[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 13, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1646-S1656]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    ECONOMIC GROWTH, REGULATORY RELIEF, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT

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

       A bill (S. 2155) to promote economic growth, provide 
     tailored regulatory relief, and enhance consumer protections, 
     and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       McConnell (for Crapo) modified amendment No. 2151, in the 
     nature of a substitute.
       Crapo amendment No. 2152 (to amendment No. 2151), of a 
     perfecting nature.

  Mr. McCONNELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. 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the quorum call be rescinded.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.


                                  DACA

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on September 5 of last year, President 
Trump announced the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals Program, known as DACA. As a result of that decision by 
President Trump, hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the 
United States as children, known as Dreamers, face losing their work 
permits and their right to stay in America without deportation. They 
are threatened with being returned to countries that many of them 
barely remember, if at all.
  These Dreamers were brought here as children--infants, toddlers, 
young kids--by their parents to America, and they grew up here. They 
went to school in America, to our public schools and other schools that 
were available to them. They stood up in their classrooms every morning 
and pledged allegiance to the flag. They grew up believing that this 
was their home.
  At some point in their lives their parents pulled them aside and told 
them the bitter truth--that they were not legally in America, they were 
undocumented, and they were vulnerable. At any minute, a knock on the 
door or a stop on the highway could result in not only their 
deportation but the deportation of every member of their 
family. Growing up is tough enough for an adolescent. I can't imagine 
growing up with this shadow over me, wondering whether at any moment a 
misstep or being in the wrong place might mean that I would be sent 
from this country and that my parents would be sent with me, but they 
grew up with that reality and with that danger.

  They did some extraordinary things. They not only prospered in 
America and finished their education, they went on with great ambition, 
believing the day would come when they would get a chance to be part of 
this country.
  Seventeen years ago, I introduced the Dream Act. The purpose of that 
bill was to give those young people a chance--a chance to earn their 
way to legal status, earn their way to citizenship. If they have a 
serious criminal record, they are gone and we want nothing to do with 
them. They had squandered any opportunity they had to be part of 
America's future. But if they were doing the right thing, leading a 
good life, working hard, finishing school, many of us believed they 
deserved a chance. In fact, at this point, 85 percent of Americans 
believe they deserve a chance, and that includes 60 percent of the 
people who voted for President Trump.
  We have never passed the Dream Act and made it the law, but when I 
asked my former Senate colleague, President Obama, to see if there was 
something he could do by Executive order, he created DACA. DACA gave 
these young people a 2-year renewable protection. They had to pay a 
$500 fee, submit themselves to a criminal background check, and if they 
passed it, they would end up with a temporary, renewable right to stay 
in America. About 800,000 came forward and did it.
  There were many more who were eligible but scared--scared that 
turning over their family's information and their personal information 
to this government or any government could turn out badly. Can you 
blame them? They have lived their whole lives in fear that a highway 
stop or somebody being arrested next to them could mean they would have 
to leave the only country they had ever known. But 800,000 stepped up 
and said: We will do it. I encouraged them. I went to so many meetings 
in Chicago, around the State of Illinois, and around the country 
telling them that this DACA Program was for real and that the 
government was giving them a pledge that they would stand by them on a 
renewable basis because of President Obama's order.
  The program was a huge success. As I mentioned, 800,000 signed up, 
and some even renewed. Then came the decision by President Trump to end 
the program. What he said was that by March 5 of this year, there would 
be no more DACA. Those who were protected could play out their 
temporary protection but no renewals.
  That is where the issue stood for the longest time. Many of us 
decided that we needed to do something about it and to accept the 
President's challenge and create a law--a law that would provide 
protection for these young people. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican 
from South Carolina; Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona; 
Senator Cory Gardner, a Republican from Colorado; Senator Michael 
Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado; and Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat 
from New Jersey--we came together and decided on a bipartisan basis to 
draw up a bill to try to solve this problem, be fair to these young 
people, and give them a chance to stay in America and earn their way to 
citizenship. When we proposed the bill to President Trump, he rejected 
it. In fact, he rejected six different bipartisan proposals to solve 
this problem.
  So the deadline was looming and passed last week on March 5, and the 
program, by the President's proclamation, would have been finished were 
it not for two Federal courts that intervened and said: No, Mr. 
President. You may have overstepped. You may have done more than you 
can legally do. So we are going to protect these Dreamers, these DACA 
young people, until we resolve the question on your constitutional 
authority to make that decision.
  At the current moment, more than 700,000 of these young DACA 
recipients are protected by a court order that required that they 
reopen DACA eligibility for those whose DACA protection had expired, 
the 2-year temporary protection. Now tens of thousands of them are 
coming forward and applying for DACA renewal.

[[Page S1647]]

  Last week I called Secretary Nielsen at the Department of Homeland 
Security and said: I have some questions that I am hearing as I travel 
around. For example, if I was protected by DACA and my protection came 
to an end and I am now reapplying for DACA and going to your agency, 
how long will it take your agency to process my application?
  Secretary Nielsen could not give me an exact date, but there has been 
speculation that it could take 4 to 6 months. You see, there is a big 
backlog of cases, and it could take months before they process all 
those cases. That was my first question.
  My second question: In that 4- to 6-month period, can these young 
DACA recipients be deported?
  She said no. I put out an order, she said, that no one is to be 
deported if they made an application for DACA renewal.
  I asked Secretary Nielsen: Can we have that in writing?
  I will get back to you, she said.
  I don't think that is too much to ask--whether these young people can 
be protected from deportation while they are applying for DACA renewal.
  The third question: There is also a legal ability to work under DACA. 
Can you protect these young people's ability to have a job while you 
are processing their applications?
  She didn't know whether she could. I have since learned that she has 
the authority to do that, but it is an important question, isn't it? If 
you happen to be one of these DACA recipients--the vast majority of 
them are actually working, and most of them are in school or have 
graduated. They have to. They don't qualify for any Federal Pell grants 
or government loans, so they need to work to pay off their education. 
That is understandable.
  So it is still uncertain as to what is going to happen. Then what 
happens when the court lifts this injunction, and what will be the 
future of these young people?
  President Trump said some harsh things about immigration during the 
course of the Presidential campaign. We all remember his comments about 
people of the Muslim religion, his comments about Mexican rapists, and 
his pledge to build a big, beautiful wall from sea to shining sea and 
have Mexico pay for it. Do you remember? We all heard those things. But 
an interesting thing happened after he was elected: He started saying 
more moderate, positive things about Dreamers, to the point where I 
actually had some hope that this particular group would have a fighting 
chance. As of today, there is no indication that President Trump feels 
the same way. Six different bipartisan proposals have been rejected. So 
here we stand with this uncertainty.
  When the issue came before the Senate, we did our best to put 
together a bipartisan rollcall. We came close but not close enough. 
There were 4 proposals on the floor, and the one with the largest 
number of votes received 54 votes. There were three Democrats who 
disagreed with some parts of it. I think we could have probably found a 
way to get their support. But we only had 8 Republicans who joined us--
8 out of 51--to vote for the measure to deal with this issue. So it is 
still an unresolved issue at this moment as to what is going to happen 
after the court cases.
  I have come to the floor many times--in fact, over 100 times--to tell 
the stories of these Dreamers, and I would like to do that today before 
I yield to the Democratic leader.
  This is Maria Torres Mendoza. Maria is the 111th Dreamer I have 
featured here on the floor of the Senate. She came here to the United 
States from Mexico when she was 5 years old, and she grew up in the 
State of Washington. Her family didn't have much money, so she worked 
pretty hard. She used to deliver newspapers. She delivered 100 
newspapers before school each morning. She worked odd jobs--shoveled 
snow, cut grass. When she was in high school, she worked as a server at 
a restaurant every day while she was still going to school, kept up 
with her studies, and delivered the newspapers in the morning. You can 
tell Maria is not a lazy person.
  Because of her family's financial struggles, despite her best 
efforts, her family was homeless for some time. Through it all, she was 
an excellent student, and despite her family difficulties, she 
graduated from high school with a 3.8 grade point average.
  She didn't believe she would ever make it to college, but she did. 
She was accepted at Washington State University Tri-Cities. She is a 
senior now, and this spring, she will graduate with a bachelor's degree 
in mechanical engineering and a minor in computer science. She is 
currently working as a student engineer at ATI Titanium and Specialty 
Alloys, a specialty parts manufacturer. Her main project is creating a 
system to facilitate the usage of AutoCAD drawings and manuals for 
engineering and maintenance. I hope none of my colleagues ask me to 
explain what I just said, but it sounds like pretty important work. 
What is her dream? She wants a master's degree in engineering. She is 
particularly interested in nuclear-powered mechatronics--the technology 
that combines electronics and mechanical engineering.
  Maria wrote me a letter, and here is what it said:

       DACA is a whole world of opportunities for me. If DACA were 
     to be taken away from me, all my hard work would not count. I 
     want to see the results of my hard work and I wouldn't be 
     able to do so without DACA.

  Would America be a better place if Maria was asked to leave? Would we 
be a stronger nation if we took this young girl's amazing energy, her 
academic accomplishment, and her dream and drive and sent them back to 
Mexico? After all these years, after education and hard work--two jobs 
at a time when she was in high school--is there any doubt that this 
young woman is going to be a spectacular success in life?
  That is what this comes down to--real human beings, DACA recipients, 
protected by that Executive order of President Obama's, who are now 
under the threat of deportation because of President Trump's decision. 
It is a test of who we are as a nation, whether we believe in fairness 
and opportunity or whether we are going to walk away from our legacy. 
This is a nation of immigrants.
  I stand before you proudly, the son of an immigrant to this country. 
My mother was brought here from Lithuania when she was 2 years old, and 
here her son stands as a Senator from the State of Illinois. That is my 
story, that is my family's story, and that is America's story.
  It is time for us to remember Maria and the hundreds of thousands 
just like her who are asking for a chance to be part of our future.
  Mr. President, is it possible that with all the things on your mind, 
you have forgotten DACA and the Dreamers?
  We need President Trump to step up and lead.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Democratic leader is 
recognized.


                                  DACA

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, let me thank my friend from Illinois, 
Senator Durbin. There has been no more passionate, effective, strong, 
and consistent voice for the Dreamers, for those beautiful, young 
people who simply want to become Americans and contribute to America. 
He will never let this issue rest, nor will we. We are going to do 
everything we can to help the Dreamers. We hope President Trump finally 
sees it in his heart to actually get something done. We had a 
bipartisan agreement. It could have passed. It had some things we 
didn't like, and it had some things the other side didn't like, but 
President Trump, in one of the more inept acts in terms of legislating, 
blew the whole deal. We are going to keep working.
  I thank my colleague from Illinois.


                               Gun Safety

  Mr. President, as the Senate debates the banking bill, Americans are 
wondering if the Republican majority will ever move to take up the 
issue of gun safety. Tomorrow, thousands of students across the 
country--awakened students--will participate in a nationwide walkout to 
demand action. At 10 a.m. in high schools from one end of America to 
the other, students will walk out for 17 minutes in honor of the 17 who 
gave their lives at Stoneman Douglas High School, in solidarity. But 
they are not going to stop there; they are going to keep working and 
working and working until we get something done.

[[Page S1648]]

  When the students walk out, what will this Senate, what will this 
Congress, what will our Republican friends be able to say? Nothing, 
because we will have done nothing in that time to address gun safety in 
a meaningful way.
  The unfortunate reality is that it seems there is too little courage 
in the White House to take on the NRA. After sounding the right notes 
when the cameras were on, President Trump has backed away from 
everything but the policies to which the NRA gives its rubberstamp 
approval.
  I am still amazed at this. I believe it was on the issue of age that 
the President criticized Senator Toomey at his televised meeting and 
told him not to be afraid of the NRA. He said he wasn't.
  And what does the President do? He doesn't show one one-hundredth of 
the courage that Senator Toomey showed on guns.
  Senator Toomey and I don't agree on much, and I would have gone 
further than he did in the checks bill that he and Senator Manchin put 
together, but he had the courage to buck the NRA.
  President Trump, you have no courage to buck the NRA. You talk a good 
game, and then, when it comes to action, you are afraid to do 
anything--anything--that gets the NRA upset.
  The NRA is so far away from where America is. Over 90 percent of 
America wants background checks. The NRA and Trump don't. A huge 
percentage--over 80 percent of gun owners--want background checks--
comprehensive and universal background checks. President Trump and the 
NRA don't. The majority of Americans want protective orders so that if 
a family member or a friend or a teacher sees a young person acting 
like they are angry or upset and might do damage, their gun could be 
temporarily taken away. Most Americans want that. President Trump and 
the NRA don't, and neither do our Republican friends. The vast majority 
of Americans would like a debate on assault weapons--or certainly the 
majority. President Trump, the NRA, and our Republican majority don't.
  Mr. President, why don't you retract what you said to Senator Toomey. 
Why don't you admit that he had more courage than you? Why don't you 
say that you are afraid of the NRA, because that is really what is 
going on here. No one is going to be taken in by nice words spoken in 
an hour in front of a TV camera when you then back off on anything. Of 
course, the plan was released Sunday night. They thought, hopefully, 
that it would get no news coverage, but it is still in the news.
  Unfortunately, too many Republicans here on the Hill are in the same 
boat as President Trump, but not Senator Toomey. They want to appear as 
though they are doing something for gun safety but are only willing to 
support the smallest bore policies that the NRA gives a green light to. 
They say: OK, let's do these small things first; maybe we will do more 
later.
  We all know the game here. Everyone sees what is going on. My friends 
on the other side don't dare support anything that the NRA opposes, 
even though the vast majority of Americans want them to. Our friends 
hope that we will pass something tiny, something small so that they can 
clap their hands and say they did something on gun violence and move 
on. The day they want to do something meaningful and real on gun safety 
never seems to come.
  My friend the Senator from Texas--he is a good friend of mine. We 
banter in the gym almost every morning. I have worked with him on a 
number of issues. But he comes to the floor every day and says: Let's 
do the small Fix NICS bill, and then we will see about other proposals. 
He knows as well as I do that Fix NICS is not even close to enough of a 
response to the epidemic of gun violence in the country. He knows as 
well as I do that the NRA is OK with Fix NICS but not universal 
background checks.
  Fix NICS only improves reporting within the existing background check 
system. The big loopholes that allow so many bad people, felons, and 
those adjudicated mentally ill to get guns--the gun show loophole, the 
online loophole--are not touched by Fix NICS.
  I say to my good friend the senior Senator from Texas, when you are a 
doctor and you are sewing up a wound, you don't just do the first 
stitch and then walk away and say: We did something. No, you have to do 
the real job to cure the injury. I appreciate that my friend from Texas 
wants to pass this bill. Democrats support it. I am a cosponsor. But as 
a response to the spree of shootings in our schools, on our streets, in 
our churches, movie theaters, nightclubs, concerts, and on street 
corners every evening, a bill to repair just one tiny little aspect of 
the background check system is not sufficient.
  A policy or an attitude that says that we cannot offend the NRA on 
anything will never, never, never help ameliorate our problem of gun 
violence to a sufficient extent.
  As my colleague Senator Murphy, Senator Cornyn's coauthor of Fix 
NICS, has said: ``If we were to only debate the Fix NICS Act, we would 
be slamming the door in the face of all of these kids who are demanding 
change.''
  He said it perfectly.
  Democrats are fighting to make sure that Fix NICS isn't our only 
response. I hope and pray that my Republican colleagues will find the 
courage to go beyond what the gun lobbyists tell them is OK and work 
with Democrats on real and significant gun safety legislation.


                                 Trade

  Mr. President, now on another matter, this is a happy moment because 
many Democrats--certainly I--agree with the Trump administration when 
they blocked the proposed bid by the Singapore-based Broadcom to 
purchase the San Diego-based Qualcomm, on national security grounds.
  Let me say this unequivocally: President Trump and his administration 
made the right decision on blocking Broadcom from taking over Qualcomm.
  We all know that China has been rapacious about trade and very smart. 
They look for places where they can steal our best technology. They 
develop it there in China and keep us out of their markets and then try 
to flood the world with their products, sometimes dumping them. China 
has been rapacious about trade. Frankly, in my opinion, neither the 
Bush administration nor the Obama administration did enough. President 
Trump has a much better attitude.
  One particular area of concern is how frequently foreign companies 
have sought controlling stakes in cutting-edge technology companies 
like Qualcomm. Qualcomm has done a great job, and they are leading the 
world in developing the 5G system. We need to preserve that as 
Americans because it has both economic and national security concerns.
  As China seeks dominance in the semiconductor and wireless 
industries, the United States must be wary of attempts to acquire U.S. 
leaders in these industries. As to a foreign-controlled Broadcom, I 
don't know what the links are between Broadcom and China. I suspect 
there may be some, but China could move to take it over and, poof, the 
dominance that we would seek in 5G technology developed here would go 
away. It is a national security concern and an economic security 
concern.
  We Democrats believe that the CFIUS model should extend not just to 
national security but to economic security. When China attempts to 
steal our best technology by buying American companies--whether it is 
robotics, AI, or chips on Qualcomm--we ought to block it.
  China doesn't play fair. Lifetime President Xi hopes to dominate in 
the crown jewel of America's industries--the tech industries and 
others, where we dominate because we have been so good because we have 
taken immigrants, Mr. President, from around the world, and they helped 
develop these great things. We have to be wary of China--wary of China. 
To his credit, President Trump is more wary of China than the last five 
or six administrations, and I am glad he is. I am glad his 
administration is. It is just almost too late, but it is not yet.
  It is no secret that President Trump and I share similar feelings on 
the issue of trade, particularly when it concerns China. I have often 
been critical of this administration--like I have been of previous 
administrations--when it fails to follow through on the President's 
rhetoric or misdirects its policies.
  The recent steel and aluminum tariffs are an example of how the 
administration has the right instincts but bad

[[Page S1649]]

execution. If properly calibrated, tariffs could be an effective tool 
to rein in China. China certainly dumps and has sought dominance in the 
steel and aluminum industries. Instead of targeting heavily subsidized 
Chinese steel and aluminum, the President has put in place across-the-
board tariffs that would hurt many of our domestic industries. There 
was an article today about a Missouri ball bearing company that doesn't 
know where it is going to get its steel from. It hurts allies like 
Canada.
  Canada makes its own steel and aluminum. We have a trade surplus with 
Canada. Putting Canada in the same boat as China is a huge mistake. 
That is why these tariffs--and I support the thrust of them--should 
have been more carefully targeted.
  In contrast, the action on Qualcomm is targeted and effective in 
terms of protecting U.S. industry, and I urge the Trump administration 
to do more of these things. They will fill a hole that previous 
administrations failed to fill.


                          Russia Investigation

  Mr. President, finally, on Russia, we all know that the Republican 
majority on the House Intelligence Committee has ended its 
investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 elections. The 
House Republican majority on the Intelligence Committee has so 
discredited itself.
  The report makes several assertions that are contradicted by already 
well-known facts. It says that Russia had no preference for Donald 
Trump in the 2016 elections. Remember, it is not just the intelligence 
community's assessment that the Russians were trying to elect Trump, 
but an independent grand jury--nonpolitical--in the special counsel's 
investigation concluded the same thing on the basis of evidence 
independently acquired and presented by the special counsel. By saying 
they disagree with the intelligence community's assessment that Russia 
interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, Speaker Ryan and 
Chairman Nunes are closer to Putin's view than the view of the CIA, the 
FBI, the NSA, and the DNI--people in the administration.
  It seems that there are no lengths to which Chairman Nunes and 
Speaker Ryan will not go to protect this White House, even when it 
damages America's security.
  After Chairman Nunes's midnight run to the White House, his partisan 
memo, fake memo, and fake scandals about unmasking FBI text messages, 
no one should take this report seriously. I would say, to the vast 
majority of Americans, Chairman Nunes has discredited himself. He is 
much more of a partisan operative than a representative helping America 
be secure.
  The House Republican majority has never taken this investigation 
seriously. From the very beginning, they have sought to distract and 
kick up dust. They have shown time and again that they are willing to 
put party before country--something our Founding Founders warned 
against. They are willing to twist facts and ignore evidence about a 
foreign power attacking our democracy because it might cause political 
damage to the President. It is a shocking and shameful abdication of 
duty.
  In my judgment, Chairman Nunes, you and your committee have made a 
shocking and shameful abdication of duty to America. A congressional 
party that is wholly subservient to the political interests of the 
President is failing fundamentally to fulfill its constitutional 
obligation. Congress is supposed to be a separate, equal branch of 
government. Read the Constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. One of 
the main purposes of Congress was to check the power of the executive 
branch. Our Founding Fathers feared an overreaching executive branch, 
as I know my friend from Nebraska knows, because he cites these things. 
That responsibility doesn't fall only on one party. It falls on all of 
us.
  That is why there has been a history of bipartisanship and 
cooperation on the Intelligence Committees, where the vital interests 
of the Nation are at stake. That has been the case through the years. 
Until Chairman Nunes seemed to get ahold of this, that tradition was a 
grand one and a good one. Now that tradition has been discarded by 
House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee through this 
embarrassing episode that will historically go down as one of the 
lowest moments of any committee's actions in Congress.
  Let me say pointedly to my colleagues that the Senate Intelligence 
Committee has been quite different than the House Intelligence 
Committee. I salute both Chairman Burr and Ranking Member Warner for 
trying to run things in a different way. Let us hope that the Senate 
Intelligence Committee does not go the way of the House and continues 
its bipartisan cooperation to get to the bottom of this mess. That is 
because we have a responsibility to get to the bottom of what happened 
in 2016 and to report those findings in an unbiased way. If the House 
isn't going to do it, the Senate must.

  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant 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 ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I would like my colleagues to take a trip 
down memory lane. Go back a decade or two to 2006, 2007, 2008, and look 
at the decade before that. My State of Ohio, for 14 years in a row--
from the late 1990s through the year 2010--experienced almost a decade 
and a half of foreclosure increases leading up to the crisis. That 
meant that in Ohio, literally every year for 14 years, there were more 
foreclosures than the year before in my State.
  Predatory and irresponsible lenders made dangerous, subprime loans. 
They often ignored whether borrowers had the ability to repay that 
loan. The incentives were these: We will keep writing these; we will 
keep underwriting; we will keep collecting fees. We don't care if the 
borrower can pay.
  We can see that is a setup for disaster. Because of the lack of 
standards for underwriting, we learned a painful lesson that not all 
mortgage lending is created equal.
  Look at some headlines from that period. On September 18, 2008, the 
front page of the Wall Street Journal featured three headlines. This 
was September 18, 2008, so just slightly less than 10 years ago: 
``Mounting Fears Shape World Markets As Banking Giants Rush to Raise 
Capital.'' ``Bad Bets and Cash Crunch Push Ailing AIG to Brink.'' 
``Worst Crisis Since `30s, With No End.''
  On the same day the Washington Post reported: ``Markets in Disarray 
as Lending Locks Up.''
  How did we get to that crisis? Banks forgot the essential rule of 
lending. A borrower needs to be able to pay back the loan. It is pretty 
simple, but a forgotten dictum. Instead, lenders offered loans that 
required no documentation. They offered loans with teaser interest 
rates that shot through the roof after 2 or 3 years. They offered loans 
where borrowers never paid down their principal or they stripped their 
home's value through cash-out refinances.
  So borrowers had these mortgages where they simply paid the interest 
with the belief the home would go up in value more and more and more, 
never paying the principal. The homes didn't go up in value, and look 
what happened.
  All of these practices had devastating results for families and 
communities and the economy. My wife Connie and I live in ZIP Code 
44105 in Cleveland, OH, just south of Slavic Village in the great city 
of Cleveland. Eleven years ago, in the first half of 2007, 44105 had 
more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. I 
can still see the blight brought on by those foreclosures--what it did 
to individual families, what it did to the neighborhood, what it did to 
the city of Cleveland.
  Think about--and we don't do that very much here. We don't really 
think all that much when we talk about things like this. We look at 
numbers. We look at statistics. We read analyses and data, but we don't 
really think about individual families.
  Think about what happens when somebody suffers a foreclosure. First 
of all, these families understand that things are getting tighter. It 
is harder

[[Page S1650]]

and harder to pay their mortgage. Their spouse may have been scaled 
back to half time, depending on the economic circumstances.
  The first thing they do is often get rid of the family pet. It costs 
too much to take the dog to the vet. The second thing they do is cut 
back on everything. They just start cutting back on everything. 
Eventually they have that sit-down with their 12-year-old daughter and 
their 14-year-old son and their 15-year old son, and tell them: We are 
going to have to move. We don't know where we are going or what school 
district we will be in. We don't know how much we are going to get; we 
have to sell the car. We don't know how much you are going to be able 
to see your friends. They think about the personal side, but we don't 
do that much here.
  Pope Francis used to admonish his parish priests to go out and smell 
like the flock. We don't do that very much here. We look at data and 
ideas, and we don't think about our policies and our votes and the 
impact they have on individual human beings.
  So thinking back to ZIP Code 44105, if those faulty mortgage products 
weren't bad enough on their own, they were targeted to communities of 
color. The neighborhood my wife and I live in, ZIP Code 44105, is 
mostly African American, but pretty diverse. A lot of people look more 
like me, but there are a lot of people with moderate to low incomes.
  These mortgage products were targeted to communities of color. In 
those communities in particular, even those who qualified for no-
frills, no-surprises prime mortgages were often instead steered into 
subprime loans. Why? Because the lender could make more money on a 
subprime loan than a straightforward loan that most Members of the 
Senate generally sign up for. So even African-American and Hispanic 
borrowers with higher incomes than other borrowers found themselves--
because the banks put them there--with subprime mortgages.
  These practices of discrimination, which went on for years, stripped 
a generation's worth of equity from communities that had fought hard 
for equal access to home ownership. Think about this: The household 
wealth of communities of color simply hasn't recovered from the last 
decade. Middle-class Black and Hispanic families lost half of their 
wealth from 2007 to 2013. In 2016, it was $38,000. The numbers are 
similar for Hispanic households: $85,000 in 2007, $46,000 in 2016. They 
all sound like numbers, but what that does to a family who has lost 
half its wealth, particularly because their wealth is generally in the 
home that they own--think of what that does.
  My colleagues talk about how hard the banks have it, how hard it is 
to be a banker now, and how hard it is for Wall Street. I would like to 
revisit what happens when banks stop following the rules. Borrowers 
with these higher cost loans were foreclosed on at almost triple the 
rate of borrowers with standard 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages. Between 
2006 and 2014, more than 9 million homeowners lost their homes to 
foreclosure in distressed sales or surrendered their home to the 
lender--9.3 million homeowners. What does that mean to us? Do we know 
any of them? Do we ever talk to any of them? Do we listen to their 
stories about what happens when you get thrown out of your house? Do we 
sit there and patiently listen and ask them questions and ask them to 
tell us about what has happened during the last 10 years of their 
lives? Because when you get thrown out of your home, whether you are 
evicted or whether you get put out because of foreclosure, you don't 
just give away the family pet. You don't just cut back on everything. 
You lose a lot of your possessions because you can't take things with 
you. You start again in your life, and you start again in debt. Does 
anybody here care about that?
  They talk about how hard it is for the banks and how Wall Street is 
suffering, but they don't think about the individual homeowners who 
struggle. Some of them get foreclosed on. Some of them are just 
struggling. Some of them have lost half of their wealth.
  It is not just families of color who lost half their wealth; a whole 
lot of working class White families have lost a lot of their wealth. 
Does this place seem to care? Not a whole lot.
  It wasn't just subprime mortgages. The crisis revealed a host of 
other harmful practices, like steering borrowers to affiliated 
companies, kickbacks for business referrals, inflated appraisals, and 
loan officer compensation based on the loan product. If you have a 
certain loan product that might be more profitable, even though it is a 
little sleazy and a little underhanded, you make a little more money 
because you steer people into those loan products. It might lead to the 
ruining of their lives or it might lead to their foreclosure, but they 
are making more money.
  So what does that mean? It means the worse the loan was for the 
borrower, the more money the lender made. In 2008, the worse the loan 
was for the borrower, the more money the lender made. That is what our 
laws were. We fixed that, and we are going to undo some of that in this 
bill.
  After the dust settled, this country realized how twisted our 
mortgage lending market had become. Congress finally stepped in to do 
what the market and regulators refused to do for too long.
  I believe in free enterprise. I believe in the dynamism of 
capitalism. But when the market and the regulators did nothing except 
encourage this kind of behavior--that is why government is involved. 
That is why government steps in. That is why we did Wall Street reform. 
It established a commonsense rule that lenders should evaluate whether 
a borrower has the ability to repay a home loan. The ability to repay 
rule means that lenders can no longer make a loan based on the home's 
value or ignore the fact that an adjustable rate mortgage will become 
unaffordable in a year or two.
  A mortgage is the largest financial transaction most families will 
make in their lifetime. It is a big deal, central to the economic life 
and the life overall of a great majority of people in this country. 
Requiring that the mortgage process, services, and fees be transparent 
and understandable to borrowers is essential. We don't all have great 
sophistication when we get a homeowner's loan. That is why it is so 
important that it be transparent and understandable to borrowers. But 
the bill before us today chips away at that principle. It includes 
several provisions that, when taken together, weaken transparency and 
inclusiveness and undermine fairness in mortgage lending.
  The bill says lenders need not consider whether a borrower can afford 
an adjustable rate mortgage after the interest rate adjusts. Banks and 
mortgage companies make more money when they write more loans. I get 
that. They should. But when the incentive is only that and there is no 
requirement that the borrower be able to afford an adjustable rate 
mortgage after the interest rate adjusts--we know what will happen.
  The bill also allows the largest banks to acquire small banks and 
retains these legal protections for the larger banks.
  I spoke to a member of a bank board in Mansfield, OH, yesterday, a 
longtime friend of our family's. That is where I grew up. I know the 
locally owned banks in Mansfield, OH. I know that Mechanics Bank works 
hard for their enrichment. I know they work hard for their customers. 
They know their customers. Small banks work with their customers. If 
they lose a job or face a sudden illness, the bank can try to work with 
them to figure out how to avoid foreclosure. Would a megabank in 
Cleveland, Columbus, or Dayton do the same thing? Based on the record 
of Secretary Mnuchin's bank, OneWest, and others during the crisis, we 
can be pretty sure we know the answer to that, and the answer is no, 
they won't.
  The bill before us also gives lenders a pass on the requirement to 
escrow for taxes and insurance when making subprime loans. It doesn't 
cost real money to the lender to put money aside for taxes and 
insurance; it is part of the calculation when you buy a house. Most of 
us want our taxes and insurance included so we have a more predictable 
stream of outflow, so we know how much we are paying next month, and it 
doesn't change. It may change once a year, but it doesn't change often. 
By definition, someone taking out a subprime loan is at a higher risk 
of default. Also, escrow helps a borrower plan for the expenses of 
taxes and insurance, and it protects

[[Page S1651]]

the lender from unexpected losses. That is in the bill, and we are 
stripping that out of the law.
  Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, appointed by President Bush, is a 
terrific public servant. She was a high-ranking employee--I believe 
chief of staff--for Senator Dole when he was a Member of the Senate. 
She steered the FDIC through the worst of the financial crisis. She 
raised her opposition to this provision in a letter to me.
  This bill exempts 85 percent of banks from reporting the HMDA data 
they are collecting and reporting today. I credit Senator Cortez Masto, 
who, as the attorney general of Nevada before she joined us in the 
Senate 14 months ago, saw up close what happened with foreclosures. She 
is a strong, outspoken opponent of this bill. She has had those 
discussions with people who have lost their homes. She understands how 
it happened. She doesn't have the amnesia that apparently a majority of 
my colleagues have, forgetting what happened 10 years ago and learning 
almost nothing from what happened 10 years ago. Her amendment would fix 
HMDA data collection. Without this data, we can't monitor trends in 
mortgage lending, particularly in rural areas. Without this data, it 
will be even harder to see who has access to affordable mortgage credit 
and who does not.
  We know that redlining is still happening. The latest report from the 
Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed tens of millions of 
mortgage records and found that across the country, people of color are 
far more likely to be turned down for a loan even when you take into 
account factors like their income and the size of the loan. Without 
this data, we won't know when redlining happens. It will make it more 
difficult to show that community lenders go the extra mile for their 
customers. That is why the NAACP, National Community Reinvestment 
Coalition, Unidos, National Urban League, Rural Community Assistance 
Corporation, and more than 170 State and national organizations have 
objected to this devastating new hole in lending data. Why in the world 
would Congress want to keep us from getting that information, keep us 
from getting that data, so we, in fact, understand better what goes on?
  Part of our problem in 2007 and 2008 was that we had a whole bunch of 
regulators who were asleep at the switch, we had a Congress that was 
oblivious, and we had a national media that was not paying enough 
attention to this. Part of that was that the regulators didn't have the 
information they needed. That is why the head of supervision at the 
Federal Reserve, Randal Quarles, who was in the Bush administration 
then, could see nothing but roses and candy in the years ahead. He said 
that in 2006 and I believe in 2007. He had no idea what was going on, 
partly because he maybe didn't want to know but partly because we 
didn't have the data collected that we are starting to collect now. So 
we are going to say we don't care about that.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from former 
FDIC Chair Sheila Bair and the letters from civil rights groups in 
opposition to this provision be printed in the Record at the conclusion 
of my remarks.
  Any one of these provisions is bad enough, but taken together, they 
add up to riskier loans for American families and more foreclosures on 
American families.
  Think about this: If this bill passes, a bank could make a subprime 
loan without considering whether a borrower could afford the higher 
interest rate when the teaser rate expires. The first 2 or 3 years, you 
are paying rate X, and then in the third or fourth year, you are paying 
X plus two or X plus three, and then the next year, maybe X plus that 
number plus one, to the point you can't afford your mortgage anymore. 
What happens? You get foreclosed on, and your life turns upside down.

  If this bill passes, a bank could make a subprime loan without 
considering whether the borrower could pay the higher interest rate. A 
bank wouldn't have to collect taxes and insurance on a monthly basis, 
making a loan look affordable when it may not be because you have 
insurance and taxes. Why not put that in the monthly payment so people 
can predict more and understand their finances better?
  The homeowner loses her right to take the bank to court for removing 
her from her home even though the bank made a loan it knew she could 
never repay. So the bank makes a loan to a homeowner. The homeowner 
perhaps doesn't have the sophistication the banker sitting across the 
table has, doesn't quite understand what the teaser rate will mean to 
the cost of her house. Then the bank doesn't do the escrow adding 
insurance and taxes, and the bank convinces this perspective homeowner, 
the borrower, that she can make these payments, no problem. Then she 
loses her right to action if she is foreclosed on. She has no recourse 
even though the bank sold her something that a good banker wouldn't 
have. It is a recipe for disaster. It is a recipe for more families 
ending up in homes they were misled into thinking they could afford. Is 
it too much to ask a lender to consider whether a family can afford the 
loan they are getting? Are we back here already?
  The cherry on top is this bill eliminates data we need to determine 
whether banks are targeting certain communities for these risky loans. 
We know this administration and the heads of Departments are not 
concerned about accountability for financial institutions' equity, 
lending, and inclusivity. We learned that HUD is considering changing 
its mission statement to delete references to inclusive communities. 
Imagine that, Secretary Carson, that you would do such a thing.
  I am concerned this bill will put more families at risk of poor 
housing conditions, particularly in rural communities that are so often 
ignored in this town. The bill reduces the frequency of required 
inspections for units overseen by rural public housing agencies that 
administer 550 or fewer units of HUD public housing and section 8 
rental vouchers. For many of these so-called PHAs, HUD will inspect 
their property once every 3 years rather than every 1 or 2 years. This 
bill would allow PHAs to inspect more voucher-assisted units just once 
every 3 years. A lot can happen to an apartment in 3 years that could 
put residents' health and safety at risk. In my neighborhood, it is in 
the 90 percent rate, those homes that have toxic levels of lead, and it 
gets worse as the house gets older and the paint chips. And we are not 
going to inspect these places.
  I understand that PHAs face many challenges in maintaining high-
quality housing for families. Due to years of underfunding, public 
housing alone faces an estimated $26 billion backlog of repairs. My 
Senate Democratic colleagues and I have proposed an infrastructure 
package that includes funding for public housing repairs and 
revitalization to help address these challenges. We have an obligation 
to make sure these struggling families have safe and decent housing. I 
have been clear throughout this process that I want to help community 
lenders and housing providers better serve their customers. We don't do 
that by reducing accountability. We don't do that by returning to the 
freewheeling housing market that led to millions of families losing 
their homes.
  When we talk about escrow and lending requirements, it sounds kind of 
boring, it sounds dry, and it may sound like legalese that don't 
matter, but it matters when it comes to the biggest, most important 
purchase most Americans will make.
  It just seems that particularly when people buy that first home and 
they don't really know much about how to do that--maybe they don't have 
a lot of political sophistication; they are 25 or 30 years old or 
whatever age they are--we shouldn't make it more complicated, we should 
make it less complicated. Bankers should not be incentivized only by 
how much money they make by writing more and more mortgages but instead 
should walk through what this is going to cost: Here is the escrow. 
Here is what your insurance costs. Here is what you are going to pay if 
you have a teaser rate. We are going to make some decisions, and this 
house may be a little too expensive for you because of that teaser 
rate, because of what you will be paying 3 years from now in addition 
to the escrow, the taxes and insurance that you hadn't really planned 
for.
  Weakening a standard here or granting an exemption there will end up 
causing real pain for real families.

[[Page S1652]]

  Growth in the housing sector is only sustainable if families can 
afford their loans and homes are maintained. I know families in my ZIP 
Code can't afford a repeat of the housing crisis. I know what it has 
done to my neighborhood. Some of them are still digging out.
  Let's stop listening to the big-bank lobbyists and start listening to 
the people we serve, the families across this country who remember all 
too well what foreclosures and job losses mean to them.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                February 13, 2018.
     Hon. Sherrod Brown,
     Ranking Member, Senate Banking Committee,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Brown: You had requested my views on S. 2155, 
     the ``Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer 
     Protection Act''. At the outset, I would like to commend the 
     Senate Banking Committee leadership for developing this 
     legislation on a bipartisan basis, and proceeding in the 
     traditional way with hearings and a markup. I appreciate that 
     much work has gone into negotiating its provisions, and I am 
     highly supportive of most of them, particularly those reforms 
     which give relief to community and regional institutions, as 
     well as changes that would give consumers more control over 
     their credit information.
       Regrettably, the bill also includes Section 402 which would 
     significantly weaken a key constraint on the use of excessive 
     leverage by the largest financial institutions in the US. In 
     these times of market volatility, I would strongly urge the 
     Senate to reject this provision as imprudent and short-
     sighted. Now is the time we should be bolstering bank capital 
     levels, not chipping away at them.
       Banks operated with far too little capital during the run 
     up to the 2008 financial crisis. In setting capital 
     requirements, regulators erroneously judged certain 
     activities--for instance mortgage securities, derivatives, 
     and European sovereign debt--as having little, if any risk. 
     Banks piled into these activities because regulators let them 
     lever returns with borrowed money. The consequences were 
     catastrophic.
       Because their judgments about risk were so wide of the 
     mark, regulators have made greater use of non-risk weighted 
     standards since the crisis. The most important of these is 
     the ``supplemental leverage ratio'' or ``SLR''--a relatively 
     simple metric which sets minimums for big banks' common 
     equity as a percentage of their total assets and certain off-
     balance sheet exposures. In the US, the SLR has been set at 
     5% for the largest banking organizations (6% for their 
     insured bank subsidiaries).
       Section 402 is a seemingly innocuous provision which would 
     exempt from the SLR deposits held at central banks by 
     ``custodian'' banks. This includes deposits at the Federal 
     Reserve (Fed), as well as the central banks of other 
     Organization for the Economic Cooperation and Development 
     (OECD) members such as Turkey and Greece.
       As originally introduced, Section 402 was limited to three 
     so-called ``custodian'' banks, specialized banks which 
     safeguard customer assets but do not engage in traditional 
     commercial banking. However, during the markup, the Senate 
     Banking Committee loosened the definition of ``custodian'' 
     bank, potentially creating a gaping loophole as any bank 
     arguably serves as ``a custodian'' of depositor money. Most 
     big banks will likely press the Fed to let them benefit from 
     Section 402, given the huge competitive advantage it would 
     bestow. Data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation 
     (FDIC) indicate that capital reductions for some banks could 
     approach 30%.
       The laudable goal of the sponsors of S. 2155 is to support 
     economic growth. But it seems Section 402 will simply give 
     banks more incentives to take on additional leverage by 
     parking money with central banks, not making business and 
     consumer loans. They can arbitrage the near-zero interest 
     rates they pay on deposits with the 150 basis points they can 
     get at the Fed. That's a nice, tidy margin that will grow 
     even wider as the Fed raises rates this year.
       Central bank deposits do not support lending in the real 
     economy. They do include the extra reserves created by 
     central banks when they intervene in the markets through 
     things like quantitative easing, the practice of buying 
     government and private securities to increase the money 
     supply. If the goal of S. 2155's supporters is to facilitate 
     monetary interventions, then that should be made clear. 
     However, even assuming that is the purpose, there is no need 
     for Section 402. The Fed already has substantial flexibility 
     to temporarily ease capital requirements during times of 
     economic stress. The Basel Committee, an international 
     regulatory forum which includes central bank supervisors, has 
     said that in times of exceptional macroeconomic circumstances 
     central banks should have the flexibility to temporarily 
     remove reserve deposits from the leverage ratio calculation 
     to facilitate such interventions. Only the Brexit-challenged 
     Bank of England has removed central bank deposits from its 
     leverage calculation. Notably, it also made an upward 
     adjustment in its ratio to mitigate the reduction in capital 
     levels, something which S. 2155 does not do.
       More fundamentally, why does Congress want to start 
     designating banking activities as low or no risk, when expert 
     financial regulators were so spectacularly wrong prior to the 
     crisis? The SLR's key strength is that it does not reflect 
     government judgments about risk. Central bank deposits may 
     seem low risk, but where does this slippery slope end? The 
     Treasury Department wants US government securities also 
     removed from the leverage ratio, notwithstanding their 
     significant interest rate risk. What's next? Housing agency 
     debt? How about AAA corporate bonds? To the extent these 
     instruments compete with central bank deposits for banks' 
     liquid investments, Section 402 will put them at a 
     competitive disadvantage unless they get similar treatment. 
     It will also alter the competitive landscape as it provides a 
     special capital break for big banks that does not apply to 
     smaller institutions, an ironic result for a bill designed to 
     help community and regional banks.
       Before concluding, I would like to address some of the 
     confusion surrounding this change, not surprising given the 
     complexity of bank capital regulation. Assets of pension 
     funds, mutual funds, endowments and other bank clients that 
     are held in custody and invested under the control of those 
     clients are already excluded from the SLR. Losses on those 
     assets fall to the clients, not the bank. The SLR applies to 
     funding, be they deposits or other borrowings, over which 
     banks have control. Even though custody banks may not operate 
     as traditional commercial lenders, they are highly systemic 
     and have significant operational risk with many trillions 
     under custody. They can also suffer losses on their 
     investment portfolios, as they did during the crisis. As 
     Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Vice-Chair Tom 
     Hoenig has pointed out, custodian banks were borrowing from 
     the Federal Reserve $60 to $90 billion dollars a day to cover 
     funding shortfalls during that tumultuous time.
       In the years following the crisis, custodian and other 
     large, systemic banks have grown and remained profitable 
     notwithstanding toughened capital rules. Indeed, the higher 
     capital standards we imposed in the US relative to Europe 
     have been key to our faster economic recovery. It is true 
     that during times of market stress, deposits significantly 
     increase at custodian banks. But this is true of all banks--
     FDIC insured deposits went up dramatically during the crisis. 
     This is why risk-based capital rules have built in counter-
     cyclical buffers, and there would certainly be no harm in 
     Congress recognizing the authority of bank regulators to 
     provide capital accommodation in times of severe stress when 
     deposits are increasing dramatically as investors seek out 
     safety. This is authority I believe they already have.
       Government judgments favoring one asset class over another 
     inevitably distort markets. I would strongly encourage 
     Congress not to embark down this path. The responsibility--
     and accountability--for capital rules should rest with the 
     Fed and other bank regulators. Weakening capital rules now 
     will undermine the resiliency of the banking system and 
     heighten the risk of bank failures during the next downturn. 
     This current recovery is already long in the tooth by 
     historical standards. For now, growth is strong and banks are 
     profitable, but that will eventually change. If anything, 
     Congress should be encouraging banks and their regulators to 
     increase capital buffers.
       You had also requested my views on other aspects of S. 
     2155. As previously indicated, outside of Section 402, I am 
     highly supportive of this bill with two caveats. First, in 
     limiting the application of Enhanced Prudential Standards 
     (EPS) Congress should take care not to weaken pre-Dodd-Frank 
     authorities to utilize forward-looking supervisory tools and 
     protect the deposit insurance fund. You would not want to 
     inadvertently weaken supervisory tools that existed prior to 
     the crisis. Second, I am troubled by Section 109 which would 
     exempt many more lenders from escrow requirements for high-
     cost mortgage loans. Mandatory escrow of insurance and taxes 
     for borrowers with troubled credit histories provide both 
     consumer and safety and soundness benefits. Borrowers who 
     have difficulty managing their finances may well have trouble 
     making these essential payments on their own, forcing them to 
     turn to high cost lenders to cover those costs when they come 
     due, or worse, defaulting on their mortgage obligations. 
     Moreover, administrative costs of escrow requirements are not 
     high and certainly less than costs associated with default. 
     To both protect consumers from the loss of their homes as 
     well as the FDIC-insured banks from mortgage defaults, I 
     would encourage Congress to leave current escrow requirements 
     alone.
           Sincerely,
     Sheila C. Bair.
                                  ____

                                      National Association for the


                                Advancement of Colored People,

                                    Washington, DC, March 5, 2018.
     Re NAACP Strong opposition to S. 2155, the Economic Growth, 
         Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

     The Honorable,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator: On behalf of the NAACP, our nation's oldest, 
     largest and most widely-recognized grassroots-based civil 
     rights organization, I strongly urge you to oppose, work 
     against, and vote ``Nay'' on passage of S. 2155, the mis-
     named Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer 
     Protection

[[Page S1653]]

     Act. This dangerous bill does irreparable damage to fair 
     lending protections against racial discrimination; it harms 
     homebuyers; and it contains over two deregulatory provisions 
     of the financial services industry that were put into place 
     after the 2008 global crises which led to a recession from 
     which many American families and communities are still trying 
     to recover.
       Section 104 of the bill would exempt 85% of depository 
     institutions from full reporting of loan data under the Home 
     Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). This would devastate our 
     attempts to determine--and potentially rectify--racially 
     discriminatory lending or loan approval patterns at play. The 
     HMDA dataset contains the most comprehensive publicly 
     available information on mortgage market activity. Each fall, 
     new HMDA data are made available. In 2016, almost 7,000 
     institutions released over 16 million records, making HMDA an 
     invaluable administrative dataset on housing and 
     homeownership for policymakers, regulators, and researchers.
       Furthermore, S. 2155 provides exemptions from crucial 
     mortgage lending protections for buyers of manufactured 
     homes, such as mobile homes. These provisions would allow 
     sellers of manufactured homes to overcharge customers and 
     make the millions of Americans who wish to purchase a 
     manufactured home more vulnerable to predatory lending 
     practices similar to those which caused so many--too many--
     families to lose their homes in the 2008 crisis.
       If we as a nation learned anything from the 2008 financial 
     crisis, it is that American consumers need more information 
     and protection, not less. Thus, I urge you to reject S. 2155 
     and to focus on policies and proposals to help the average 
     American consumer. Thank you in advance for your attention to 
     the position of the NAACP. Should you have any questions or 
     comments, please do not hesitate to contact me at my office.
           Sincerely,
     Hilary O. Shelton,
       Director, NAACP Washington Bureau & Senior Vice President 
     for Policy and Advocacy.
                                  ____

                                                    March 8, 2018.
     Re Oppose section 104, ``The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act 
         Adjustment''.

       Dear Senator: The undersigned civil rights, fair housing, 
     consumer, and community organizations write to highlight our 
     strong concerns with Section 104 of S. 2155, ``the Home 
     Mortgage Disclosure Act Adjustment and Study''. This section 
     would undermine efforts to ensure that the nation's mortgage 
     lenders are serving all segments of the market fairly by 
     exempting the vast majority of lenders from the updated 
     reporting required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and 
     Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank). Public officials use 
     this information in distributing public-sector investments so 
     as to attract private investment to areas where it is needed, 
     and to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns.


 The Dodd-Frank Act's Updated HMDA Reporting Reflects Lessons from the 
                            Financial Crisis

       In response to widespread concerns about predatory lending 
     and opacity in the mortgage market in the run-up to and 
     following the financial crisis, Congress amended the Home 
     Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) to require both banks and non-
     bank lenders to disclose more information about their 
     mortgage lending activities--updates finalized by the CFPB in 
     2015. Although not previously reported and disclosed through 
     HMDA, these data points are already collected on a routine 
     basis by banks, credit unions and for-profit mortgage 
     companies in the normal course of business, either as a part 
     of basic loan underwriting, for securitization or for other 
     purposes required by law.
     The CFPB Reduces the Reporting Burden on Small Lenders 
         Without Sacrificing Data About Lending in Underserved 
         Communities
       After considering a number of higher reporting thresholds 
     and receiving extensive feedback from all size and type of 
     lending institutions, the CFPB adopted a standard that 
     applies the new reporting requirements to institutions that 
     made 25 closed-end mortgage loans or 100 open-end/home equity 
     lines of credit (HELOCs). Importantly, in response to 
     concerns raised by lenders and by some in Congress, the CFPB 
     has already temporarily raised the reporting threshold for 
     HELOCs to 500 through 2019, in order to further review the 
     impact of the rule and what the permanent HELOC threshold 
     should be. In adopting the HMDA thresholds, the agency 
     balanced several Congressional interests--adopting a uniform 
     and simplified reporting regime for banks and non-banks; 
     eliminating the need for low-volume banks to report while 
     maintaining sufficient data for analysis at the national, 
     local, and institutional levels; and increasing visibility 
     into the home mortgage lending practices of non-banks.
       Section 104 upsets the careful balance: its proposed 
     reporting thresholds--500 closed end loans or 500 open-end 
     lines--would exempt the vast majority of the nation's 
     mortgage lenders from the updated requirements. Based on 2013 
     data, under the threshold set by the CFPB, 22 percent (1,400) 
     of the depository institutions that currently report on their 
     closed-end mortgages would be exempt. In contrast, if Section 
     104 is enacted, the agency estimates that 85 percent (5,400) 
     of depositories and 48 percent of nondepositories (497) would 
     not have to update reporting on their mortgages. This higher 
     threshold would sacrifice key data about lending in 
     underserved communities that would help to ensure the flow of 
     credit to qualified borrowers, stimulate the economy, and 
     prevent future mortgage crises.
     Tiered Reporting Sacrifices Critical Data Without Reducing 
         Lender Burden
       Section 104 proposes to adopt a tiered reporting approach, 
     exempting some lenders from reporting the new data points 
     pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act only. This is purportedly a 
     way to reduce burden. However, because the data points 
     covered by the rule are already collected by lenders, the 
     burden associated with the rule is minimal. Further, as with 
     any data collection effort, the primary driver of HMDA costs 
     is in establishing and maintaining systems to collect and 
     report data, and not the costs associated with collecting and 
     reporting a particular data field. Therefore, this approach 
     sacrifices critical information without relieving much of the 
     purported HMDA reporting burden on banks or non-banks.


       Section 104 Would Undermine Fair Access to Mortgage Credit

       HMDA was passed in 1975 to provide the necessary tools to 
     dismantle uneven access to mortgage credit and expand equal 
     lending opportunities for qualified borrowers, yet important 
     segments of the market continue to lack fair access. For 
     people of color, low- to moderate-income families, and 
     borrowers in rural areas, access to mortgage credit remains 
     tight. While the numbers of loan originations have gone down 
     for all borrowers, African Americans and Latinos have 
     experienced the steepest declines. A Federal Reserve analysis 
     of lending in rural areas has found higher denial rates in 
     those communities since the housing crisis than in urban 
     areas. The new data would help explain and inform responses 
     to these lending gaps. A new HMDA data point on the 
     applicant's age is also vital information for evaluating age 
     bias in lending, especially in conjunction with reverse 
     mortgages.
       The stark disparities in access to mortgage credit and the 
     continued struggle for economic recovery in the communities 
     hit hardest by the financial crisis call for a strengthening 
     of our nation's fair lending laws, specifically HMDA, not a 
     weakening of them. Quite simply, the updated HMDA data will 
     provide critical information about whether similarly situated 
     borrowers and underserved communities are receiving equitable 
     access to mortgage credit, data that we lacked a decade ago 
     when the crisis hit. This is not the time to limit the 
     nation's ability to adequately assess the reasons for 
     restricted credit access for underserved borrowers. Instead, 
     we must increase efforts to address the causes behind the 
     increased difficulty in accessing safe, affordable credit.
       For these reasons and more, we urge you to oppose Section 
     104 and any other efforts to roll back the data collection 
     and reporting as called for in Dodd-Frank and implemented by 
     the CFPB. Should you have any questions or comments, please 
     feel free to contact Gerron Levi at the National Community 
     Reinvestment Coalition.
           Sincerely,
       National Groups: Americans For Financial Reform, Center for 
     Responsible Lending, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of 
     America, Equal Rights Center, Grounded Solutions Network, 
     Housing Choice Partners, The Leadership Conference on Civil 
     and Human Rights, Morningstar Urban Development, 
     Incorporated, NAACP, National Community Reinvestment 
     Coalition, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American 
     Community Development, People's Action, National Fair Housing 
     Alliance, National Housing Law Project, National Organization 
     of African Americans in Housing, National Urban League, 
     Public Counsel, Rural Community Assistance Corporation, Take 
     Charge America, UnidosUS (Formerly NCLR).

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise to discuss S. 2155. It is 
called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection 
Act. One would think from the title that I would be all for it, but as 
one who went through the drop in the economy when we were on the brink 
of collapse, I believe this is a very bad bill.
  Let me go back to that time. Banks were teetering and over 300 would 
fail in the next 3 years. For perspective, only three banks had failed 
in the year of 2007. Unemployment was skyrocketing. We lost $19 
trillion in household wealth. Americans lost nearly 9 million jobs.
  In my State of California, more than 2 million people were 
unemployed, 3\1/2\ million mortgages were at risk, and nearly 200,000 
people filed for bankruptcy.

[[Page S1654]]

  Now that the economy has recovered and unemployment has decreased 
from its high point of 10 percent during the crisis, I worry that my 
colleagues have forgotten the magnitude of this crisis. I simply 
cannot.
  I remember sitting in caucuses hearing from our top financial 
officials about the potential for a total collapse of our economy. 
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified to the House Financial 
Services Committee that ``our financial system failed to do its job and 
came precariously close to failing altogether.'' That is not an 
exaggeration. For those of us who were here, who listened to the 
economists, who heard what was happening, we feared a total collapse. 
Personal conversations I had with these economists carried the most 
dire warnings. We should never get close to that point again.
  Congress spent more than $400 billion on something labeled TARP, 
Troubled Asset Relief Program, to help stabilize the economy. It was 
very controversial at the time, but we have since recouped more than we 
spent on that bank program.
  Congress then passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act in 2010, putting in place policies to prevent another 
financial crisis, including strong protections on the largest banks. 
Now, just 8 years later--how quickly we forget--we are considering 
loosening these protections.
  Have we forgotten the lessons from 10 years ago and the devastating 
consequences for American families?
  As with any bill we pass, I am open to looking at how it has been 
implemented and making adjustments as needed. For Dodd-Frank, I agree 
that community banks and credit unions shouldn't be regulated the same 
way as the largest banks in the country. I am open to adjusting some of 
these regulations for them, but this bill simply goes too far. It goes 
beyond targeted relief for small institutions.
  The nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, says the 
probability of a large bank failing or another financial crisis will go 
up if this bill is enacted. One provision I am particularly worried 
about would roll back regulations and supervision for banks with assets 
between $50 billion and $250 billion. These aren't just small community 
banks we are talking about. Instead, this would apply to some of the 
largest banks in our country.
  Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrote that 
Countrywide, National City, and GMAC were all below $250 billion and 
``required billions of dollars in official capital assistance and debt 
guarantees either for themselves or their acquiring institutions.''
  Here is what Phil Angelides, who served as chairman of the Financial 
Crisis Inquiry Commission, said about this particular provision:

       The bill's provisions to lift the asset threshold for 
     enhanced prudential standards and supervision from $50 
     billion to $250 billion would substantially reduce oversight 
     over 25 of the nation's 38 largest banks, including 
     institutions of over $100 billion in assets that were deemed 
     ``Too Big to Fail'' in 2009.
       A number of financial institutions with less than $250 
     billion triggered the need for bailout assistance during the 
     crisis and history has shown, time and time again, that the 
     failure of financial firms that are not among the largest 
     mega-banks can pose systemic threats to financial stability.

  In addition to weakening these requirements, the bill can also weaken 
capital requirements for even the largest banks.
  Sheila Bair, former Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance 
Corporation, said this could lead up to a 30-percent capital reduction 
at some banks. Just think of that. She also raises a question that we 
should all take a moment to reflect on: Why does Congress want to start 
designating banking activities as low or no risk, when expert financial 
regulators were so wrong prior to the crisis?
  Finally, this bill would amend the SAFE Act that I authored to ensure 
mortgage brokers and lenders meet minimum standards. This was necessary 
to curb the abusive lending practices we saw leading up to the 
financial crisis in which many consumers were taken advantage of 
through predatory lending.
  This was a serious problem in California. Between March and June of 
2008, 406 defendants were charged in 144 mortgage fraud-related cases, 
and approximately $1 billion in losses were attributed to these 
fraudulent acts.
  The SAFE Act created a new system of registration and licensing that 
included background checks, education requirements, and testing to 
ensure that mortgage brokers and lenders could meet basic standards.
  The bill before us, interestingly enough, would allow mortgage loan 
originators to operate without a license--without a license--for up to 
120 days if they move from a bank to a nonbank or across State lines. 
Allowing this transition period without ensuring that lenders have 
passed the licensing test we required in the SAFE Act weakens the 
protections we put in place for consumers.
  Before I conclude, I want to say that I appreciate this is a 
bipartisan bill. It has gone through the Banking Committee. I also 
understand the interest in ensuring regulations are appropriately 
tailored to the size and activity of financial institutions, but I am 
really worried that Members here have become too comfortable in our 
economic recovery and have forgotten where the path of deregulation 
ends.
  I oppose this bill because it simply goes too far in deregulating 
some of our largest institutions and weakening the protections we put 
in place to prevent another financial crisis.
  If we don't learn from past failures, we are doomed to repeat them.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the letter of Phil Angelides.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                    Sacramento, CA, March 5, 2018.
     Re S. 2155.

     Hon. Mike Crapo,
     Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and 
         Urban Affairs, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Sherrod Brown,
     Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, 
         and Urban Affairs, Washington, DC.
       I am writing this letter to express my strong opposition to 
     S. 2155 by Senator Crapo which would weaken the financial 
     system safeguards and taxpayer and consumer protections put 
     in place in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The 
     provisions of the bill, particularly when coupled with the 
     clearly expressed deregulatory agenda of the Trump 
     Administration and its key financial regulators, will once 
     again put us on the path of exposing American taxpayers, our 
     financial system, and our economy to significant risk.
       As Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 
     which conducted the nation's official inquiry into the causes 
     of the financial crisis, I am deeply troubled by the 
     potential passage of this legislation, considering the 
     magnitude of the economic and human damage caused by the 
     crisis and the effectiveness of post-crisis reforms in 
     stabilizing our financial system and economy. That the Senate 
     is taking up this bill on the floor at this time is 
     particularly astounding given that next week will mark the 
     10th anniversary of the collapse of Bear Stearns, one of the 
     seminal events in the unraveling of our financial markets 
     that plunged our nation into the Great Recession.
       Before the financial crisis abated, the federal government 
     and the nation's taxpayers provided trillions of dollars of 
     financial assistance through two dozen separate programs, 
     including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), to bail 
     out Wall Street. Even with this historic and unprecedented 
     government response, the consequences of the crisis were 
     dire. Millions lost their jobs and their homes, cities and 
     towns across the nation were devastated, and trillions of 
     dollars in wealth were stripped away from hard working 
     families and businesses. The aspirations of millions of 
     Americans were crushed in the financial assault on our 
     nation, with all too many families and regions still 
     struggling today from the fall-out of the crisis.
       Without any compelling public policy rationale--other than 
     the deceptive guise of aiding regional and community banks--
     this bill now seeks to undo key bulwarks of public protection 
     designed to avert future crises. Indeed, its provisions would 
     put us on the road to re-creating conditions that the FCIC 
     concluded led to the 2008 crisis. While the bill purports to 
     be the ``Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer 
     Protection Act'', only the ``regulatory relief'' portion of 
     its title bears any relationship to reality. Like the 
     ``Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000'', which 
     ensured that over-the-counter derivatives would remain hidden 
     in a dark market, or the House ``Financial CHOICE Act'', 
     which would eviscerate the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, S. 
     2155's benign name deliberately obscures its detrimental 
     effects.
       Below are just some of my specific concerns with the 
     legislation.
       First, the bill's provisions to lift the asset threshold 
     for enhanced prudential standards and supervision from $50 
     billion to $250 billion would substantially reduce oversight 
     over 25 of the nation's 38 largest banks, including 
     institutions of over $100 billion in assets that were deemed 
     ``Too Big To Fail'' in

[[Page S1655]]

     2009. A number of financial institutions with less than $250 
     billion triggered the need for bailout assistance during the 
     crisis and history has shown, time and again, that the 
     failure of financial firms that are not among the largest 
     mega-banks can pose systemic threats to financial stability. 
     While the bill purports to allow the Federal Reserve to 
     ``reach back'' to institutions with more than $100 billion in 
     assets, those provisions would be legally difficult to 
     implement, given the likelihood of financial industry 
     litigation; undermine the very purpose of having enhanced 
     prudential standards in place prior to the emergence of 
     risks; and undercut the Federal Reserve's current broad 
     authority to impose such standards.
       Secondly, while existing law allows the Federal Reserve to 
     tailor financial stability rules for banks over $50 billion 
     in assets, this bill would now require the Federal Reserve to 
     do so for the banks still subject to enhanced prudential 
     standards--those with assets over $250 billion. There is 
     legitimate concern that this change, from ``may'' to 
     ``shall'', will be implemented to reduce scrutiny of the 13 
     biggest banks in our nation.
       Third, the bill will weaken stress testing of major 
     financial institutions by, among other things, reducing the 
     timeframe for testing from semi-annually for the nation's 
     biggest banks to ``periodically'', which could be as 
     infrequently as once every three years. What public purpose 
     could possibly be served by diminishing the understanding by 
     regulators of how major financial institutions would fare in 
     the event of adverse financial and economic conditions?
       Fourth, as Secretary Mnuchin himself has indicated, the 
     legislation is likely to be implemented in a manner that 
     deregulates 10 foreign megabanks--including but not limited 
     to firms such as Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank--heightening 
     the risk that those banks could infect and debilitate our 
     nation's financial system.
       Fifth, the bill would punch a new hole in leverage ratios, 
     leading to a substantial reduction in required capital at 
     certain large banks, a troubling reversal of the drive toward 
     stronger capital requirements in the wake of the crisis. The 
     need for enhanced capital at major financial institutions has 
     been one of the areas of broadest consensus emanating from 
     the 2008 meltdown. It should also be noted that this proposal 
     is wholly outside the realm of the bill's stated purpose of 
     aiding regional and community banks.
       Finally, this bill begins to chip away at the post-crisis 
     reforms made to the woeful mortgage lending standards that 
     the FCIC found to be a primary cause of the crisis. There is 
     no sound policy rationale or good public purpose served by 
     exempting most financial institutions from reporting mortgage 
     lending data which they already collect; eliminating escrow 
     requirements for subprime loans; or giving lenders a 
     liability shield for adjustable rate mortgages underwritten 
     at low teaser rates.
       Based on the above concerns, I urge the Senate to reject S. 
     2155. Thank you for your consideration.
           Sincerely,

                                               Phil Angelides,

                                Chairman, Financial Crisis Inquiry
                                           Commission (2009-2011).

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Signing Authority

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or joint resolutions on Tuesday, 
March 13, 2018.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Fix NICS Bill

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, just 2 days ago, the White House announced 
its plans to reduce gun violence in our Nation's schools. This is an 
important issue, and the White House's recommendations should be taken 
seriously. I certainly do.
  The President's blueprint attempts to address this pervasive problem 
from multiple angles during what has been a period of heightened 
tension and discord across the country. Parents and children continue 
to grapple every day with the aftermath of the shooting at Stoneman 
Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. But, of course, the problem didn't 
start with that single event and what I think can only be fairly called 
a catastrophic failure across the board, which resulted in this 
terrible tragedy.
  One important piece of the White House plan is to train school 
staffers. The President strongly supports a bill introduced by the 
senior Senator from Utah that would authorize funding for school safety 
improvements. You wouldn't think that would be controversial. Those 
school safety improvements include training efforts, school threat 
assessment, and crisis intervention teams. This bill is called the STOP 
School Violence Act. We ought to pass it, and we ought to pass it 
today.
  As Senator Hatch said last week, there has been little disagreement 
but a lot of discussion and debate and not much legislative progress. 
He said: ``To break the impasse, we must unite on the issues where we 
agree.''
  I couldn't agree with Senator Hatch more. We must unite on the issues 
where we can agree. One of those issues relates to a bill that I have 
introduced with the junior Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy, to 
improve background checks on gun purchases.
  NICS is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. As of 
earlier today, the bill called Fix NICS now has 69 cosponsors. That is 
nine votes more than we need in order to pass legislation, so clearly 
we could and should get it done.
  The numbers speak for themselves: 32 Republicans and 36 Democrats 
want to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check 
System. Why? Because we want to save lives.
  There have been some who have come to the floor and have said in 
public comments: Well, we want to do more.
  Well, God bless you. I hope that we will have other ideas presented 
that could do even more, but we know this has the political support and 
the critical mass we need to get this done in the Senate and to get it 
done now.
  The reason this particular legislation is supported by so many 
Senators is, essentially, that it enforces current law. In other words, 
current law states that a felon--a person convicted of a felony in any 
court in the Nation--cannot buy or possess a firearm. It also says that 
a person who has committed and been convicted of an act of domestic 
violence cannot purchase or possess a firearm. If you entered the 
country illegally, you cannot possess or purchase a firearm, and so on 
and so forth. There are also provisions that if you have been 
adjudicated as a person with mental illness, you cannot legally 
purchase or possess a firearm. The problem is that many States and the 
Federal Government have done a very poor job of uploading the 
appropriate information into the FBI's National Instant Criminal 
Background Check System, so there are gaps in the system.
  The most notable one recently occurred in Sutherland Springs, TX, 
outside of San Antonio, where 26 people were killed and 20 more were 
injured by a gunman who purchased the guns illegally. He lied on his 
background check and, sadly, the Federal Government had failed to 
discharge its duty to upload the appropriate information, which would 
have revealed that at the point of sale. I am convinced that those 26 
people who are dead would be alive today and the 20 more who were 
wounded would not have been shot if an appropriate background check 
system had been in place. We have reached critical mass, and I believe 
we are at a tipping point.
  I believe the public is demanding that we do something. That is what 
we usually hear when these mass shootings occur. People say: Well, do 
something.
  My question is, OK, what is it that you want us to do?
  This is something concrete and specific. It enjoys broad political 
support and will save lives, so I believe it is worth doing, and it is 
worth doing today, if possible.


                               Tax Reform

  Mr. President, the other topic I want to address is the legislation 
that was signed into law in December called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 
That is the formal name of the comprehensive overhaul of our Nation's 
Tax Code. The tax change we made was a change in the law that doubled 
the standard deduction, meaning that for the first $24,000 a married 
couple earns, they will pay zero income tax. It doubled the child tax 
credit. It lowered tax rates across the board, and for the first time 
in a long time, it made the United States more competitive when it 
comes to attracting investment and businesses around the globe.
  (Mr. CRUZ assumed the Chair.)
  We know that our Tax Code had been a self-inflicted wound. With the 
highest tax rate in the world, businesses were moving offshore to lower 
tax jurisdictions--such as Ireland, for example--in order to avoid the 
highest taxes here in

[[Page S1656]]

the United States. We changed that by lowering the business tax rate to 
attract people to bring that money back to the United States rather 
than leaving it overseas.
  Today, I want to briefly mention one of several portions of the law 
that is frequently overlooked. They don't steal the headlines, but they 
actually deserve more recognition.
  The one I am thinking of is the one sponsored by the junior Senator 
from South Carolina, Mr. Scott, called the Investing in Opportunity 
Act. Importantly, this measure helps incentivize long-term private 
investment in communities that need it most. That is why it is called 
the Investing in Opportunity Act. It provides a new way for investors 
across the Nation to pool their resources through newly created 
opportunity funds established specifically for making investment in 
economically distressed communities, so designated by State Governors.
  As any businessperson will tell you, private capital formation is a 
necessary ingredient for planting the seeds of job creation and 
opportunity. Our economically distressed communities need this sort of 
investment, and this provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes that 
possible and more likely.
  That is just one of the provisions we need to keep reminding folks 
back home about because they get so much disinformation, and, of 
course, there is so much information coming at us that it easily gets 
lost in the day-to-day shuffle. These are important provisions, and I 
think they bear some emphasis.
  The Presiding Officer and I have the great privilege of representing 
28 million Texans. He and I hear from them from time to time on the 
legislation we pass. On the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, I heard from Pam 
from Amarillo, TX. She prefers that her last name not be mentioned, and 
I will certainly respect that. She thought she had made a mistake when 
she was figuring out her payroll at her company at the end of February. 
Because the pay increases to employees were just that big, she thought 
she had made a mistake. She said the differences in withholding were 
``significant'' and a real ``boost in salary.''
  Similarly, we heard from Glenda from Midland, TX, who wrote to me 
recently. Glenda has been retired since 2013, which, she reminded me, 
means that she is living on a fixed income with no possibility of pay 
increases or year-end bonuses. That doesn't mean she is not grateful 
for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. She said that the reduction in her 
income taxes feels like a raise, even though she is retired and living 
on a fixed income.
  She took the critics to task for calling her additional income 
crumbs. She said that maybe to them it is crumbs, but ``every single 
dollar makes a difference'' to her. She called the effects of the Tax 
Cuts and Jobs Act an ``absolute blessing.''
  I want to express my gratitude to Glenda and Pam for sharing their 
stories because I think it is really important to make sure that the 
facts get out.
  According to what the Bureau of Labor Statistics said last week, 
Midland--where Glenda lives--had the largest employment increase in the 
country over the last year. This past January in Midland, the increase 
was 10.4 percent. In Texas, they also had the lowest unemployment rate 
of 2.4 percent, a significant decrease from 4 percent at the same time 
last year.
  Of course, as the Presiding Officer and I know, Midland is the 
epicenter of energy production, and they are basically trying to get as 
many people as are willing to work on the jobs that produce energy to 
fuel our economy. Glenda is actually a part of a larger story that 
involves not only the place she calls home but also the entire country.
  After years of economic stagnation, Americans are finally getting 
some good economic news. In February, the U.S. economy added 313,000 
jobs--313,000 jobs. That is about one-third of a million. The 
unemployment rate is at a 17-year low, and it would have been even 
lower but for the fact that the number of people actually in the 
workforce increased by 806,000 in February alone. Let me say that 
again. The reason the unemployment rate actually didn't dip 
statistically lower from 4.1 percent is that 800,000-plus Americans 
reentered the workforce. To me, that is a remarkable statistic and a 
reason for hope that our economy will continue to grow and people will 
continue to find work, provide for their families, and pursue their 
dreams.
  Since January of last year, our economy has added nearly 3 million 
jobs. Consumer confidence is at the highest level since 2000. The good 
news is that it is happening not because the Federal Government is 
spending the money but because the people who are actually earning it 
are getting the money and spending it as they see fit.
  Glenda and Pam are just two of the examples I have mentioned, but 
they are proof that spirits are high, people are hopeful, and the 
economy is gaining force.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________