.
  He announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris 
Agreement. He put the three stooges of fossil fuel--Scott Pruitt, Ryan 
Zinke, and Rick Perry--in charge of climate policy. Trump completely 
forgot his and his family's own words from a full-page New York Times 
advertisement in 2009, calling climate change ``irrefutable'' and 
portending ``catastrophic and irreversible consequences.'' That was 
Donald Trump and his family in 2009.
  As bad as the news became coming out of Washington, we saw action 
around the country to give us some reason for optimism. The leadership 
void left by the Trump administration was filled by State and local 
governments, businesses, academic institutions, and faith organizations 
which pledged to honor the Paris Agreement. California and Washington 
State joined with Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico to 
announce a plan to put a price on carbon that would reach virtually up 
and down the entire west coast of the Americas.
  Over management opposition, BlackRock, the great investment firm, 
helped force ExxonMobil to report its climate risk to its shareholders. 
Moody's announced it will start using climate risk in rating the bonds 
of coastal communities. Companies like Microsoft and Unilever adopted 
an internal carbon price to help them reduce the carbon intensity of 
their operations.
  At heart, this is a battle of truth versus lies, and courts are a 
good forum for the truth. California municipalities as well as New York 
City have sued fossil fuel companies, under State law, over the huge 
adaptation costs they will have to bear from sea level rise and extreme 
weather. The State attorneys general in Massachusetts and New York are 
pursuing a fraud investigation into what ExxonMobil has been covering 
up about its fossil fuels.
  So there you have it. Over the last 6 years, we are ever more aware 
of the accelerating pace of climate change and ever more aware of the 
terrible threat that rising seas, increased temperatures, and more 
frequent extreme weather events pose. It has become harder and harder 
for the fossil fuel industry and the web of front groups and Trump 
administration officials who do its bidding to claim there is nothing 
to see here, folks, that it is all a hoax, and to move along.
  Yet, despite all of the information and all of the evidence, this 
great institution--the U.S. Senate--continues to sit silent, paralyzed 
by the threats of retribution that come from the fossil fuel lobby. 
When this started, I had hoped we would never get to 100--let alone 
199--of these speeches. We ought to have solved this years ago. It is a 
disgrace that we haven't, and it is a disgrace as to why we haven't. If 
we remain as ineffective as we have been during the last 6 years, we 
will have failed ourselves and all future generations.
  America deserves better than this. A city on a hill, with the eyes of 
the

[[Page S1431]]

world upon it, can ill afford to ignore such a problem--worse still 
when the reason is one all-powerful industry that demands obedience. 
America deserves better. The countries and people around the world who 
rely on and look to American leadership deserve better. At long last, 
it is time for us to wake up here and meet our responsibilities.


                        Nuclear Innovation Bill

  Mr. President, the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee has come to the floor. While she is here, may I 
thank her for her work in clearing the nuclear innovation bill that 
Senator Crapo and I passed into law this afternoon by unanimous 
consent. The chairman's work, along with the ranking member's, in 
clearing that bill was essential to getting it passed, and she was a 
cosponsor and a critical force in getting it done. I am grateful to 
her.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and congratulate 
him. I recognize him and Senator Crapo, as well, for their efforts.
  I think, as we look to those energy solutions that can take our 
country and our planet to a place that is better, that demonstrate a 
truly greater environmental stewardship through the uses of clean 
energy, one should almost immediately look to the benefits that nuclear 
is able to provide for us.
  In my coming from a fossil-producing State like Alaska, people often 
ask, if I were not someone in Congress, would I be a supporter of 
nuclear. I truly believe that when it comes to our energy portfolio and 
those that will allow us to have a balanced approach to our energy and 
our energy solutions and when we are talking about the affordability, 
the accessibility, the diversity of supply, and the security of supply, 
you must also include and emphasize the clean energy supply.
  What the Senator from Rhode Island continues to repeat is worth 
repeating. Focusing on how we move ourselves to a cleaner energy 
environment is something we have had opportunities to visit and is 
something to which I am committed. So I look forward to finding those 
areas of balance.


                        Remembering Jim Balamaci

  Mr. President, I am here this afternoon for a brief few moments to 
pay tribute to an Alaskan whom we lost just within the past 2 weeks.
  My State is a State that is well known for the strength of its 
nonprofit sector, and we lost one of our leaders of that sector--a very 
special person who was beloved by many. He was a gentleman, a friend, 
by the name of Jim Balamaci. Jim was the president and chief executive 
officer of Alaska's Special Olympics. He unexpectedly passed away at 
the age of 63.
  This Sunday, I will be going home and will join with thousands who 
will fill the Alaska Airlines Arena on the University of Alaska 
Anchorage campus to pay tribute to Jim and to celebrate his 
contributions to the Special Olympics. Jim was really a giant in the 
Special Olympics, both at the local level and at the national level.
  I think it is most fitting that the celebration of Jim's life will 
occur during the weekend of the Special Olympics Alaska Winter Games. 
This will provide an opportunity for the many Special Olympians, the 
coaches, the volunteers--I am actually going to be there to help pass 
out awards--and for so many of us whose lives have been touched by 
Jim's inspiration to gather together to show our love and our 
admiration for, again, a truly great man.
  Being born in Alaska affords one a certain quantum of bragging rights 
when it comes to leadership, but truth be told, when the history of 
Alaska post-statehood is written, it is people like Jim who came from 
somewhere else and chose to make Alaska their home--their lives will be 
remembered for making Alaska the extraordinary and very special place 
that it is. Jim really fit that bill.
  Our NBC affiliate in Anchorage, KTUU, said: ``If there was ever an 
Alaskan who wore his heart on his sleeve, it was Balamaci.''
  In a 2017 interview with KTUU, Jim explained what makes Alaska so 
special in words that show how significant a figure he will be 
remembered as. He said: ``We build our communities, we build our state, 
and we build our friendships.'' That in a nutshell really explains the 
DNA of post-statehood Alaska. Jim absolutely got it, and I think that 
is one of the reasons he has earned a place in history, as well as in 
our hearts.
  Jim was born in Bridgeport, CT. He was active in sports. He was 
active in church. He entered a pretheology program at St. Vladimir's 
Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, NY. He was concurrently a 
student at Iona College in nearby New Rochelle. He graduated from Iona 
in 1976.
  A year after graduation, Jim left the suburbs of New York City to 
pursue his Alaskan adventure, his Alaskan dream. He moved north. He 
settled in Kodiak--pretty remote, not on anybody's road system. He 
worked in commercial fisheries there. He was a carpenter and teacher, 
and he kind of did it all. That is when he began his career, his 
lifetime of volunteer service.
  He began volunteering in the Special Olympics in 1979, and shortly 
thereafter, he moved into coaching. He was selected as president and 
CEO of Special Olympics in Alaska in 1996. Back in 1996, there were 
about 400 athletes around the State. Jim grew that universe of athletes 
of Special Olympians. Alaska's Special Olympics community today 
includes some 2,000 athletes, and I can tell you, they are all friends 
of Jim's.
  In a career as rich as Jim's, it might be difficult to identify just 
one or two experiences that were truly exceptional, but I would bet 
that Jim would probably say that he was most proud of the 2001 Special 
Olympics World Winter Games that were hosted in Alaska. We had over 
3,000 athletes from 80 countries who participated in the event. Eunice 
Kennedy Shriver, who, of course, is the founder of the Special 
Olympics, reportedly told Jim that it was the best World Winter Games 
in Special Olympics' history. That was substantial praise from the 
founder of the Special Olympics.
  Up until the last visit I had with Jim here in Washington, DC, Tim 
Shriver, who is also an extraordinary individual working within the 
Special Olympics, has been there with Jim when they come to Washington 
to visit with me.
  Another capstone experience occurred in 2014 with the completion of 
the Special Olympics Alaska Athlete Training Center and Campus. I will 
tell you, this is a phenomenal facility. It is really a one-of-a-kind 
facility. It is 28,000 square feet. It has a facility center, an indoor 
track, and a multipurpose sports court. It has a kitchen where the 
athletes learn about nutrition. It was built at a cost of about $7 
million. It remains one of the world's only dedicated training centers 
for developmentally disabled athletes. I have had occasion several 
times a year to be able to go out to their games. They have field 
hockey inside. The games they are able to participate in year-round in 
a place like Alaska--to have this training facility is absolutely 
exceptional and unparalleled.
  When we think of the Special Olympians, we typically tend to think of 
younger athletes, but as young Special Olympians age, they still remain 
Special Olympians. Jim saw this. We had so many conversations where he 
was talked about just the demographic, the aging population that we are 
seeing among our Special Olympians and those who are developmentally 
disabled. He said that we cannot not be thinking about their future as 
well.
  Jim was truly a pioneer. He worked in developing the Aging Unified 
Athlete Program with Special Olympics leaders across the country to 
ensure that developmentally disabled athletes live long and healthy 
lives, focusing on lifetime learning but really making sure that at all 
ages, there is engagement.
  Jim had an extraordinary heart, a big heart, a warm personality. He 
was just so loved. I cannot convey it enough. He was loved by not only 
those within the community of the Special Olympics but within the 
broader Alaskan community at large. I certainly saw that this fall when 
the torch run was being put on, which is a partnership with our law 
enforcement, along with our Special Olympians--again, a coming together 
of a community to provide support for one another.
  Jim could motivate and charm with the best of them. You need look no 
further for evidence of that than to be out at a place called Goose 
Lake in Anchorage, AK, the third week of December. Jim Balamaci is a 
guy who could

[[Page S1432]]

get thousands of Alaskans--literally thousands of Alaskans--to jump 
into a hole in a frozen lake in December to raise money for the Special 
Olympics.
  If you have never dressed up in costume to jump into a hole--this is 
not something where you can wade out to get your feet wet and say: I 
have done the polar plunge. This is a polar plunge where you go into 
that hole and you are swimming in a frozen lake, and it is December. I 
was out there in December. Jim Balamaci reminded us that we were all 
there ``freezin' for a reason,'' and that reason was to help the 
Special Olympics and Special Olympians. He was an extraordinarily 
special person to so many of us.
  On behalf of my Senate colleagues, I send my condolences to Jim's 
mother Frusina. She visited him often during his 40-year Alaskan 
adventure. We send our condolences to his sister and brother and to all 
those who were touched by Jim's kindness and generosity.
  Alaska and our Special Olympians across the country are better 
because of Jim Balamaci.
  With that, Mr. President, I thank you, and I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hoeven). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  All postcloture time has expired.
  The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
  The motion was agreed to.

                          ____________________