[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 14, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1696-S1729]
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 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 legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The Democratic leader is recognized.


                              Gun Violence

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, at this moment all across the country, 
students are walking out of school for 17 minutes in memory of the 17 
Americans who died at Stoneman Douglas High School 1 month ago today.
  Here on the floor of the Senate, I join with those students in 
remembering the fallen students and teachers of Stoneman Douglas. I 
join with them in remembering the beautiful children who died at an 
elementary school in Newtown. I join with them in remembering a long 
line of American children who perished in the slow-moving tidal wave of 
gun violence that is consuming our country--all the unopened presents 
and uncelebrated birthdays, all the empty chairs at dinner tables, 
graduations, and holidays. These kids had their whole lives ahead of 
them.
  This has gone on for too long. When a disease plagues our people, we 
seek a cure. When we see drug addiction stealing the lives of our 
youth, we get together here in Congress and try to do something about 
it. Why is it that when it comes to gun violence--which is responsible 
for just as many, if not more, deaths--we throw up our hands and 
pretend there is no solution?
  We know there are commonsense things we could do. Close the dangerous 
loopholes in the background check system; ensure that anyone with a 
criminal history or history of mental illness can't get their hands on 
a gun; and, yes, we should debate the assault weapons ban because 
weapons of war have no place on our streets and no place in our 
schools.
  While so many students today are mourning their friends and 
classmates, we in Congress are in a unique position. We alone have the 
ability to change our laws to make America safer and, God willing, 
prevent another one of these massacres--these horrible, horrible 
massacres.
  What will we do with that awesome responsibility? I was here on the 
floor of the Senate when this body failed to advance any legislation in 
the wake of Sandy Hook. The shame we all felt, and America felt, as 
this body was unable to act because a powerful special interest seems 
to have its grip on too many of our colleagues. Well, let this time be 
different. Let this time be different.
  In a moment, I will read the names of 17 Americans--14 children--who 
were killed in the horrific attack at Stoneman Douglas High School. I 
am joined by a good number of my colleagues who wish to read the names 
of children and other victims who died at the hands of gun violence in 
their States. May their memories--may their memories--inspire us to 
act.
  Alyssa Alhadeff, Martin Duque Anguiano, Scott Beigel, Nicholas 
Dworet, Aaron Feis, Jaime Guttenberg, Christopher Hixon, Luke Hoyer, 
Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow 
Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup, Peter Wang.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I join with my colleagues today to give 
the country a sense of the scope of this epidemic. We have tried every 
means to move our colleagues to action, but in remembering the names of 
people who have been lost, it is a reminder that there is a human face 
behind every single one of these numbers, and behind that victim there 
is a trail of trauma--family members, friends, classmates--that is 
difficult to unwind.

[[Page S1697]]

  On December 14, 2012, armed with a tactical semiautomatic weapon with 
clips of 30 bullets, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School 
in Newtown, CT, and killed 20 children, 6 adults, and himself.
  Among them were Rachel D'Avino, 29, a teacher's aide; Dawn 
Hochsprung, 47, the principal; Anne Marie Murphy, 52, a teacher's aide; 
Lauren Rousseau, 30 years old, a teacher; Mary Sherlach, 56 years old, 
a school psychologist; Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher.
  The students were Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old; Daniel Barden, 7 
years old; Olivia Engel, 6 years old; Josephine Gay, 7 years old, Dylan 
Hockley, 6 years old; Madeleine Hsu, 6 years old; Catherine Hubbard, 6 
years old; Chase Kowalski, 7 years old; Jesse Lewis, 6 years old; Ana 
Marquez-Greene, 6 years old; James Mattioli, 6 years old; Grace 
McDonnell, 7 years old; Emilie Parker, 6 years old; Jack Pinto, 6 years 
old; Noah Pozner, 6 years old; Caroline Previdi, 6 years old; Jessica 
Rekos, 6 years old; Avielle Richman, 6 years old; Benjamin Wheeler, 6 
years old; Allison Wyatt, 6 years old.
  I have a 6-year-old, and yesterday he and 24 of his classmates were 
locked in a tiny bathroom for several minutes for an active shooter 
drill. When he came home last night, he said: Daddy, I didn't like it.
  Since Sandy Hook in Connecticut, there have been hundreds more: Lisa 
Infante, 52, of Shelton; Antoine Heath, 29, of New Haven; Jonathan 
Aranda, 19, of New Haven; Miguel Arguelles, 22, of Bridgeport; Cameron 
Chapman, 25, of Waterbury; Sherrie Blount, 31, of Danbury; Ebony Swaby, 
22, of Waterbury; Daniel Joseph Caron, Sr., 63, of Bristol; Michael 
Watkins, 26, of Bridgeport; Keon Huff, Jr., 15, of Hartford; Joshua 
Rivera, 28, of New Haven; Deon Rodney, 31, of Bridgeport; Khali Davis, 
22, of Bridgeport; Norris Jackson, 36, of Bridgeport; Eduardo Anes, 37, 
of Hartford; Alfanso Anderson, 49, of Bridgeport; Guy Moore, 26, of 
Waterbury.
  That is just the tip of the iceberg as to what has happened since 
Sandy Hook, just in my State of Connecticut--representing only 1 
percent of the population.
  A 6-year-old shouldn't be locked into a bathroom, smushed together 
with 24 of his classmates, preparing for the day when a shooter 
potentially walks into his public elementary school. We have a duty to 
act.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Mr. President, along with my colleagues today, I 
rise to address what has unfortunately become the norm for our kids in 
schools and across the country.
  On October 1 in Las Vegas, we saw the worst mass shooting in the 
history of this country--innocent concertgoers attending an 
entertainment venue outdoors. There were 58 killed and 500 injured at 
the hands of a madman with an assault weapon.
  In the past 5 years, we have lost an average of 10 children each year 
to gun violence in Nevada alone. Today I speak in memory of the 50 
children from my home State who will never get the chance to grow up 
and graduate from high school, pursue their dream job, or even have 
children of their own.
  The names I am about to read aloud were beloved sons, daughters, 
friends, and classmates whose lives were tragically cut short in the 
last 3 years:
  Clemente, 17 years old, from Las Vegas; Jovanni, 16 years old, from 
Las Vegas; Terry, a 17-year-old from Reno; Tiris, 17 years old, lived 
in Las Vegas; Marcus, 3 weeks old, lived in Las Vegas; Anthony, 17 
years old from Laughlin; John, 11 months old, from Las Vegas; Anthony, 
16 years old, from Las Vegas; Bradley, 4 years old, lived in Las Vegas; 
a young male victim, 16 years old, from Reno; Giovanni, 14 years old, 
Las Vegas; another young victim, 16 years old, lived in Las Vegas; 
Luis, 16 years old, from Las Vegas; another young victim, 15 years old, 
from West Wendover; Sincere, 12 years old, from Las Vegas; Ethan, 17 
years old, from Las Vegas; Angelo, 15 years old, lived in Las Vegas; 
Benjamin, 17 years old, lived in Las Vegas; a young female victim, 3 
years old, from Las Vegas; another male victim, 4 years old, lived in 
Las Vegas; Jhronne, 17 years old, from Las Vegas; Joshua, 17 years old, 
from Las Vegas; Xonajuk, 14 years old, from Las Vegas; Anhurak, 9 years 
old, from Las Vegas; Dalavanh, 15 years old, from Las Vegas; Robert, 17 
years old, from Las Vegas; another young female victim, 17 years old, 
from Reno; and Fabriccio, 13 years old, from Las Vegas.
  Across the country students are saying ``Never again'' to another 
child lost to gun violence, and I ask that this Congress do the same 
thing.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today to remind all 
of us of those who have been lost due to gun violence from Washington 
State.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the names be printed in 
the Record to remind all of us that this is just a fraction of those we 
know have been lost.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Carrie Parsons, Sam Strahan, Deputy Daniel McCartney, 
     Officer Jake Gutierrez, Sergeant Mark Renninger, Officer 
     Ronald Owens, Officer Tina Griswold, Officer Greg Richards, 
     Deputy Anne Jackson, Trooper Troy Giddings, Army Sergeant 
     Timothy Hovey, Michelle Vo, Denise Burditus, Sarai Lara, 
     Shayla Martin, Chuck Eagan, Belinda Galde, Beatrice Dotson, 
     Joe Albanese, Andrew Keriakedes, Kimberly Layfield, Donald 
     Largen.
       Gloria Leonidas, Anna Bui, Jordan Ebner, Jake Long, Zoe 
     Galasso, Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, Gia Soriano, Andrew Fryberg, 
     Pam Waechter, Frank Cohens, Jr., Thomas Ianniciello, Erick 
     Valdez-Herrera, James Smith, Michael Clayton, Demonte Young, 
     Karen Perez-Placencia, Carl Phelps, Junior, Justin Love, 
     Brandon Perry, Trina Bolar, Eddie Holmes, Jenna Carlile, Ava 
     Field.
       Ashen Field, Tiana Montgomery, LeRoy Lange, Wayne Anderson, 
     Judy Anderson, Scott Anderson, Erica Anderson, Olivia 
     Anderson, Nathan Anderson, Paul Lee, Maxine Harrison, 
     Samantha Harrison, Jayme Harrison, Heather Harrison, James 
     Jr. Harrison, George Brown, Davary Hicks, Jeffrey McLaren, 
     Alex Kelley, Wesley Gennings, Tabitha Apling, Adam Gutierrez, 
     Dennis Sloboda.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in recognizing that 
we must take action to protect the safety of our communities.
  Senator Van Hollen and I are on the floor, proud of the Maryland 
students who are here today to speak in solidarity with the students 
from Parkland, FL, in recognizing and remembering the 17 victims of 
that tragic episode. We also wish to point out that so many others have 
lost their lives to gun violence.
  In the State of Maryland, we have not been spared. Just Monday night, 
10 people, including 2 teenage boys, were wounded in 5 separate 
shootings in Baltimore. They are the lucky ones who will likely survive 
their injuries.
  Two men killed in separate shootings on Monday were Montrel Rivers, 
age 20, and Ronald Preston, age 30, both from East Baltimore.
  On March 5, 23-year-old Devonte Rhodes was lost to gun violence in 
Baltimore. One day earlier, Jashawn Ivory, also of Baltimore, was the 
fatal victim of a shooting.
  In February, 28-year-old Jasmine Chandler and her pregnant friend, 
Mia Robinson, who was also 28, were shot as they sat in a parked car in 
Northwest Baltimore. Also last month, off-duty Prince George's County 
Corporal Mujahid Ramzziddin lost his life to gun violence.
  Fatal victims of gun violence in Maryland include young people like 
Tre'Quan Bullock, age 18, the first of seven students at Excel Academy 
in West Baltimore shot and killed since October 2016.
  Lavar Douglas, age 18; Bryant Beverly, age 18; James Martin, age 55; 
``Sonny'' Buchanan, age 39; Prenkumar Walekar, age 54; Sarah Ramos, age 
34; Laurie Ann Lewis-Rivera, age 25--the list goes on and on and on.
  In memory of all of those who have lost their lives to gun violence, 
it is imperative that we speak out and act.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to thank the young people 
throughout this country who have the courage to do what the U.S. 
Congress is not doing; that is, to lead us forward in a way to lower 
the slaughter we are seeing from coast to coast in terms of gun 
violence.
  The bad news is that people continue to be killed every day. The good 
news

[[Page S1698]]

is that the American people have come together around commonsense 
solutions to lower the level of gun violence we are experiencing. The 
American people know that we need to expand and improve background 
checks, that we need to do away with the gun show loophole, and that we 
need to do away with the straw man provisions. More and more Americans 
understand that we should ban the sale and distribution of military-
style weapons.
  In my small State of Vermont between 2011 and 2016, 42 people were 
killed by guns. Some of them are Lara Sobel, Julie Falzarano, Regina 
Herring, Rhonda Herring, Molly Helland, Molly McLain, Kevin DeOliveira, 
Rhonda Gray, Marcus Austin, and Obafemi Adedapo. These are just some of 
the people who lost their lives to gun violence in Vermont.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today many of us will join with 
Maryland students and other students throughout this region to demand 
that this Senate and the House of Representatives take commonsense 
action to reduce gun violence in America--gun violence that has 
resulted in massacres at concerts, slaughters in churches, and, of 
course, mass deaths at schools throughout the country, and the death 
toll we see in the streets of America every day.
  I am going to read the names of 17 Maryland young people, people 
under age 20, who have died just in the last year as a result of gun 
violence in Maryland.
  Andre Galloway, 16 years old; Lavander Edwards, 16 years old; 
Dashanae Woodson, 17; Shaquan Trusty, 16; Thomas Johnson, 16; Anthony 
Cheeks, 17; Tyrese Davis, 15; Jeffrey Quick, 15; Xavier Cole Young, 14; 
Kymici Brown, 17; Larry Aaron, 19; Terry Joseph Bosley, 17; Iyanni 
Nachae Watkins, 13; Shadi Adi Najjar, 17; Artem Ziberov, 18; Dustin 
Khoury, 17; and Laila Goodwin, 4 years old. That is not the entire list 
of people under age 20 who were shot and killed in Maryland. In the 
State of Maryland, in 2017, 481 souls were lost to homicide, and in 
2016, 436 Marylanders were lost to homicide, in all cases by gun 
violence.
  The time to act has long passed, but for goodness' sake, let's join 
with the students and Americans crying out throughout this country to 
say enough is enough and enact commonsense gun safety legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, these are the names of 17 children who 
were killed with guns in my State. I will read their first names only 
because it makes us remember they could be anyone's children.
  Lisa Marie, age 15; William Robert, age 15; Anthony, age 16; Jacob 
Alexander, age 14; Joseph Anthony, age 17; Terrell, age 3; Joshua 
Albert, age 15; Alisha, age 17; Jesse, age 18; Cedric, age 18; Darion 
Joseph, age 15; Justin Daniel, age 17; Jennifer Ellen, age 17; David 
Andre, age 17; Tabitha Lee, age 16; Terrence, age 16; Anthony Michael, 
age 3.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, Congress does not have the courage to act 
on gun violence, but young people across this country are showing the 
way. They are speaking up, and they are demanding action. I honor them, 
and I commit to fight alongside them.
  I am going to read the names of some of those lost from 
Massachusetts. They didn't get a chance to join this fight before they 
died from gun violence, so I take this opportunity to join them to the 
young people who are fighting today for sensible gun reforms.
  Gerrod Brown, 16 years old; Anthony Scaccia, 6 years old; Angel 
Suazo, 16 years old; Alejandro Lorente, 11 years old; Tenzin Kunkhyen, 
16 years old; Janmarcos Pena, 9 years old; Chantal Matiyosus, 16 years 
old; Latoya Graham, 15 years old; Brian Crowell, 12 years old; Ross 
Mathieu, 12 years old; Liquarry Jefferson, 8 years old.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, today is a momentous one in the 
Capitol because the students of America are giving us a real life 
lesson in the American Constitution. Their energy and passion are a 
civics lesson for America. What a proud and wonderful moment today is 
for our democracy. It is sad--indeed, tragic--that this lesson must 
concern gun violence that has taken such a devastating toll, most 
recently in Parkland, FL, but literally that toll is true of America 
every day. We can never become numb to the catastrophic costs of gun 
violence in America today.
  I have the honor to read the names of some of those victims of gun 
violence; indeed, the Sandy Hook victims. Their deaths are still in our 
hearts. Their lives are still with us. Their memories are alive today. 
My friendships with their loved ones, particularly their parents, 
inspire me to continue this fight against gun violence in America. 
Their courage and strength have inspired so many of us in this country, 
and their names deserve to be remembered and read again in this 
Chamber.
  Noah Pozner, age 6; Charlotte Bacon, age 6; Jack Pinto, age 6; Olivia 
Engel, age 6; Dylan Hockley, age 6; Catherine Hubbard, age 6; Avielle 
Richman, age 6; Jessica Rekos, age 6; James Mattioli, age 6; Josephine 
Gay, age 7; Caroline Previdi, age 6; Benjamin Wheeler, age 6; Chase 
Kowalski, age 6; Ana Marquez-Greene, age 6; Grace McDonnell, age 7; 
Emilie Parker, age 6; Madeleine Hsu, age 6; Allison Wyatt, age 6; 
Daniel Barden, age 7; Jesse Lewis, age 6. And their teachers: Victoria 
Soto, age 27; Lauren Rousseau, age 30; Anne Marie Murphy, age 52; 
Rachel D'Avino, age 29; Mary Sherlach, their psychologist, age 56; Dawn 
Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal of the school, age 47.
  All of them died in December of 2012. All of them will be remembered 
not only on this day but forever, not only in Connecticut but around 
the world. We must always keep them in our hearts as a reason to keep 
this fight against gun violence going.
  In the hearing presently underway in the Judiciary Committee, as I 
speak, there is testimony from members of the government investigative 
agencies which have responsibility for stopping gun violence. My fear 
is, this hearing will be an excuse for inaction and continued 
complicity by Congress in the failure to act. The complicity in those 
deaths is on our hands in this body by failing to take action.
  There are actions we can take that will help to save lives--
commonsense, sensible action--that Congress has failed to take: 
universal background checks, ban on assault weapons and high-capacity 
magazines, a red flag statute that will prevent people who are 
dangerous to themselves or others from having or buying guns. Many of 
these measures are bipartisan, and we can come together with the lesson 
from the students and young people who are in the streets coming to the 
Capitol today. That lesson should be a reminder that the right side of 
history is in favor of preventing gun violence.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, today is 1 month to the day from a tragic 
shooting in Parkland, FL, where 17 high-school-aged students lost their 
lives. As so many of my colleagues have done, I come to the floor to 
remember them, to honor their loss, to speak to their classmates, 
colleagues, and families, and to share from the experience of my own 
home State of Delaware.
  This morning, today, there are high school students across our 
country and across my home State of Delaware who are walking out of 
class to try and draw the attention of those of us in Washington to the 
urgent need that we work across the aisle to tackle the plague of gun 
violence that affects communities all over this country. That is why we 
see young people not just across the country but including in my home 
State of Delaware demanding that we take action. We need to answer 
their call.
  Let me speak to my hometown of Wilmington, DE. Just last month, 5 
people--5 people, last month--under the age of 21 were shot in 
Wilmington,

[[Page S1699]]

and 2017 ended as one of the worst years ever for gun violence and 
homicides--197 individuals shot, 32 wounded fatally.
  If I could, I wish to read the names of 31 individuals who were 
victims of gun violence in the city of Wilmington in 2017. We are 
working--Federal, State, and local officials; police departments and 
community and civic leaders--to try to tackle these challenges, but 
some of the core causes can only be addressed here. We need to find a 
way to work together, to respect each other, to compromise, and to 
tackle the very real epidemic of gun violence in our country.
  These 31 Delawareans lost their lives in the city of Wilmington to 
gun violence in the year 2017: Dariberto Velazquez Mendez, age 32; 
Santanu Muhuri, age 64; Jermaine Francois, age 34; Charles Mays, age 
66; Jamiere Harris, age 21; Kayden Young, age 21; Ainsley Cumberbatch, 
age 23; Jamiel Congo, age 23; Keevan Hale, age 38; Tajuane Helton, age 
41; Richard Crosby, age 30; Yaseem Powell, age 18; Tyree Robinson, age 
23; Bryan Brooks, age 29; Tynesia Cephas, age 16; Joquon Coverdale, age 
22; Derrius Jackson-Paul, age 23; Sherman Pride, age 22; Shamar 
Lindsay, age 25; Cyree Watson, age 22; David Bailey, age 23; Nycire 
Mills, age 23; Kai'Mel Ennals, age 20; Barry White, age 19; Allen 
Melton, age 28; Albert Hazzard, age 33; Dwayne Grimes, age 19; Justin 
McDermott, age 18; Andrew Pennewell, age 25; Shawn Lockhart, age 29; 
and Keanan Samuels, age 20.
  The facts of all of these different episodes of violence and loss 
vary widely, but the conclusion must be the same: We have to find ways 
to listen to each other, to work across the aisle, and to stop deadly 
shootings in our country.
  I am encouraged that many of my colleagues today have introduced 
legislation that would take meaningful steps to tackle gun violence and 
make all of us safer. We must act. We must listen to the voices of 
young Americans demanding that we do our job and make our country 
safer.
  I yield floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, in every corner of our country today and 
across my State in Washington, countless students are taking part in a 
walkout in support of reforms to combat gun violence. I stand in 
solidarity with these students who are trying to provide an example of 
why we must make progress on this issue. No student should fear for 
their life while attending school, and I will continue to work on 
solutions here to curb gun violence.
  We in Washington State have been able to make progress by passing 
initiatives to close gun show loopholes and to move forward on extreme 
person legislation. I should say that that was passed by the citizens 
of our State. We should look at the example of Washington's initiatives 
and the success we have had in our State in curbing gun violence as 
commonsense solutions that should be considered here in Washington, DC.
  When we look at these issues, I am reminded of the tragic shootings 
in our State--of Sam Strahan, from Spokane, who was killed, and 
individuals who were killed in Washington in a Marysville-Tulalip 
shooting when Jaylen Fryberg, at just 15 years old, opened fire on 
students and killed Gia Soriano, Andrew Fryberg, Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 
and Zoe Galasso and wounded Nathan Hatch.
  These tragedies are more than we can take at our schools. These 
tragedies are something that we need to address here in Washington. So 
I stand in solidarity with our students who are trying to address these 
issues and address our Nation's need to come together and provide 
better solutions to protect our students.
  We are still heartbroken about this shooting in the sense of it being 
an example of the challenges we face--a young man who took his father's 
gun. He was a father who never should have had the gun to begin with 
because he was on a domestic violence restraining order. Yet he was 
still able to go to a store, get the gun, and keep the gun in the home. 
Then the young student was able to take that to school.
  I want all of these families to know that we still think of them, 
that we are still mourning the loss of these individuals, and that we 
are working very hard with our colleagues to come to some resolution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about the 
legislation before us, which is the banking legislation that has been 
reported out of the Banking Committee on a bipartisan vote and awaits 
our attention here today.
  Mr. President, like my colleague from Washington State, I will also 
speak briefly to the issue that is being raised in States across 
America and in schools across America, where students are demonstrating 
their support and their solidarity with the folks in Parkland, FL, 
where 17 kids were lost earlier this year.
  My dad was a hunter, grew up in West Virginia. I was born in West 
Virginia and grew up in Virginia. I bought my first BB gun when I was 
10 years old, and I still have the shotgun that my grandfather gave me 
just before he died, when I was just a pup of a teenager. In my family, 
we are big believers in Second Amendment rights--to own and bear arms. 
We are also big advocates of using common sense with respect to 
weapons.
  My dad was not only a hunter, he was also a gun collector. He would 
buy and sell guns to other people whom he knew. From the time my sister 
and I were little kids, my dad would always say to us, ``Just use some 
common sense.'' He said it a lot to us when we were growing up. We must 
not have had much of it because he said it very often. My dad said that 
it didn't make common sense for somebody who had serious mental health 
problems or a felony record to be able to go to a gun show and buy a 
weapon. It also doesn't make a lot of sense for people who can't fly on 
airplanes because they are on a terrorist watch list to be able to buy 
guns. My dad would have said that didn't make a lot of sense.
  What is happening across the country is that the kids are leading us. 
In a verse in the Bible, it reads that the ``child shall lead them.'' I 
think that is really what is going on here, and I think States are 
already starting to address this issue in a more constructive way than 
we have done thus far.
  My hope is that the children will lead us and that the States will 
lead us as well. Maybe we will be able to come to agreement on some of 
these issues that are respectful of our Second Amendment rights in the 
Constitution but that are also consistent with the kind of common sense 
that my dad always talked about with respect to everything, including 
the buying and selling of weapons.
  Mr. President, I remember standing on this floor--I think it was 
about 8 years ago--when we debated the Affordable Care Act. That was at 
a time when we were spending about 18 percent of the GDP for healthcare 
in this country--18 percent. The Japanese were spending 8 percent. They 
had better results in Japan for their healthcare than we had, and they 
covered everybody. Think about that. We had been spending 18 percent, 
and they had been spending 8 percent. They had gotten better results in 
healthcare--in life longevity for adults and in lower rates of infant 
mortality. They covered everybody. When people went to bed in this 
country at that time, 40 million people went to bed without having any 
healthcare coverage. I think most of us realized at the time that that 
was not a good thing. I used to say that the Japanese can't be that 
smart and we can't be that dumb.

  We passed the Affordable Care Act. There was a lot of debate and a 
lot of amendments offered in committees, including in the Finance 
Committee on which I served, Republican amendments and Democratic 
amendments. As we know, the final vote here on the floor was not a 
bipartisan vote. It was a huge issue that we were trying to address--
delivering healthcare to 300 million Americans.
  For those who supported the legislation, even they realized that it 
was not perfect and that we were going to have

[[Page S1700]]

to come back at some point in time and make changes to it. The 
Democrats felt that way. The Republicans and Independents felt that way 
as well. We ended up not coming back and offering modest amendments or 
making tweaks to the legislation. At the end of the day, we ended up 
with a battle here, initially over the repeal of the ACA and later over 
repealing and replacing it.
  I felt proud of the work we had done on the ACA. In my knowing it was 
not perfect, I always looked forward to coming back shortly after we 
had adopted it, actually, and making some tweaks. I felt the same way 
about Dodd-Frank, the banking legislation that we passed after the 
great recession about 7 or 8 years ago.
  I will just remind everybody, especially our young pages here today, 
who were probably about 7 or 8 years old at the time, that we didn't 
fall into a burning ring of fire--we fell off a cliff. The unemployment 
rate shot up to 10 percent, and banks stopped lending money to send 
kids to school or to allow people to buy a car or a house. Credit was 
shut off for businesses as well. The unemployment rate skyrocketed. Our 
economy was locked up, and we felt that we had to do something.
  What we tried to do was to figure out how we ended up in that mess in 
the first place. What had gone on is that the people who wanted to buy 
houses, who were not creditworthy, ended up being loaned money by banks 
across the country to buy houses. In many cases, the appraisals for the 
houses were not worth the paper they were written on. The 
creditworthiness of the buyers was not worth the paper it was written 
on as well. We had unqualified people who were trying to buy property. 
They were unable, realistically, to repay their loans. It all worked 
just fine until we went into a slump. As the unemployment rate started 
to go up, people found it more and more difficult to make their 
payments.
  In the olden days, I remember the first house I lived in when I was a 
kid. My parents borrowed money from a bank for a mortgage, and then 
they paid it off to that bank. I remember, when they paid off the 
mortgage to the house they owned in Danville, VA, it was a big deal. My 
dad actually took the mortgage and burned it up outside, not inside our 
house.
  Yet, 7 or 8 years ago, for a lot of people, after they borrowed money 
from banks, the banks sold those mortgages to somebody else, oftentimes 
to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would package 
those mortgages into mortgage-backed securities--into a security that 
could be sold to investors in this country and to investors around the 
world. As long as housing prices continued to rise, everything worked 
fine. When they stopped rising and started falling, a number of those 
mortgage-backed securities were riddled--almost like Swiss cheese--with 
bad mortgages. As more and more people failed to be able to pay their 
mortgages, the mortgage-backed securities lost their value. Those 
investors around the world who had invested seriously in mortgage-
backed securities got scared, and it started to spiral down from there.
  That was not really the only reason we got into a burning ring of 
fire all those years ago, but it was a big reason. Part of what we 
decided to do with Dodd-Frank was to make sure that didn't happen 
again. We would make other mistakes, but we were not going to make that 
mistake again.
  The legislation was passed. Again, not everybody was for it. I voted 
for it and helped to write some of the provisions in the bill. I knew 
at the time, as I think we all did, that anything that big--a massive 
change in our banking regulatory approach in this country--was going to 
have to be tweaked and revisited just like the Affordable Care Act. It 
has taken a while.
  For the most part, our Republican friends--not all and probably not 
including the Presiding Officer--were interested in repealing Dodd-
Frank. I and, I think, the majority of folks on our side were 
interested in fixing the provisions that needed to be fixed but not in 
throwing the baby out with the bath water.
  The legislation before us today was reported out of the Banking 
Committee but not unanimously. It was reported out, I think, last fall, 
by the chairman of the committee, Mike Crapo from Idaho, whose name is 
on the bill. I am going to spend some time here today talking about 
what it does and what it doesn't do.
  If the bipartisan bill before us becomes law, 90 percent of Dodd-
Frank will remain unchanged. Let me say that again. If the banking bill 
before us today becomes law, 90 percent of Dodd-Frank will remain 
unchanged.
  The legislation that has been authored by Senator Crapo and others 
does not touch some of Dodd-Frank's most important reforms. Some of 
those most important reforms include the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau. It remains. The Financial Stability Oversight Council remains. 
It is affectionately known as FSOC, and it works to identify and to 
address overarching threats to the financial system. The regulations 
that crack down on risky derivative trading remain, and the ability of 
the FDIC to wind down failing complex institutions through an orderly 
liquidation authority remains.
  Under this legislation, the Federal Reserve would retain the 
authority to apply enhanced standards to any bank with over $100 
billion in assets. In addition, banks with over $100 billion would 
still be subject to numerous regulatory requirements. Those 
requirements include, one, meaningful stress tests; two, increased 
capital requirements to provide a cushion in tough times and bad times; 
and, third, vital international reforms to leverage in liquidity 
standards.
  I have a number of charts. I have more charts today than I think I 
have ever brought to the Senate floor. I promise we will be done by 
sundown. It will seem that long, but in reality it will not be.
  Let me start off, if I could, with a couple of claims made about the 
bill and, then, talk about the reality.
  One of the claims is that this bill would gut Wall Street reform that 
was passed after the financial crisis to prevent another global 
meltdown.
  That is the claim. Here is the reality. This bipartisan bill makes 
targeted, commonsense fixes that will provide tangible relief to 
community banks and credit unions, while leaving in place the rules and 
regulations that will keep Wall Street accountable.
  Before we look at the next claim, like the Presiding Officer, I do 
customer calls all over my State. The Presiding Officer has a big 
State, and I have a little State. I visit businesses, schools, 
hospitals--you name it. I do customer calls literally every week, 
including the credit unions and small community banks. Sometimes they 
come to see me, and oftentimes I go to see them. For years, during 
those customer calls, visiting credit unions and community banks, 
especially in the central and southern part of our State, they would 
say to us: We didn't create the financial meltdown that led us to the 
great recession. Yet we bear the burden of the regulatory reform for 
that meltdown.
  It wasn't their fault. We need a lot of the regulation that is 
adopted in Dodd-Frank, but keep in mind that credit unions and 
community banks didn't cause the problem but yet they bear a big part 
of the burden of fixing it.
  Another claim is that this bill rolls back stress test requirements 
for all big banks. I will say it again. This bill rolls back stress 
test requirements for all big banks. That is the claim.
  Here is the reality. This bill continues to require stress tests for 
all banks over $100 billion in assets. That would be the largest 
financial institutions. That is the reality.
  The claim is that this bill does nothing to protect consumers. That 
is the claim--that the bill does nothing to protect consumers.
  Here is the reality. This bill actually creates new protections. It 
provides free credit freezes and allows year-long fraud reports. It 
allows parents to turn credit reporting on and off for minors. It 
provides free credit monitoring for all Active-Duty servicemembers.
  I am a retired Navy captain. Our Presiding Officer is a colonel--Navy 
salute.
  It was one of the things that Senator Coons and I insisted on in 
order to support this legislation, and that was to provide free credit 
monitoring for all Active-Duty servicemembers as part of the bill.
  Another reality in terms of new protections is that it encourages 
banks to report suspicious behavior they become aware of.

[[Page S1701]]

  That is a little bit of the claims and the reality. I can go on with 
that, but I will not. I will actually turn to the words of other 
people, starting off with questions from Senator Jon Tester of Montana, 
a senior member of the Banking Committee. The first question he asked 
last November was to a fellow who had been nominated to be Chairman of 
the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, who was confirmed on this floor with 
80 or 90 votes--a big bipartisan vote.
  Senator Tester asked Mr. Powell, who was a Governor, if I am not 
mistaken, at the time within the Federal Reserve System. He asked:

       Part of that bill--

  The bill before us today--

     is eliminating the Volcker Rule compliance for community 
     banks that have less than $10 billion, as long as they have 
     less than 5 percent, trading assets and liabilities. Any 
     concerns there?

  The witness, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell, said: ``None.''
  Senator Tester went on to ask the Federal Reserve Chairman--I think 
this was in February of last year. Senator Tester, my colleague, is a 
farmer out in Montana. He asked Jay Powell, who was not yet the 
Chairman of the Federal Reserve:

       But I'm a dirt farmer, OK? I just, kind of, read things as 
     they are and don't read a lot of extra stuff into it. You're 
     the--you're the man on the Fed and so I need to know your 
     opinion. Does 2155 require the Federal Reserve to weaken any 
     of the Dodd-Frank enhanced prudential standards for . . . 
     [foreign banks] such as Deutsche Bank, UBS or Barclays?

  This was the response of Chairman Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve:

       It does not, according to my reading of the text.

  I will just add that this is the text of the bill.
  Senator Crapo, the chairman of the Banking Committee, has put 
together this bipartisan legislation, with a lot of help from Jon 
Tester and others. In a hearing last July, he questioned the woman who 
was then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen. I think she did 
a very good job. She stepped down, and I thank her for her service and 
leadership.
  Senator Crapo said:

       There appears to be growing consensus that Congress should 
     consider changing the $50 billion SIFI threshold [for big 
     banks]; also, changing the Volcker rule, exempting certain 
     institutions from company-run stress testing requirements and 
     reducing the burdens on community banks and credit unions.

  He went on to ask:

       Do you agree that it would be appropriate for Congress to 
     act in each of those areas?

  He asked: Do you believe it would be appropriate for Congress to act 
in each of those areas--changing the SIFI threshold, changing the 
Volcker rule, exempting certain institutions from stress test 
requirements, reducing the burdens on community banks and credit 
unions.

       Do you agree that it would be appropriate for Congress to 
     act in each of those areas?

  She said four words: ``I do--I do.''
  Again, in February of last year, Federal Reserve Chairman Janet 
Yellen, on the Volcker rule, said:

       So, yes, let me reiterate what I said there. It's important 
     to look for every way we can to mitigate the regulatory 
     burden. What we've suggested previously and I would reiterate 
     with respect to Dodd-Frank is that Congress might want to 
     consider exempting community banks from the Volcker rule. . . 
     .

  That is what she said last February, a year ago.
  Then, former Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo spoke. I think 
his position is held now by Andy Cohen. Last year, Daniel Tarullo said:

       We have found that the $50 billion in assets threshold 
     established in the Dodd-Frank Act for banks to be 
     ``systemically important,'' and thus subject to a range of 
     stricter regulations, was set too low. . . .

  He went on to say:

       The fact that community banks are subject at all to some of 
     the Dodd-Frank Act rules seems unnecessary. . . .

  I will say it again.

       The fact that community banks are subject at all to some of 
     the Dodd-Frank Act rules seems unnecessary to protect safety 
     and soundness, and quite burdensome on the very limited 
     compliance capabilities of small banks.

  Dan Tarullo said that last April.
  Here are the words of former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, 
whom I got to know and work with when I was in the House of 
Representatives. He was Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and I was on 
the Banking Committee. He was a giant then and still is--literally and 
figuratively.
  Here are his words in February of this year. He said:

       I am pleased that the Senate Banking Committee has forged 
     ahead with meaningful bipartisan financial reform to ease the 
     unnecessary regulatory strain on small banks, helping them to 
     flourish as an engine of economic prosperity. . . .

  He goes on to say that he doesn't agree with every single word of the 
legislation before us today, but he concluded by saying:

       I thank you for the opportunity to comment on this 
     important piece of legislation and look forward to its swift 
     passage.

  This is in a letter to Senator Brown, I believe. It doesn't mean he 
agrees with every single sentence and paragraph, but he looks forward 
to it.
  Former Congressman and former Banking Committee chairman and my 
colleague Barney Frank, spoke on whether Dodd-Frank needs reforms in a 
CNBC interview last February. He was asked if Dodd-Frank needed 
reforms, and he said: ``Of course.''
  On the $50 billion SIFI threshold, he said: ``I think it should be 
changed,'' and he went on to say: ``It's too low, I believe it is.''
  Again, former Congressman Barney Frank on November 27 of last year 
said:

       If this bill became law tomorrow, well over 90 percent of 
     the Wall Street reform bill would be unchanged. . . . The 
     Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; the strict regulation 
     of derivative trading; the orderly liquidation authority; the 
     risk retention requirements on securitizations and most other 
     provisions would remain in full force. . . .

  In full force.
  We are almost done here. I thank my colleague from Vermont for his 
patience.
  This is former Congressman Barney Frank on relief for community 
banks. These words are from the CNBC interview last February, a year 
ago.

       With regard to banks under $10 billion, some of them are 
     spending more money than they should complying with 
     provisions that were never really intended to apply to them 
     and I understand that. The Volcker Rule which says that large 
     banks should do more lending and less derivative trading, 
     which I think is a wholly good thing, a number of small banks 
     which never did much derivative trading are overdoing the 
     effort to show [that] they aren't there. I would exempt some 
     of the banks under $10 billion from some of those rules and I 
     would agree to raise the $50 billion threshold.

  Last but not least, a couple of comments more--one from the 
Bipartisan Policy Center recently; the words of two of the folks from 
there:

       As U.S. politics descends ever further into partisanship, 
     there are still signs that old-fashioned legislating is not 
     dead. This week, the Senate Banking Committee will mark up 
     one of the first significant pieces of financial regulatory 
     legislation in years with real bipartisan support. . . .
       These are not major changes. Yet taken together, they are 
     constructive and should provide greater incentives to extend 
     credit, particularly to Main Street small businesses, without 
     undermining the progress made since the crisis in making the 
     financial system safer.

  This statement is from the president and CEO of the Independent 
Community Bankers of America:

       The markup of S. 2155 is a rare opening for real, impactful 
     relief that will strengthen economic growth, job creation, 
     and consumer protection. It is the culmination of years of 
     collaborative effort to achieve consensus among Members of 
     Congress across the spectrum and community bankers in their 
     home States and districts. Community bankers urge all members 
     of the Senate Banking Committee to vote YES on S. 2155.

  This is from the president and CEO of the Credit Union National 
Association, or CUNA:

       This bill includes credit union-specific provisions that 
     provide meaningful regulatory relief, a sign that 
     policymakers are praying close attention to the needs of 
     credit union members. We thank Senator Crapo and his 
     colleagues for working across party lines to advance 
     regulatory relief legislation that benefits community 
     financial institutions, and look forward to continuing to 
     work closely with them as the bill moves through the 
     legislative process.

  I hope we will keep these words in mind in the hours and days ahead 
as we take up this important legislation.
  I have no interest in undoing Dodd-Frank. I am a strong supporter of 
Dodd-Frank. I helped to write some of the provisions in Dodd-Frank, and 
I have no interest in pulling the plug on Dodd-Frank.

[[Page S1702]]

  Can we make some reasonable changes? Yes, we can. I felt the same way 
about the Affordable Care Act.
  With that, I yield the floor to my friend from Vermont, and I thank 
him for his patience.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.


                              Gun Violence

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I was just at a hearing in the Judiciary 
Committee, and we were talking about what continues to happen, over and 
over again in this country--mass shootings. We are an outlier in this 
country, as we have far more shooting deaths per capita than any other 
similar country in the world, and we heard some of the things that make 
it difficult to attack the problem.
  For example, Congress has passed legislation that cripples the Bureau 
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. When ATF is asked to perform a trace 
on a gun involved in criminal activity, they have to go to a warehouse 
with stacks of papers to do a physical search of records. They search 
warehouses that contain the amount of information I can store on an 
iPhone and find in a matter of seconds. This physical search is 
something Congress has required them to do.
  We heard about the fact that you can buy magazines carrying 15 or 20 
rounds, even though many states including my own State of Vermont, 
limit the number of rounds you can have in your weapon for deer season.
  We want to give the deer a chance, but we don't want to give children 
in school the same chance. This is the world upside down. We limit what 
you can buy and use to go deer hunting but not what can be sold to 
people who want to shoot children.
  Outside the Capitol right now, there are young students who have 
brought their powerful message to those of us inside the Capitol. They 
say thoughts and prayers are welcome, but what the United States needs 
right now is action.
  I said this morning at the hearing that I am tired of people saying: 
``Oh, this is not the time to talk about taking steps. This is the time 
for prayer and reflection,'' as though it is an either/or thing. It is 
getting kind of weary to hear that refrain over and over again--this is 
not the time for action. Tell that to the parents, tell that to the 
other children, tell that to their siblings when they are at the 
funeral because somebody shot them.
  Now, I am very, very proud of those students in Vermont whose voices 
are joining this nationwide chorus of student voices. We have 
Vermonters showing up, even though we have had 10 to 20 inches of snow 
in some towns in Vermont in the last day or so, and it is still snowing 
heavily there now. We know that in Washington, half an inch of snow 
would close the place down but not in my State. These Vermont students 
are not going to use a heavy snowstorm as an excuse for not showing up 
to deliver their message. We are here in comfort in a secure building. 
We ought to act in solidarity with these students and with the students 
who put shoes out here on the lawn of the Capitol--rows and rows and 
rows of shoes--symbolizing children who have died.
  Now, I remember a little over a year ago, millions of women across 
the Nation brought their energy into the halls of government. In my own 
hometown of Montpelier, VT, where I was born, our State's capitol, 
there are only 8,500 people. We had 19,000 to 20,000 show up on the 
statehouse lawn for the women's march there. Brave and strong, they 
were speaking out. My sister was one of those joining them. In fact, 
some had to park their cars on the interstate; they caused such a 
traffic jam just to be there.
  I remember the hundreds and hundreds of Vermonters who came here to 
Washington. My wife Marcelle and I hosted them before the march with 
coffee and doughnuts, and we had to keep sending out for more coffee 
and more doughnuts because of the number of people there.
  We marched with them alongside our daughter and granddaughter. We saw 
people of all races, all backgrounds, all across the economic and 
political spectrum marching for women's rights. They made a difference, 
and now our students are doing the same thing. Our students are acting 
as a catalyst to break the inertia that has prevented Congress from 
dealing with the plague of gun violence.
  When I was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we brought 
several pieces of gun legislation here, and even those that got 50-plus 
votes were blocked from going further. There was heavy pressure from 
powerful lobbyists. The lobby that wasn't heard, though, were the 
children who were facing this danger. Now they are being heard. Now 
they are being heard.
  The question is, does Congress have the courage to listen? The 
strength of our democracy is citizen engagement. At a time when it has 
never been more important to protect and engage in our democracy, I am 
deeply moved by the students who are making their voices heard today. I 
think of those students in Florida and elsewhere who faced a horrendous 
thing that most of us will never see, even if we have been in combat, 
but they had the courage to go back to school after the shooting. They 
saw this tragedy, they faced the danger, they saw their classmates and 
teachers killed, and they still had the courage to go back to school.
  Well, I would ask: does Congress have the courage to do something? 
That is the question they are asking. If we can't answer it positively, 
then we in Congress have failed these students.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. MURRAY. 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. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Women's Healthcare

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, time and again, President Trump and Vice 
President Pence have made clear they will put extreme ideology ahead of 
women's health and constitutional freedoms. We have seen it in their 
efforts to undermine women's ability to get reproductive healthcare 
from providers they trust. We have seen it in their efforts to let 
employers deny women birth control coverage based on what they believe 
and regardless of what the women who work for them believe. We have 
seen it in the administration's close coordination with a hate group on 
tailoring policies to undermine Planned Parenthood. We heard it loud 
and clear when Vice President Pence laid out his far-right vision that 
women's freedom to have safe and legal abortions could end in our time. 
We have also seen it implemented to an appalling extreme in Scott 
Lloyd's inexcusably harmful and ideologically driven actions as 
Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
  The Office of Refugee Resettlement is a little-known but very 
important office inside the Department of Health and Human Services. 
They are supposed to be helping resettle refugees who are fleeing 
violence, to resettle and integrate Iraqis and Afghans whose lives are 
actually in danger because they work for the U.S. Government. They 
provide rehabilitative, social, and legal services to survivors of 
torture, and they are charged with overseeing a network of providers 
across the United States who care for unaccompanied children who arrive 
at our Nation's borders--children and youth--seeking safety in our 
country.
  However, under Director Lloyd, it has become a testing ground for the 
radical Trump-Pence agenda to interfere with women's health choices. 
Repeatedly, under the supervision of Director Lloyd's office, when 
young women--some of whom are survivors of sexual abuse--have sought 
safe and legal abortions, his response has been to personally step in 
and put up barriers to their care. He worked to prevent young women in 
his custody from speaking with lawyers about their rights. He 
personally interfered to try to pressure women out of their decisions 
to have abortions. Director Lloyd even had his office explore the 
possibility of reversing an abortion once the medical procedure was 
underway--a practice that the American College of Obstetricians and 
Gynecologists has noted is ``unproven and unethical.''
  A deposition from ongoing litigation shows just how reckless and 
irresponsible Scott Lloyd has been. In emails,

[[Page S1703]]

he admitted he was making these decisions on an ad hoc basis. In other 
words, Director Lloyd wasn't concerned with fulfilling his duty as the 
head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. He wasn't concerned with 
the well-being of women. He wasn't concerned with their personal 
decisions or their freedoms. He was only concerned with furthering an 
extreme, ideological agenda.
  Women and men across the country are not having it. They are standing 
up and standing against Scott Lloyd's extreme policies. Many have 
signed a petition calling for his removal, and they are just the latest 
addition to a growing outcry against Director Lloyd's willful disregard 
for women's rights.
  Many Senate and House Democrats have called for him to step down. I 
am again calling on Secretary Azar to fire Scott Lloyd as Director of 
the Office of Refugee Resettlement because Scott Lloyd's actions and 
his personal beliefs about what women can and can't do with their 
bodies show a fundamental disrespect for the rights and equality of 
women, as does setting policy that has huge implications for women's 
health and lives through an ``ad hoc'' process.
  Scott Lloyd's actions to undermine women's health and to deny women's 
rights are utterly unacceptable, and they cannot go unchecked. We 
cannot permit bullies to try to intimidate vulnerable young women who 
are making the healthcare decisions that are right for them--not 
President Trump, not Vice President Pence, and not Scott Lloyd.
  I am going to keep standing up and fighting for the rights of these 
women and immigrants across the country and for the rule of law that 
ensures those rights. I am going to keep fighting against those who 
think they are above the law and who want to roll back the clock on 
these freedoms. I urge my colleagues to join me today in standing with 
women, standing for the rule of law, and calling for Scott Lloyd's 
immediate removal from office.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from 
Washington to talk about the challenge that women both here in the 
United States and across the world are facing from the excesses of this 
administration.
  What we have seen time and again is that the Trump administration has 
exhibited a dangerous obsession with rolling back women's reproductive 
rights here in the United States and abroad. Just in the past 14 months 
in office, this administration has launched a multipronged and 
aggressive assault on women's rights. One of President Trump's first 
acts in office was to reinstate and greatly expand the global gag rule, 
which prohibits U.S. funding for international women's health 
organizations that so much as mention abortion. What they did was to 
say that this is not going to just affect those organizations but any 
health organization that the United States puts funding into. This 
action will cause a significant increase in unsafe abortions and 
maternal deaths across the developing world. The administration has 
proposed budgets that would eliminate all Federal funding for Planned 
Parenthood, and, going even further, would prohibit States that on 
their own would direct Federal funds to Planned Parenthood for those 
same health services. They would prohibit States from doing that.

  Most recently, the State Department reportedly removed data on 
reproductive healthcare from its annual human rights report. So is the 
idea that if you don't give people access to data, then it doesn't 
happen? The administration instructed career employees at the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention to remove words such as ``fetus,'' 
``diversity,'' ``evidence-based,'' and ``science-based'' from their 
official vocabulary.
  Well, if we are not basing decisions at the CDC on evidence-based and 
science-based data, then what are we basing it on? As Senator Murray 
says, they are basing it on ideology. Well, that is a lousy way to make 
a decision about where to put our healthcare money.
  This administration has even attacked women's access to birth 
control, issuing new rules that allow almost any company to opt out of 
the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act.
  Simply put, you cannot support women's empowerment unless you support 
women's access to family planning. Recently, the United Nations 
Population Fund's ``Family Planning 2020'' report explained why women's 
access to all healthcare services, including abortion, is so vital both 
to women's advancement and to their country's economic development. The 
report says:

       Every woman and girl must be able to exercise her basic 
     human right to control her own reproductive health. Access to 
     safe, voluntary family planning is fundamental to women's 
     empowerment. It's also fundamental to achieving our global 
     goals for a healthier, more prosperous, just, and equitable 
     world.

  The report goes on to say:

       Rights-based family planning programs have a greater ripple 
     effect than almost any other development investment, from 
     saving lives and improving health to strengthening economies, 
     transforming societies, and lifting entire countries out of 
     poverty. It is the surest path to the future we want.

  Well, I couldn't agree more. Study after study demonstrates that 
access to comprehensive healthcare services is closely correlated to 
the economic success of women and their families. By contrast, lack of 
access to basic healthcare services, including family planning 
counseling and all birth control options, is a major factor in 
perpetuating the dangerous, life-threatening cycle of poverty.
  Now, I think it is really ironic that those who seek to outlaw 
abortion do so under what they say is the pro-life banner. I think it 
is ironic because we know from experience that outlawing abortion 
doesn't end abortion, it simply drives it into the shadows and unsafe 
conditions. Like many in this Chamber, I remember the days before 1973, 
when abortion was against the law. An estimated 1.2 million women each 
year resorted to illegal abortions, typically performed in unsanitary 
conditions by unlicensed practitioners and often resulting in 
infection, hemorrhage, and even death. Just about every woman of my 
generation has a story about a friend or an acquaintance who had to 
resort to this kind of risky, dangerous abortion or who thought she had 
to resort to that.
  Well, I don't think we want to go back to those days. We know that 
right now in the United States, we have the lowest level of abortions 
that we have had since 1973. That is a success that is directly 
attributed to the increased access to contraception that is in the 
Affordable Care Act.
  We know that again and again, studies have found that policies to 
limit or ban abortion outright have the unintended consequence of 
dramatically increasing abortion overall. Conversely, when family 
planning services are accessible, the rates of unplanned pregnancies 
and abortion go down. Again, according to the Guttmacher Institute, we 
are seeing success in terms of reducing the number of abortions and 
unintended pregnancies.
  Now, what we have seen internationally is that the global gag rule 
has had especially lethal consequences. It denies access to safe 
abortions and, in doing so, it dramatically increases abortions 
overall. A Stanford University study of implementation of the global 
gag rule during the George W. Bush administration found that the number 
of women having induced abortions more than doubled in countries that 
were most impacted by the policy.
  Today, in Nigeria--which is the one country we have data on to date, 
based on the expansion of the global gag rule in the Trump 
administration--health workers on the ground estimate that because of 
the administration's new global gag rule, there will be an additional 
660,000 abortions in Nigeria from now through 2020, and that could 
result in nearly 10,000 additional maternal deaths.
  The Trump administration claims it wants a smaller government. The 
President ran on a platform promising to get the government out of 
people's lives. Yet it is doing everything possible to inject the 
government and law enforcement into some of the most intimate, 
difficult, and personal decisions a woman has to make.
  This is not only insulting, but it is condescending to all women. We 
don't need guidance from the government for an adult. We need to be 
able to consult those we choose to consult and make

[[Page S1704]]

our own decisions about the healthcare we need.
  To take away women's access to full reproductive health services, 
including abortion, is demeaning and unacceptable. We cannot allow the 
Trump administration to turn back the clock and put women's lives at 
risk.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, first of all, I wish to commend my 
Pacific Northwest colleague Senator Murray for taking this time to talk 
about these exceptionally important issues. I had a chance to listen to 
the thoughtful remarks of our friend from New Hampshire--3,000 miles 
away from the Pacific Northwest--and she has been, as usual, 
extraordinarily eloquent and passionate about the cause of women's 
health, and it is great to be able to follow her.
  We can sum up the healthcare policy of the Trump administration in 
just one word: discrimination. I am here with my colleagues today to 
discuss a particularly alarming example of the Trump agenda of 
healthcare discrimination and an example of where the administration is 
working overtime to make women's healthcare worse.
  What is particularly frustrating about this is we are dealing with a 
bureaucracy run amok. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part 
of the Department of Health and Human Services, has made a critical 
judgment. They will put ideology over the law of the land when it comes 
to the medical care available to the young women in its custody.
  Under Director Scott Lloyd, the office has attempted to block several 
immigrants from exercising their freedom of choice with respect to 
reproductive health. It has no legal right to do so. This issue is 
settled law, but this hasn't stopped the Director and its agency from 
dragging young women into prolonged, taxpayer-funded court battles.
  There are roughly 5,000 young people in the Office of Refugee 
Resettlement's custody. Most of them are from Central American 
countries. Many of these young women are survivors of sexual violence. 
They are on their own, and they didn't come here to have somebody 
else's ideology dictating their medical care. In my view, this office 
ought to uphold its duty to provide all the care these young women have 
a right to receive, and it ought to check the ideology at the door.
  That is not how the Office of Refugee Resettlement is working under 
Mr. Lloyd. According to a recent report from VICE News, ``Mr. Lloyd 
receives a spreadsheet every week containing information on every 
pregnant teen in their custody.''
  He reportedly sought to interfere in a young woman's medical 
procedure that was actually already underway. In another case, the 
report says he put a young woman at further risk by directing staff to 
inform her parents--against her wishes--that she had an abortion.
  Last fall, an HHS official was asked about Mr. Lloyd's direction of 
the office and the matter of interfering in the medical care of young 
women. Here is what that spokesman said: ``He by law has custody of 
these children, just like a foster parent, he knows that that's a lot 
of responsibility and he is going to make choices that he thinks are 
best for both the mother and the child.''
  I say to my colleagues, that is just rampant government paternalism 
summed up in just one sentence.
  Now, it ought to be no surprise, given his background, that this is 
the direction the office is taking. This is a gentleman who has made a 
career out of opposing the right of women to make their own judgments 
about their own healthcare choices. He has fought access to 
contraception and to a variety of healthcare services that are 
important to women. His views are right in line--right in line--with 
this administration's agenda of healthcare discrimination against 
women.
  Right out of the gate, the administration and Republicans in Congress 
pushed for legislation that would have deprived hundreds of thousands 
of women the right to see the doctor of their choosing. They made it 
harder for many of those women to obtain routine, vital medical care 
from providers like Planned Parenthood, including cancer screenings, 
prenatal care, preventive services, physicals, and a whole host of 
preventive services that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion--
nothing to do with abortion.
  Then the Trump administration sought to deny women guaranteed, no-
cost access to contraception. When women have guaranteed access to 
contraception, it means healthier pregnancies, healthier newborns, a 
lower risk of cancer, and, particularly, economic fairness for women of 
modest means, but the Trump administration wants to unravel that 
guarantee as well.
  Then, the Trump team is green-lighting junk insurance policies that 
drive up the cost of healthcare for women with preexisting conditions, 
and they are involved in very elaborate--as my colleague knows--
discussions with the State of Idaho. People ought to understand exactly 
what the Trump administration is saying to Idaho because they are going 
to say it to other people. The Trump administration is saying to Idaho: 
You can discriminate, just don't be too obvious about it. That is their 
position with respect to these junk insurance policies.
  The administration is exploring ways to place lifetime limits on the 
care people can get from Medicaid, and that is a frightful proposition 
for the millions of older women who count on Medicaid to pick up the 
tab for their nursing and home-based care.
  These are serious healthcare problems around this country. By the 
way, we never heard anything in the campaign of 2016 about how we were 
going to turn back the clock on older women for whom Medicaid is often 
a lifeline for long-term care, but that is what we are dealing with 
now. These are serious healthcare challenges women face right now--on 
top of it, a raging epidemic of opioid misuse and abuse and the 
skyrocketing cost of prescription medicine. When we are talking about 
the Office of Refugee Resettlement, as my colleagues talked about so 
eloquently, there is also a lot to be done to fix our broken 
immigration system.
  Finally, it is important, as we get into these issues, to recognize 
how deep-seated this policy of healthcare discrimination is. The 
example my colleagues are talking about here today is an example of 
massive ideological overreach and paternalism. It is happening at the 
Office of Refugee Resettlement, but it is not the only example. This is 
behavior that ought to stop.

  I thank my colleague, Senator Murray, who has been our go-to person 
for years and years on women's healthcare. I want her and our 
colleagues to know that I will be doing everything I can to be a part 
of their efforts to push back on these policies that turn back the 
clock and particularly discriminate against the rights of women.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


                             Budget Reform

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, when I was in college, I remember 
watching a State of the Union speech by President Reagan in which he 
took a 43-pound stack of papers and set them on the podium. As he was 
giving his State of the Union Address, he said: This is the budget bill 
that has been given to me--43 pounds of it, all stacked up. It was a 
famous moment when the President said: Do not send this to me again.
  Republicans and Democrats alike stood and cheered. They said: That is 
a terrible way to do government.
  For 5 of the next 6 years there were no more Omnibus appropriations 
bills, but that did not last. Since 1986, there have been 22 Omnibus 
appropriations bills. People may ask, what is that?
  By law, Congress is to do 12 appropriations bills. Each part of that 
has a section of the budget, and each one of those is passed as a 
stand-alone. First, they go through subcommittee, then committee, then 
to the full floor, and then they pass. But 17 times since 1998 and 22 
times since 1986, all of those bills were just looped together to make 
one giant document--the 43-pound document that President Reagan dropped 
in 1988.
  What is going wrong? We have another one of those omnibus bills next 
week, in which all of the appropriations bills have been looped 
together to try to simplify the process, but this actually provides 
even less transparency.

[[Page S1705]]

What do we do with this? How did we get here?
  The short story is that the Budget Control Act of 1974 was created 
right after Watergate in a fight between Congress and President Nixon 
over the fact that President Nixon was told that Congress wanted to be 
able to spend certain amounts of money in certain areas, and President 
Nixon basically didn't want to spend it. So Congress pushed back and 
put additional requirements on him to actually do what Congress was 
compelling him to do in that 1974 Budget Act, to try to create more 
transparency and provide greater leadership for Congress. Out of that 
was born this Budget Act, but also the House and Senate committees and 
the Congressional Budget Office were born.
  All of those things were to create more input and create a system in 
which, each year, the President would create a budget and would submit 
that budget to Congress. Then that budget would lead to authorizing 
bills from the different committees. And then, from the authorizing, it 
would lead to appropriations bills and final passage.
  Well, how is that working for us? It is not. It created a process so 
complicated and so slow that, although it makes sense on paper and in 
legislative language, it doesn't actually work year to year, and it 
pushes us into what is called continuing resolutions--or, as is 
commonly thrown around here, CRs. Every year since 1995, Congress has 
had at least one CR--one continuing resolution; that is, taking last 
year's appropriations bill, just changing the date on it, and moving it 
over. There is no strategic planning, nothing. That is a problem for 
us.
  The budget process itself has broken down and has fallen into omnibus 
spending bills, with 12 bills, all combined. Some years, we fail to get 
budget bills done at all.
  The authorizing process that is supposed to go between the budget and 
the appropriations process has completely collapsed for us. In fact, in 
the 2017 appropriations, it happens that there were 256 expired 
authorizations in the final appropriations bills. About $310 billion of 
what was appropriated was not authorized even last year. Some of those 
things hadn't been authorized for more than a decade. Finally, we have 
passed all appropriations bills only four times in the last 44 years.

  We have a major problem with the way we do budgeting. Year after 
year, people visit me or people bring this to me in townhall meetings 
or at the grocery store or at Taco Bell; people catch me and say: What 
is going on with the budget process?
  I can tell you that if it sounds as if you say that every year, it is 
because you have said that every year now for a couple of decades.
  How do we get out of this? There is a bipartisan, bicameral committee 
that has been put together and met for the first time last week. There 
are 16 total--8 Democrats and 8 Republicans, 8 from the Senate and 8 
from the House. Our mission is to revise the way we do budgeting. A lot 
of Americans probably will not watch this process, but it will be 
extremely important that we actually fix it.
  I am convinced that we are not going to get a better budget product 
until we get a better budget process. This committee itself is designed 
in such a way that it takes out the partisanship, not just with equal 
numbers on both sides, but the agreement from the very beginning is 
that if we don't have a majority of Democrats and a majority of 
Republicans signing off on the final proposal, we will not bring it to 
the floor. If we do, we hope to fix the budget process itself.
  The budget process is set up to create gimmicks in the budgeting 
rather than to fix them. We have a 10-year budget window, and there are 
all these gimmicks that have been created to try to move spending 
outside the 10-year budget window to make things look as though they 
are actually going to balance when they actually don't balance. I would 
like for us to consider some things like biennial budgeting. Twenty 
States budget every 2 years. It gives budget certainty for 24 months. 
We should get that. That helps our economy. That helps our businesses. 
That helps our agencies. That helps in contracting. That helps us avoid 
these continuing resolutions--if we can actually do budgeting in 2-year 
cycles.
  I would like to get out of the perpetual focus on government 
shutdowns and the countdown clocks that happen. I proposed a bill 5 
years ago called the Government Shutdown Prevention Act. It is designed 
to get us to a spot where we actually put the pressure on Congress to 
get the job done but hold agencies and hold the American people 
harmless while we work through the process.
  Quite frankly, I think the President's budget is a meaningless 
document. It has never been passed by any President of any party. I 
don't mind the Presidents releasing their budget priorities--ways we 
can save money, duplication that they see, key aspects. That is 
entirely appropriate. But the President's budget every year just 
becomes a big fight, and when it is late, it throws the process off 
even more and gives Congress one more reason to say that they are not 
getting their job done because someone else was late in doing theirs. 
We should reform that.
  We should reform the way we do debt limits. We are the only country 
in the world that does this. We have had some kind of debt limit since 
the 1920s, actually. But originally, when it went to the form that it 
is in now in the late 1930s, it was established as a way to protect us 
from adding more debt, and it did work for decades.
  It has not worked for decades. It has been another fiscal cliff out 
there that has not resolved anything. We have to fix that so it does 
what it is supposed to do or take it away, but we can't destabilize 
international economies because we can't get our job done here.
  We have to have some sort of focus on both revenue and spending. We 
should deal with real consequences when we don't get things done on 
time. We have to build internal processes that actually get things 
done. We have to pay attention to $20 trillion, and growing, in 
national debt.
  These are things we can get done, but they will not get done if we 
don't actually fix the process. There is no moment to actually get the 
big things and hard things done.
  My hope and my commitment, with this body and with this group of 16 
of us who have grouped together from the House and the Senate--
Republicans and Democrats--is this: Bring a proposal to us that is a 
fair, nonpartisan proposal that is not focused on what party is in 
power at that moment but looks at the fiscal health of the Nation, how 
we can plan for the future, and how we can actually get off this 
endless cycle of nonaction and get back to a process of predictable 
budgeting and appropriations. We will bring some of those solutions in 
the days ahead.
  Right now we are meeting and talking. I invite any Member of this 
body who wants to contribute to catch any one of us in this group. We 
are not saying that the 16 of us are exclusive to solving the problems.
  I also say the same thing to the American people: Anyone in my State 
or anyone around the country who wants to contribute good ideas, bring 
them. Let's add these good ideas together. Let's fix the process. Let's 
get back to actually talking about how we solve the budget issues 
rather than how we solve our internal processes in the House and the 
Senate. That is the last thing we should be arguing about and the first 
thing we should fix.
  With that, I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, according to the latest Gallup poll, 81 
percent of the American people disapprove of the way Congress is doing 
its job--81 percent. I suspect the other 19 percent are not really 
paying attention. If you want to know why the American people have so 
much anger and contempt for what goes on in Congress, it is because, 
time after time, what we are seeing is Congress under the Republican 
leadership doing exactly the opposite of what the American people want.
  This week could mark a new low for the Republican leadership in the 
Senate in terms of ignoring what the American people want and doing 
what they don't want. Today marks the 1-month anniversary of the tragic 
mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. 
I just had the opportunity to be outside, in front of the Capitol, with 
thousands of beautiful, beautiful young people from all over--I think 
all over the country. The young people are saying to the

[[Page S1706]]

Congress: Do something about the gun violence.
  Everyone knows there is not an easy solution; this is not an easy 
problem to solve. There are hundreds of millions of guns in this 
country. There are 5 million assault weapons. The young people are 
saying: Do something. Have the courage to take on the NRA.
  The American people overwhelmingly want to expand and improve 
background checks. They want to do away with the gun show loophole. 
They want to do away with the straw man provision. More and more people 
think we should be banning military-style assault weapons--whatever. 
The American people want us to do something. I don't see anything 
happening here. The American people want it. It is not happening.
  The American people want us to deal with the high cost of 
prescription drugs. In the State of Vermont, elderly people are cutting 
their pills in half. I don't see any legislation to deal with the high 
cost of prescription drugs, to have the courage to take on the 
pharmaceutical industry.
  The American people, overwhelmingly--Democrats, Republicans, 
Independents--want to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. I don't 
see anything happening on that issue.
  On issue after issue, the American people want action, and they are 
not getting it. What they are getting is exactly what they don't want 
but what powerful special interests do want.
  This month marks the 10th anniversary of the collapse of Bear 
Stearns, one of the largest investment banks in America, whose greed, 
recklessness, and illegal behavior triggered the worst economic crisis 
since the Great Depression. What is the response of the U.S. Senate to 
that? Are we talking about breaking up the large banks that have become 
much larger? Is that what we are talking about? Are we talking about 
protecting consumers who are paying 20 percent, 25 percent in interest 
rates on products they buy at a department store? Are we talking about 
taking on the payday lenders who are squeezing the lifeblood out of 
poor people who, in desperation, have to borrow money from them? No, 
that is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about the 
need to guarantee healthcare to all people. We are not talking about 
the affordable housing crisis. We are not talking about the fact that 
millions of moms and dads in this country can't afford childcare. We 
are not talking about the global crisis of climate change. We are not 
talking about our crumbling infrastructure, our rigged trade deals that 
have resulted in the deindustrialization of America. That is not what 
we are talking about.
  What we are talking about at this particular moment, right here in 
the U.S. Senate, is the deregulation of some of the largest banks in 
America, some of the very same banks that nearly drove the economy off 
a cliff in 2008. That is what we are talking about.
  Just last week, the Congressional Budget Office told us that the 
legislation on the floor right now will ``increase the likelihood that 
a large financial firm with assets of between $100 billion and $250 
billion would fail.''
  We are not talking about protecting consumers. We are not talking 
about breaking up large banks. We are not talking about taking on the 
power of Wall Street.
  What we are talking about is deregulating some of the very same banks 
that drove this economy into the worst economic downturn since the 
Great Depression. In other words, this legislation will make it more 
likely that we will see another financial crisis, another taxpayer 
bailout, and massive dislocation of our economy.
  What CBO tells us is that this legislation will increase the deficit 
by more than $450 million over the next decade--$450 million. This 
bill, which benefits some of the largest banks in America, will cost us 
over $450 million. Who is going to pay for that? The big banks? No. It 
will be the American taxpayers who will be picking up this tab.
  The question we have to ask ourselves, which we don't very often--
although the American people, I think, understand this emotionally in 
their guts--is this: How does it happen that a bill like this gets to 
the floor while we are not dealing with the issues the American people 
are concerned about, whether it is gun safety, whether it is DACA and 
protecting the 1.8 million young people who are eligible for that 
program, whether it is the high cost of prescriptions? How does this 
particular bill get to the floor of the Senate? The answer is pretty 
obvious. Follow the money.
  Since the 1990s, the financial sector has given more than $3.2 
billion in campaign contributions. Let me repeat that. Since the 1990s, 
the financial sector--Wall Street, other parts of the financial 
sector--has given over $3.2 billion in campaign contributions. Last 
year alone, the financial sector spent over $200 million on lobbying. 
That is why Congress is spending day after day trying to make life 
easier for large financial institutions while continuing to ignore the 
needs of working families.
  Instead of listening to lobbyists in Washington, maybe, just maybe--I 
know it is a very radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, we might want to 
listen to the American people. The American people believe, as I do, 
that we should strengthen, not weaken Wall Street regulations.
  Now is not the time to be talking about deregulating large financial 
institutions. Now is the time to take on the greed and power of Wall 
Street, break up the large financial institutions in this country, and 
stop big banks from ripping off the American people by charging 
outrageous and usurious levels of interest rates. That is why I have 
submitted two amendments to this bill that I would like the Senate to 
vote on this afternoon.
  The first amendment would break up large financial institutions so 
that the taxpayers of this country will never have to bail them out 
again. The second amendment would establish a 15-percent cap on the 
interest rates private banks charge their customers on credit cards and 
other consumer loans.
  Before I talk about these amendments, let's be clear. Fraud is the 
business model of Wall Street. It is not the exception to the rule; it 
is the rule. Since 2009, major banks in this country have been fined 
more than $200 billion for reckless, unfair, and deceptive activities. 
By the way, those fines take place within a very weak regulatory 
climate, but here are just a few examples of the kinds of activities 
that large banks have engaged in.
  In August 2014, Bank of America paid $16 billion to settle charges 
that it lied to investors about the riskiness of the mortgage-backed 
securities it sold during the runup to the financial crisis.
  In November 2013, JPMorgan Chase settled for $13 billion for lying to 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the quality of the mortgage-backed 
securities it sold them. Settlement documents revealed how every large 
bank in the United States committed mortgage fraud.
  In April of 2016, Goldman Sachs reached a $5 billion settlement for 
marketing and selling fraudulent mortgage-backed securities that were 
the foundation of the housing crisis.
  In July of 2014, Citigroup reached a $7 billion settlement for 
mortgage fraud. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder said that Citigroup's 
``activities contributed mightily to the financial crisis that 
devastated our economy in 2008.''
  If you are thinking that the illegal behavior of Wall Street 
executives was limited to the housing crisis, that it was a one-time 
thing, guess again. Let me give some more examples.
  In May of 2015, five banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, 
paid $5.4 billion in fines after pleading guilty to ``a brazen display 
of collusion and foreign exchange rate market manipulation,'' according 
to then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
  In March of 2014, the FDIC accused 16 large banks, including Bank of 
America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, of fraud and conspiracy in an 
epic plot to manipulate bank-to-bank interest rates that underpinned at 
least $350 trillion in global financial transactions.
  In April of 2011, Wachovia was fined for laundering billions of 
dollars in illegal drug money. The Federal prosecutor said, 
``Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international 
cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations.'' 
That was from the Federal prosecutor. The fine was less than 2 percent 
of the bank's $12.3 billion profit.
  On and on it goes. Mortgage fraud, money laundering, currency 
manipulation, bribery, conspiracy, rate tampering, and collusion are 
the routine

[[Page S1707]]

practices of Wall Street; they are not the exception. This is their 
business model.
  Our country can no longer afford to tolerate the culture of fraud and 
corruption on Wall Street. Let us never, ever forget--although, I fear 
many people have already here in Congress--that during the financial 
crisis of 2008, the American people were told that they needed to bail 
out huge financial institutions because those institutions were too big 
to fail. Do people remember that? They were just too big to fail. If 
they had gone down, the whole economy would have gone down with them. 
Yet the four largest financial institutions in this country--JPMorgan 
Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo--are, on average, 80 
percent larger today than they were before we bailed them out. Today, 
they are 80 percent larger than they were before we bailed them out 
because they were too big to fail. Does that make sense to anybody? 
Left alone, that is not even an issue that will be talked about here on 
the floor of the Senate.
  Incredibly, since the financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase has increased 
its assets by more than $1 trillion. Bank of America has seen its 
assets grow by more than $800 billion. Citigroup has grown by over $547 
billion. After Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia, it nearly tripled in 
size.
  No single financial institution should be so large that its failure 
would cause a catastrophic risk to millions of Americans or to our 
Nation's economic well-being. No single financial institution should 
have holdings so extensive that its failure would send the world 
economy into crisis. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too 
big to exist, and we should break it up.
  Let me be very clear. We should not just be concerned about the 
danger these institutions pose to taxpayers. The enormous concentration 
of ownership within the financial sector is harming the middle class 
and damaging the economy by limiting choices and raising prices for 
consumers and small businesses.
  Today--and it is important that people understand this, but 
unfortunately it is not an issue that is discussed at all, not here in 
Congress and not much in the media--the six largest banks in America 
have over $10 trillion in assets, equivalent to 54 percent of the GDP 
in America. When we talk about having the United States move in the 
direction of an oligarchy, when we talk about a handful of institutions 
and billionaires controlling the economic and political life of this 
country, this is what we are talking about.
  Let me repeat. The six largest banks in America have over $10 
trillion in assets, equivalent to 54 percent of our GDP. The top six 
banks hold more than half of all credit card debt, control over 90 
percent of all bank derivatives, underwrite about a third of all 
mortgages, and control over 40 percent of all bank deposits.
  If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, I have a sense about what he 
would be saying. He would say break them up, and he would be right. 
That is exactly what my first amendment would do.
  Specifically, this amendment would require the Federal Reserve to 
break up any financial institution whose total exposure is greater than 
2 percent of our Nation's GDP over the next 2 years. These banks would 
include JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Bank of 
America, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, Capital 
One, and the TD Group--financial institutions that have a combined 
total exposure of more than 77 percent of our Nation's GDP. None of 
these institutions would be able to receive a taxpayer bailout from the 
Federal Reserve or gamble with the federally insured bank deposits of 
the American people. Under this amendment, no financial institution 
could have a total financial exposure above $398 billion.

  Call me old-fashioned, but I believe the function of banking should 
be boring. The function of banking should not be about making as much 
profit as possible in gambling on derivatives and other esoteric 
financial instruments. The function of banking should be to provide 
affordable loans to small businesses in order to create jobs in the 
productive economy. The function of banking should be to provide 
affordable loans to Americans to purchase their homes and their cars. 
Wall Street cannot be an island unto itself, and I hope very much that 
my colleagues will support this important amendment.
  Not only do we have to break up these very large banks, but we also 
have to stop them from ripping off the American people by their 
charging outrageous interest rates and fees, and that is exactly what 
my second amendment would do.
  Incredibly, since the Wall Street crash, credit card companies have 
raked in over $1.2 trillion in revenue from interest and fees they 
charge consumers, including over $160 billion in 2016 alone. That is 
unacceptable. At a time when the American people hold a recordbreaking 
$1 trillion in credit card debt and desperately need some relief on 
that debt, my second amendment would establish a national usury rate of 
15 percent on credit cards and other consumer loans.
  In America today, incredibly, millions of our people are now paying 
credit card interest rates of 20, 25, or even 30 percent. I am not just 
talking about the payday lenders who are acting in a way that is 
totally unbelievable in ripping off the poorest people in our country. 
Let's be clear. When credit card companies charge over 20 percent in 
interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of 
making credit available; what they are involved in is extortion and 
loan sharking. That is what they are engaged in.
  Interestingly enough, if you read the religious tenets of the major 
religions throughout history, whether it be Christianity, Judaism, or 
Islam, what you will find is a universal objection and disgust to 
usury. This has existed for thousands and thousands of years. People 
know that it is immoral to lend money to poor people, struggling 
people, and then charge them excessive interest rates. That is in the 
religious teachings of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other 
religions.
  In the ``Divine Comedy,'' Dante reserved a special place in the 
Seventh Circle of Hell for people who charged usurious interest rates. 
Today, we don't need the hellfire and the pitchforks, and we don't need 
the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law that 
caps interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent.
  Despite the fact that banks can borrow money today at less than 1.5 
percent from the Fed, the average credit card interest rate today for 
consumers is now 16.84 percent. Borrow money at 1.5 percent from the 
Fed, and then charge consumers an average of 16.84 percent.
  Further, if you get a credit card from a store like Macy's, Kohl's, 
Lowe's, or Sears, interest rates are even higher. Stores like these are 
charging customers an average interest rate of 26 percent, and many of 
the stores rely on these high interest rate cards for more than a third 
of their revenue. They are making money not just by selling clothing or 
washing machines or shoes; a substantial part of their profit scheme 
comes from the high interest rates they are getting on these financial 
transactions. What that means is, if you buy a $500 refrigerator from 
Lowe's, Home Depot, or Sears on one of their credit cards, you will 
likely owe an additional $130 in interest on a $500 refrigerator. How 
is that? Do you think that is an issue we might want to talk about just 
for a moment? I know the consumers of this country don't pour hundreds 
of millions of dollars into lobbying or billions of dollars into 
campaign contributions. I understand that. But maybe, just maybe, we 
might want to remember the folks back home.
  Establishing a usury law is not a radical concept. Up until 1978, 
about half of the States in our country had usury laws on the books 
that capped credit card interest rates, but those States' interest 
rates were obliterated by a 1978 Supreme Court decision, that of 
Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service, which concluded that 
national banks could charge whatever interest rates they wanted if they 
moved to a State without a usury law. So all of these credit card 
companies moved to South Dakota. They moved to Delaware, which had no 
interest rate caps, and they charged people in Vermont or in Kansas--or 
in every other State in the country--interest rates of 20 to 30 
percent.
  This has to stop. The American people are sick and tired of being 
ripped off by the same financial institutions

[[Page S1708]]

they bailed out 10 years ago--what a world. We bail out the crooks--
taxpayer money bails them out--and they charge the same people who 
bailed them out 20 to 30 percent interest rates on loans.
  This amendment simply applies the same statutory interest rate cap on 
credit cards that Congress imposed on credit unions in 1980, capping 
interest rates at 15 percent, except under extraordinary circumstances. 
In other words, if you get a credit card through a credit union, you 
are going to be paying, in almost every case, no more than 15 percent. 
That is mandated by Federal law. By and large, that law has worked for 
about 40 years. Unlike big banks, credit unions do not come begging the 
American taxpayer for huge bailouts. Ten years ago they didn't come for 
a huge bailout. Credit unions have survived and thrived on a 15-percent 
cap, and the time has come to extend that cap to private banks as well. 
There is nothing radical about that. It exists for the credit unions in 
this country, and it should exist for the large banks.
  There has even been support for this concept in the Senate. In 1991, 
former Senator Al D'Amato offered an amendment to cap interest rates at 
14 percent that passed on a vote of 74 to 14. It was not a radical 
idea, and it passed by a huge vote in 1991.
  Here is what Al D'Amato, the Republican chairman of the Senate 
Banking Committee, said in 1991:

       Fourteen percent is certainly a reasonable rate of interest 
     for banks to charge customers for credit card debt. It allows 
     a comfortable profit margin but keeps banks in line so that 
     interest rates rise and fall with the health of the economy.

  That was an accurate statement in 1991. It is even more accurate 
today.
  Let's be clear. Credit cards are no longer used just to buy luxury 
items. We all know that. All over this country, people are buying their 
groceries, their food, and other basic essentials with credit cards. 
Commuters are paying for the gas they put into their cars on their 
credit cards. Young people are paying their college expenses with 
credit cards.
  According to the Federal Reserve, 44 percent of the American people 
could not pay for a $400 emergency expense, like a car accident, if 
they could not charge it on their credit cards or borrow money from a 
payday lender, a friend, or a family member. That is the reality of 
America today. It is not a reality we discuss here in the Senate, but 
that is the reality, nonetheless.
  Given that reality, it seems to me that if we are going to respond to 
the needs of the American people, we need to deal with the issue of 
usury and stop large financial institutions from ripping off the 
American people.
  Madam President, with that in mind, I ask unanimous consent that the 
following amendments be called up and reported by number: the Sanders 
amendment No. 2114 and the Sanders amendment No. 2155; further, that 
the Senate vote on the Sanders amendment No. 2114 without intervening 
action or debate; and that following disposition of the Sanders 
amendment No. 2114, the Senate vote on the Sanders amendment No. 2155.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I am distressed, although not 
surprised, by the objection. Apparently, the consumers of this country 
don't have the financial support to get their concerns onto the floor. 
So apparently we are not going to be discussing these items.
  Madam President, I raise a point of order that the pending measure 
violates section 4106 of H. Con. Res. 71, the concurrent resolution on 
the budget for fiscal year 2018.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the 
Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of 
applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections 
of that act and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of S. 2155, 
and I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I am asking my colleagues to waive this 
budget point of order.
  In order to offset the Congressional Budget Office's estimated 
increase in Federal deficits due to the enactment of the Economic 
Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, the bill 
contains a provision that reduces the amount of discretionary surplus 
the Federal Reserve may maintain from $7.5 billion to $6.825 billion.
  The Federal Reserve surplus funds have been used in the past to pay 
for bipartisan legislation emanating from committees that do not have 
jurisdiction over the Federal Reserve. Unlike those past instances, 
these funds will be used to offset costs of legislation emanating from 
the Banking Committee.
  In order to provide meaningful relief for consumers, community banks, 
credit unions, midsized banks and regional banks, I urge my colleagues 
to waive this point of order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues for support on the 
point of order, not only from the deficit perspective but to tell the 
Republican leadership here in Congress that we want a serious debate on 
the serious financial issues facing the American people; that we want 
the ability to bring forth amendments, not just my amendment--there are 
a lot of good amendments on both sides--that at this particular moment, 
rather than just deregulating some of the largest banks in America, we 
need to protect consumers, we need to protect ordinary Americans, and 
we need to have a real debate. So I would hope very much that Members 
of the Senate would support my point of order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I spent 28 years in the private sector 
before entering public service. In fact, in 2010 I was working at 
RightNow Technologies in my hometown of Bozeman, MT. We were growing a 
technology company there. We were creating good, high-paying jobs in 
Montana--in fact, about 500 jobs there.
  While I was working to grow jobs back home in Montana, President 
Obama and a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate were 
passing legislation that stifled job creation--in fact, costing our 
economy billions of dollars and penalizing small local banks and credit 
unions for the wrongdoings committed by bad actors on Wall Street.
  I am talking about Dodd-Frank. Since Dodd-Frank's passage, the number 
of federally insured credit unions in Montana fell by over 10 percent. 
The number of Montana State chartered banks fell over 34 percent, from 
64 to 44. This is no surprise because Dodd-Frank empowered more than 10 
Federal agencies to write more than 400 new rules, imposing 27,000 
mandates, many of which fell on these local banks and credit unions.
  These small community businesses don't have the ability to keep up 
with the onslaught of these new rules, new regulations, and guidance 
constantly coming out of Washington following Dodd-Frank, and the 
customers are suffering.
  Small local banks and credit unions are uniquely capable of knowing 
their customers and providing tailored financial services to meet their 
customers' individual circumstances. Dodd-Frank stripped this customer 
advantage away by making prohibitively difficult any loans that don't 
comply with the cookie-cutter regulations.
  It is interesting that in that debate back in 2010, many Republicans 
warned our colleagues on the Democratic side about this, but virtually 
every Democratic Senator then voted for Dodd-Frank. This difficulty 
fell particularly hard on Montana's entrepreneurs, who are self-
employed and don't typically have wage income. Entrepreneurship runs 
deep in Montana. These banks and credit unions are truly part of our 
community. They know their customers, and they are able to make loans 
for their needs. They can determine the risk and make sure they are 
making good loans. They serve up-and-coming small business owners, moms 
and dads working to keep the family business

[[Page S1709]]

afloat, and countless farmers and ranchers across Montana.
  Dodd-Frank has suffocated Montana's rural banks and credit unions 
and, ultimately, it is the people of Montana who use these banks and 
these credit unions, and they are the ones who have been hit the 
hardest.
  I wasn't here in 2010 when this bill was passed. Let me just state 
that had I been on this floor then, I would have voted no on Dodd-
Frank's passage. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Democratic 
Senators voted yes--virtually every one of them. But I will state that 
I am really happy to be here now to help undo some of the damage caused 
to our rural communities and the people of Montana.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, on Friday I held a townhall in 
Springfield, MA. On Saturday we had another townhall, this time in 
Weymouth, MA. I met with kids at Weymouth High School who are forming a 
``Never Again'' group and who want to pass some sensible gun 
regulations. I met with Dreamers who want to pass DACA. I met with 
people who fled the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and who want to get a 
comprehensive plan for rebuilding the island. I met with people who 
live along the South Shore and are deeply worried about rising oceans 
and the need for building resilience into our coastline housing and 
infrastructure. I met with people alarmed by the rising cost of 
healthcare and about Republican efforts to roll back ObamaCare, 
Medicaid, and Medicare. I met someone who wants to see us focus more on 
criminal justice reform.

  There is so much Congress could do. There are so many problems the 
American people are asking us to solve, but not one single person at 
any of my townhalls, meetings, press interviews, or picking up pizza at 
Armando's asked for Congress to work on rolling back the rules on some 
of the biggest banks in the country so they will have a chance to crash 
the economy again, and that is what the bill on the floor of the Senate 
does--really. Don't just take my word for it.
  The Congressional Budget Office experts say the bill will increase 
the chances that taxpayers will have to bail out the big banks again. 
CBO also says the bill could allow Wall Street banks, like Citigroup 
and JPMorgan Chase, to significantly reduce their capital requirements. 
Professor Jeffrey Gordon, an expert in financial regulation at Columbia 
Law School, says the bill ``will produce a race-to-the-bottom dynamic 
that will dramatically increase the chance of another financial 
crisis.'' The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both editorialized that 
the bill includes dangerous giveaways to big banks. Nobody back in 
Massachusetts asked for that.
  Buried down in the details of the bill are even more landmines for 
American families. The bill guts protections for families who buy 
traditional and mobile homes, and it undermines our ability to enforce 
civil rights laws--and for what? So banks that are already making 
record profits can tack on a little more to their bottom line?
  If the Senate is going to spend 2 weeks dealing with the big banks, 
we should be making the rules tougher, not easier. Today, I introduced 
the Ending Too Big to Jail Act, which would help make sure that big 
bank executives are hauled out of their corner offices in handcuffs the 
next time they break the law. That would do more for America's working 
families than anything in this bill, and I am going to fight to help 
make it law.
  What does it say about Washington Republicans and Democrats who can't 
come together to support commonsense gun reforms or solutions for 
working families but can come together to deregulate big banks on the 
10th anniversary of the start of the 2008 financial crisis?
  Here is what I think it says: Washington has become completely 
disconnected from the real problems in people's lives. This place works 
great for people who can hire armies of fancy lobbyists and write big 
checks, but it doesn't work for anyone else.
  This is personal for me. I grew up in Oklahoma on the ragged edge of 
the middle class. My family struggled, and when it looked like things 
were getting a little bit better, my daddy had a heart attack and he 
lost his job and we nearly lost our home. I was 12 years old, and I 
know what it feels like to hear your mother cry every night. I know 
what it feels like to wonder if you will have to change schools or move 
to another town because the bank is going to take your house away. I 
know it because I lived it.
  When the economy collapsed 10 years ago, I would go to bed at night 
thinking about the millions of people across this country who worked 
hard, who played by the rules, and then had their dignity stripped away 
because somebody they never met gambled with their family's future and 
lost. I wondered back then about the kids. I wondered about their 
mothers. I wondered about their daddies. A foreclosure isn't just some 
dry financial transaction; it is the kind of event that can tear a 
family apart.
  The American people aren't going to stand by while big banks and 
other giant corporations run this economy and this Congress for their 
own benefit. Soon--maybe not today, maybe not next week, maybe not even 
in the next election, but soon they will demand a government that works 
for the people.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, 10 years ago this month, we saw the first 
domino fall toward the worst financial crisis since the Great 
Depression. Some of our country's largest financial institutions were 
facing capital and liquidity crises, and it became clear that many of 
the biggest banks would need a massive injection of capital, in the 
form of a taxpayer bailout, to prevent what then-Chairman Bernanke 
called the ``chaotic unwinding'' of financial markets.
  The near collapse of the U.S. financial system had a real and lasting 
impact on the prosperity of the United States, reaching the pocketbooks 
and kitchen tables of every American family and the stability of the 
world's economy across all sectors. We--and I do mean we--you, me and 
all tax-paying U.S. citizens footed the bill for the risky and cavalier 
behavior of our country's biggest banks, allowed largely by a poorly 
regulated system that brought our economy to its knees. American 
taxpayer dollars propped up our financial system to prevent its 
catastrophic failure, an economic collapse that would have wrought even 
more damage and misery on tens of millions of American households.
  The crisis clearly exposed deep flaws in our regulatory system and a 
serious lack of oversight of the financial sector. It taught us that 
looking the other way and trusting the system to check and right itself 
will always result in a race to the bottom in terms of capitalization, 
risk-taking, transparency, and, too often, casual lending practices.
  Big Banks and their executives took on untold and unnecessary risks, 
hid their financial well-being and, at best, misinformed their 
investors and, at worst, downright lied. This behavior was supported 
and left unchecked by a regulatory regime without the oversight to 
identify and teeth to prevent rampant risk-taking in the name of short-
term profit.
  We vowed we would never again put American taxpayers on the hook to 
bail out Big Banks. To that end, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act, 
the most sweeping, comprehensive reforms to our financial system since 
the 1930s. These changes, including new regulations and enforcement 
mechanisms, were necessary to prevent the recurrence of the systematic 
profit-driven actions of bad actors throughout our financial system. 
Dodd-Frank required Big Banks to meet capital requirements, pass stress 
tests, and make plans for their orderly liquidation in case of failure. 
All of these requirements were designed to prevent another taxpayer 
bailout, and they are working. By design, these standards are difficult 
to meet, but they have not prevented banks from profiting. Big Banks, 
in fact, are thriving. They continue to protect American taxpayers who 
are, rightly, wary of the behavior of Big Banks. Now is not the time to 
roll back these protective rules for Big Banks. They don't need it. No 
one except these big hanks will benefit, and it would all be at the 
risk of future bailouts. Without these standards, we will again see 
bank executives influenced by compensation packages that favor

[[Page S1710]]

risky short-term profits over sound investments and loan quantity over 
quality. If we roll back commonsense oversight of Big Banks, we should 
expect banks to take advantage of their newfound flexibility and 
reintroduce risky practices like failing to ensure they are adequately 
capitalized and mitigating risk.
  Like most sweeping reforms, some pieces of the Dodd-Frank Act had 
unintended consequences. We talk a lot about banks that are too big to 
fail, but not about banks too small to succeed or perhaps too small to 
comply with the new regulatory regime. Authority was granted to new and 
existing agencies to mandate certain regulatory requirements intended 
to safeguard our financial system. Our small community banks and credit 
unions have done their best to comply with these one-size-fits-all 
regulations and rules, often to the great detriment to their 
businesses, their bottom lines, and their relationships with their 
community and customers. I have heard from community bankers who, 
instead of focusing on Vermonters' needs and tailoring their financial 
services in the honest and professional way that is a hallmark of doing 
business in a small community, must spend much of their time crossing 
Ts, dotting Is, and collecting data for fear of the consequences of 
minor errors. That is not how small community bankers should be 
spending their time and not how they maintain the flexibility necessary 
to meet the needs of their communities.
  Our community banks and credit unions did not cause the financial 
crisis; yet they are still paying the price for it, and by extension, 
the consumers they serve. I am glad that this bill provides some 
regulatory relief for smaller and community banks. If regulatory relief 
for community banks and credit unions were its own bill, we would be 
lining up to support it--or even more likely, pass it by unanimous 
consent.
  But what started out as an effort to help small community banks has 
been hijacked by Big Banks and their supporters in Congress. I am 
extremely disappointed that this essential relief has been coupled with 
some very significant changes to regulations on the biggest banks, 
banks that took hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. 
This is the handiwork of savvy lobbyists pushing a deregulatory agenda 
and hiding it behind relief for our community bankers. They know 
community banks are the backbone of our communities and that they enjoy 
the support of their representatives. It is frustrating that we could 
not consider, debate, and pass a bill that would responsibly allow 
community banks to better serve and revert to relationship lending in 
their communities without revisiting these additional oversight 
measures on Big Banks that our constituents demand and deserve.
  All told, this bill will substantially deregulate some 25 of the 
largest 38 banks and will require fewer stress tests which are 
effective ways to measure a bank's ability to withstand sudden or 
prolonged economic downturns. I do not believe this is an appropriate 
way to relieve our community banks and credit unions, and I am 
concerned that instead of safeguarding our economy, this legislation 
will instead open up our taxpayers to even more risk at the hands of 
bank executives. For these reasons, I cannot support the Big Bank 
protection act that this bill has become. I am disappointed that 
instead of passing what we said we wanted--relief for small banks that 
are being punished for something they did not cause--this bill will 
roll back the very rules that hold Big Banks accountable and that 
protect our economy and the American people.
  To conclude, I ask unanimous consent that an opinion piece by Vermont 
Law School Professor Jennifer Taub, which appeared online at CNN.com, 
be printed in the Record. In it, she discusses the troubling flaws of 
this proposed legislation. Her words would be instructive to the Senate 
as we are poised to roll back some of the strongest protections we have 
against another financial crisis.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                        [From CNN, Mar. 5, 2018]

                Mitch McConnell's Big Gift to the Banks

                           (By Jennifer Taub)

       This month marks the tenth anniversary of the $29 billion 
     US government-backed bailout of Bear Stearns. The collapse of 
     this giant investment bank in March 2008, under the weight of 
     its bad mortgage-linked bets, marked the beginning of the 
     global financial crisis.
       To commemorate it, the US Senate plans to deliver a big 
     gift to the banking sector by removing several safeguards for 
     American families put in place after the meltdown.
       Tin is the traditional tenth wedding anniversary gift. A 
     bank deregulatory bill on the crisis anniversary is a fitting 
     present from someone with a tin ear.
       Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced that 
     this week the Senate, rather than respond to the plague of 
     gun violence by considering gun law reforms after the 
     Parkland shooting, will begin debating the rollback of 
     financial reforms.
       The bill, S. 2155, would considerably weaken the Dodd-Frank 
     Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the law 
     President Barack Obama signed in 2010, which was designed to 
     tame Wall Street, protect consumers and make our financial 
     system less fragile.
       Lifting the sensible limits imposed by Dodd-Frank would be 
     a dream come true for the banking sector, but eventually a 
     nightmare for the rest of us. This bill will hurt homeowners 
     and allow giant banks once again to take big risks with 
     taxpayer-backed, FDIC-insured customer deposits.
       Who is calling for this bank deregulation? The pressure is 
     not coming from clamoring constituents. Instead, it is the 
     bank lobbyists, outside the public eye, who quietly 
     orchestrated this effort. Acknowledging this provenance, the 
     growing opposition has dubbed S. 2155 ``The Bank Lobbyist 
     Act.''
       To pass it, McConnell needs 60 votes, so he will require 
     more than just his party's support. The bill already has 11 
     Democratic co-sponsors. Unless the public speaks up, he may 
     get those votes.
       Here's why. The bill's sponsors on both sides of the aisle 
     are counting on our fading memories. They think we have 
     forgotten the terrible years after the toxic-mortgaged-backed 
     meltdown, when many millions of families lost their homes to 
     foreclosure. The bill's sponsors believe that the pain 
     previously inflicted upon us by the financial sector is 
     buried in the past. They are wagering that we have forgotten 
     both the 1980s Savings and Loan debacle and its repeat 
     performance in the more recent 2008 global financial crisis.
       That is a bad bet. We remember.
       We remember that banks and borrowers got into trouble with 
     unaffordable mortgages. Yet this bill would essentially 
     encourage banks with up to $10 billion in assets to once 
     again offer predatory mortgage loans to millions of 
     borrowers. This includes making mortgage loans to homeowners 
     based on their ability to pay just an initial ``teaser'' 
     rate, not the fully-amortized rate. This puts borrowers at 
     risk of losing their homes if they cannot afford the higher 
     long-term payments. It also puts banks at risk when these 
     loans default.
       As Boston College law professor Patricia McCoy detailed in 
     the American Banker, Dodd-Frank ``required lenders to first 
     determine that loan applicants are able to repay before 
     making them home mortgages. Lenders who fail to make this 
     assessment can be liable to borrowers.'' Yet the bill 
     ``permits banks with total assets of up to $10 billion . . . 
     to make unaffordable mortgages, with no liability to 
     borrowers, so long as the banks hold the loans on their 
     books.'' She adds that ``if the bill becomes law, Congress 
     will excuse over 97% of US banks from having to verify 
     applicants' income, assets and debts for mortgages they keep 
     on their books.''
       We remember that big banks got taxpayer-funded bailouts. 
     That is why Dodd-Frank automatically subjects bank holding 
     companies with more than $50 billion in assets to enhanced 
     supervision by the Federal Reserve. Yet, under the Bank 
     Lobbyist Act, that threshold would be raised to $250 billion. 
     This is too great a risk. As former Fed lawyer Jeremy Kress 
     explained in The Hill, raising the threshold to $250 billion 
     is ``effectively deregulating 25 of the 38 biggest banks in 
     the United States, accounting for nearly one-sixth of the 
     assets in the banking sector.'' We remember that in 2008, 
     several banks with under $250 billion in assets, including 
     Countrywide, received billions in bailouts during the 2008 
     crisis. And even before the bailout funding was available, 
     when IndyMac with just $32 billion in assets went bust, it 
     cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund about $9 billion.
       We remember that regional and community banks can cause a 
     national meltdown. The bill's proponents are positioning it 
     as harmless regulatory relief for regional and community 
     banks. But we remember that during the savings and loan 
     crisis during the 1980s, risky practices--including poor real 
     estate loan standards, thin capital, risky assets, and 
     dependence on short-term funding--led to the collapse of 
     hundreds of savings banks. The resulting S&L bailout cost 
     taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. As George 
     Washington University law professor Art Wilmarth explained in 
     the American Banker, ``Big regional banks and the largest 
     money center banks have held highly correlated risk exposures 
     during every US banking crisis since 1980. Those correlated 
     exposures resulted from very similar business strategies that 
     many large banks pursued during the boom leading up to each 
     crisis.''

[[Page S1711]]

     Yet this new Senate bill would allow regional and community 
     banks to avoid prudential supervision, and also engage in 
     high-risk trading with customer deposits.
       We remember the bailout oath of ``never again.'' Upon 
     signing Dodd-Frank, President Obama vowed we would ``never 
     again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes,'' 
     but that ``for these new rules to be effective, regulators 
     will have to be vigilant.'' Yet with President Donald Trump's 
     appointment of Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial 
     Protection Bureau, the deliberate gutting of consumer 
     protections began.
       Now with the ``Bank Lobbyist Act,'' our senators have a 
     choice. Will they pile on with the Trump Team and pummel the 
     already weakened financial reform law into submission? Or 
     will they honor their promises made to the American people 
     and protect us from a future financial meltdown?
       Time will tell. We will remember.

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the 
Senior$afe Act, which I am pleased is included in the Economic Growth, 
Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. My good friend Senator 
Claire McCaskill and I have been working on Senior$afe for several 
years now. This bill originated with testimony offered by Maine 
Securities Administrator Judith Shaw in a hearing before the Senate 
Aging Committee in 2015. I am the chairman of that committee, and 
Senator McCaskill was the ranking member at that time. We introduced 
the bill that year, and reintroduced it in January of 2017. Today, the 
bill is cosponsored by almost a third of this body, balanced nearly 
evenly on both sides of the aisle.
  I am disappointed to learn that my colleague Senator Warren has filed 
an amendment that would seriously undermine the Senior$afe Act by 
restricting its provisions just to liability that may arise under the 
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. If this amendment were to pass, financial 
service providers that report suspected frauds against seniors could 
still face liability under other laws or causes of action, which would 
discourage providers from making these critical reports. I understand 
that the proponent of this amendment contends that Senior$afe could 
somehow shield a financial service provider from its own fraud. That is 
simply not correct.
  In order to receive the protections of the Senior$afe Act, financial 
service providers must train their employees to spot suspicious 
activity that may indicate fraud targeting seniors, and make good 
faith, reasonable reports of that suspicious activity to the proper 
authorities. The bill is clear that it only shields reporting a 
suspected fraud; there is no protection for committing a fraud.
  Combating financial abuse of seniors requires consumers, regulators, 
law enforcement, and social service agencies at all levels of 
government to work collaboratively with the private sector. The stakes 
could not be higher. According to the GAO, financial fraud targeting 
older Americans is a growing epidemic that costs seniors an estimated 
$2.9 billion annually. Stopping this tsunami of fraud is one of the top 
priorities of the Aging Committee. Over the years, we have held 
numerous hearings exposing an endless variety of financial abuses 
targeting our Nation's seniors. These range from the notorious IRS 
phone scam that burst onto the scene in 2015, to the incredible ``drug 
mule'' scam, where trusting seniors have been tricked by international 
narcotics traffickers into unwittingly serving as drug couriers, and 
then find themselves arrested and locked up in foreign jails.
  Just last week, our committee heard the story of Stephen and Rita 
Shiman from Saco, ME, who lost more than $1,200 in the notorious 
grandparent scam. In this scam, fraudsters call a senior pretending to 
be a family member, often a grandchild, and claim to be in urgent need 
of money to cover an emergency, medical care, or a legal problem.
  Sadly, not all scammers are strangers to their victims--in too many 
cases, seniors are exploited by someone they know well. Sometimes, that 
abuse is perpetrated by ``friends'' or family members who are handling 
the victim's affairs informally. Other times, the abuse is committed 
under the color of a fiduciary relationship, such as a power of 
attorney or guardianship.
  No matter the scheme, one factor is common to all: The fraudsters 
gain the trust and cooperation of their victims. Without this, their 
schemes would fail. The scammers also push their victims to act fast 
and not to tell anyone what they are doing.
  Unfortunately, due to the ruthless cunning of the scam artists, many 
seniors do not see the red flags that signal fraud. Sometimes they are 
too trusting or are suffering from diminished capacity, but just as 
often, they miss the signs because the swindlers who prey on them are 
extremely crafty and know how to sound convincing. Whatever the reason, 
a warning sign that can slip by a victim might trigger a second look by 
financial service representatives trained to spot common scams, who 
know enough about a senior's habits to question a transaction that 
doesn't look right. In our work on the Aging Committee, we have heard 
of many instances where quick action by bank and credit union employees 
has stopped a fraud in progress, saving seniors untold thousands of 
dollars.
  Let me give you an example. In 2016, an attorney in the small coastal 
city of Belfast, ME, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for bilking 
two elderly female clients out of nearly a half a million dollars over 
the course of several years.
  The lawyer's brazen theft was uncovered when a teller at a local bank 
noticed that he was writing large checks to himself on his clients' 
accounts.
  When confronted by authorities, he offered excuses that the 
prosecutor later described as ``breathtaking.'' He submitted bills for 
``services,'' sometimes totaling $20,000 a month, including charging 
her $250 per hour for 6 to 7 hours to check on her house, even though 
his office was just a 1-minute drive down the road.
  In another example, a senior citizen in Vassalboro, ME, was looking 
to wire funds from his account at Maine Savings Federal Credit Union to 
an out-of-State location, supposedly to bail out a relative who was in 
jail. Something about this transaction did not sound right to the 
credit union employee. She asked the customer, and he said he had 
received a call from an ``official'' at the jail, but that official had 
instructed him not to speak to anyone about this. The official, of 
course, turned out to be a con artist.
  Fortunately, the credit union worker recognized this as a scam, and 
her quick thinking saved her customer from falling victim and losing 
his savings.
  These stories demonstrate the critical nexus that financial 
institutions occupy between fraudsters and their victims. Their 
employees, if properly trained, can be the first line of defense 
protecting our seniors from these criminals. Regrettably, various 
Federal laws can inadvertently impede efforts to protect seniors 
because financial institutions that report suspected fraud can be 
exposed to litigation. The Senior$afe Act encourages financial 
institutions to train their employees and shields them from lawsuits 
when they make good-faith, reasonable reports of potential fraud to the 
proper authorities.
  There is no doubt that financial fraud and scams targeting seniors is 
a growing problem. In 2016, the Aging Committee heard testimony from 
Jaye Martin, the executive director of Maine Legal Services for the 
Elderly, who told the committee that her organization had seen a 24-
percent increase in reports of elder abuse in just 1 year. Many of 
these cases involve financial fraud.
  In a letter describing her support for the Senior$afe Act, Ms. Martin 
said that:

       In a landscape that includes family members who often wish 
     to keep exploitation from coming to light because they are 
     perpetrating the exploitation, the risk of facing potential 
     nuisance or false complaints over privacy violations is all 
     too real. This is a barrier that must be removed so that 
     financial institutions will act immediately to report to the 
     proper authorities upon forming a reasonable belief that 
     exploitation is occurring. These professionals are on the 
     front lines in the fight against elder financial exploitation 
     and are often the only ones in a position to stop 
     exploitation before it is too late.

  I ask unanimous consent that Ms. Martin's letter be printed in the 
Record following my remarks.
  Our bill is based on Maine's innovative Senior$afe program, a 
collaborative effort by Maine's regulators, financial institutions, and 
consumer and legal organizations to educate bank

[[Page S1712]]

and credit union employees on how to identify and help stop financial 
exploitation of older Mainers. This program, pioneered by Maine 
Securities Administrator Judith Shaw, also serves as the template for 
model legislation developed for adoption at the State level by the 
North American Securities Administrators Association, or NASAA. The 
Senior$afe Act and NASAA's model State legislation are complementary 
efforts, and I am pleased that NASAA has endorsed our bill.
  I ask unanimous consent that the letter from NASAA regarding the 
Senior$afe Act of 2017 be printed in the Record following my remarks.
  I am pleased that our bill has received bipartisan support in both 
houses of Congress. Besides receiving broad support in Congress, our 
bill has the support of a wide range of stakeholders, ranging from the 
State securities administrators and insurance commissioners to 
advocates for seniors, such as AARP.
  The Senior$afe Act encourages financial institutions to train their 
employees and shields them from lawsuits when they make good-faith, 
reasonable reports of potential fraud to the proper authorities.
  I am pleased the Senior$afe Act is included in the bill currently 
before the Senate, and I look forward to it finally becoming law.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                               Legal Services for the Elderly,

                                    Augusta, ME, December 5, 2016.
     Re Senior$afe (S 2216).

     Senator Susan Collins,
     Chair, Senate Special Committee on Aging,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Collins: I want to thank you for inviting me 
     to speak with the Senate Special Committee on Aging about the 
     serious problem of financial exploitation of seniors by 
     guardians and others in a position of power. I also want to 
     thank you for your leadership in working to ensure there is 
     training of financial institution employees in reporting 
     elder abuse and an improvement in the timely reporting of 
     financial exploitation when it is suspected through passage 
     of the Senior$afe Act. I strongly support this legislation 
     that is based upon work done here in Maine.
       I served for over two years on the working group that 
     developed Maine's Senior$afe training program for financial 
     institution managers and employees. It is a voluntary 
     training program. Through that work I came to fully 
     appreciate the very real concerns of the financial industry 
     regarding the consequences of violating, or being perceived 
     as violating, the broad range of state and federal privacy 
     laws that apply to their industry. I also came to appreciate 
     that absent broad immunity for reporting of suspected 
     financial exploitation, privacy regulations would continue to 
     be a barrier to good faith reporting of suspected financial 
     exploitation. In a landscape that includes family members who 
     often wish to keep exploitation from coming to light because 
     they are perpetrating the exploitation, the risk of facing 
     potential nuisance or false complaints over privacy 
     violations is all too real.
       This is a barrier that must be removed so that financial 
     institution employees will act immediately to make a report 
     to the proper authorities upon forming a reasonable belief 
     that exploitation is occurring. These professionals are on 
     the front lines in the fight against elder financial 
     exploitation and are often the only ones in a position to 
     stop exploitation before it is too late.
       I want to add that tying the grant of immunity to required 
     training for not just supervisors, compliance officers, and 
     legal advisors, but to all who come in contact with seniors 
     as a part of their regular duties, will have the direct 
     result of bringing more cases of exploitation to the timely 
     attention of the proper authorities because it will 
     significantly increase the knowledge and awareness in the 
     industry of the red flags for elder abuse. In Maine, where 
     our training program is entirely voluntary and carries no 
     legal status or benefit, we have already seen what a 
     difference training can make.
       Senior$afe is a much needed step in the fight against 
     financial exploitation of seniors and there is no doubt it 
     will make our nation's seniors safer. I thank you again for 
     your leadership in this important area.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Jaye L. Martin,
     Executive Director.
                                  ____

                                         North American Securities


                             Administrators Association, Inc.,

                                 Washington, DC, January 24, 2017.
     Re The Senior$afe Act of 2017.

     Senator Susan Collins,
     Chair, U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Senator Collins: On behalf of the North American 
     Securities Administrators Association (``NASAA''), I am 
     writing to express strong support for your work to better 
     protect vulnerable adults from financial exploitation through 
     the introduction of the Senior$afe Act of 2017. Your 
     legislation will better protect persons aged 65 and older 
     from financial exploitation by increasing the likelihood it 
     will be identified by financial services professionals, and 
     by removing barriers to reporting it, so that together we as 
     state securities regulators and other appropriate 
     governmental authorities can help stop it.
       Senior financial exploitation is a growing problem across 
     the country. Many in our elderly population are vulnerable 
     due to social isolation and distance from family, caregiver, 
     and other support networks. Indeed, evidence suggests that as 
     many as one out of every five citizens over the age of 65 has 
     been victimized by a financial fraud. To be successful in 
     combating senior financial exploitation, state and federal 
     policymakers must come together to weave a new safety net for 
     our elderly, breaking down barriers for those who are best 
     positioned to identify red flags early on and to encourage 
     reporting and referrals to appropriate local, county, state, 
     and federal agencies, including law enforcement.
       The Senior$afe Act consists of several essential features. 
     First, to promote and encourage reporting of suspected 
     elderly financial exploitation by financial services 
     professionals, who are positioned to identify and report 
     ``red flags'' of potential exploitation, the bill would 
     incentivize financial services employees to report any 
     suspected exploitation by making them immune from any civil 
     or administrative liability arising from such a report, 
     provided that they exercised due care, and that they make 
     these reports in good faith. Second, in order to better 
     assure that financial services employees have the knowledge 
     and training they require to identify ``red flags'' 
     associated with financial exploitation, the bill would 
     require that, as a condition of receiving immunity, financial 
     institutions undertake to train certain personnel regarding 
     the identification and reporting of senior financial 
     exploitation.
       The Senior$afe Act's objectives and benefits are far-
     reaching. Older Americans stand to benefit directly from such 
     reporting, because early detection and reporting will 
     minimize their financial losses from exploitation, and 
     because improved protection of their finances ultimately 
     helps preserve their financial independence and their 
     personal autonomy. Financial institutions stand to benefit, 
     as well, through preservation of their reputation, increased 
     community recognition, increased employee satisfaction, and 
     decreased uninsured losses.
       In conclusion, state securities regulators strongly support 
     passage of the Senior$afe Act of 2017. Please do not hesitate 
     to contact me, or Michael Canning, NASAA Director of Policy, 
     if we may be of any additional assistance.
           Sincerely,

                                                 Mike Rothman,

                                     NASAA President and Minnesota
                                         Commissioner of Commerce.

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, today I wish to speak on the importance of 
helping our community banks and credit unions. These institutions are 
on the ground daily helping our families and small businesses. They 
deserve recognition. They also deserve our careful consideration of 
regulatory adjustments that will help them continue their work.
  Let me be clear: There are parts of S. 2155 I disagree with, as do 
many of my colleagues, but what I think that we can all agree on is the 
good works that our local credit unions and banks do for our 
communities.
  Community banks and credit unions anchor our towns, helping our 
workers and businesses. These institutions provide more than just 
savings and checking services. Many provide credit counseling and 
financial management. They help individuals save for education or for a 
financially secure retirement. They provide the mortgage loans that 
make homeownership a realistic goal for many families. They get to know 
our small businesses and provide them with much-needed financial 
support. Most importantly, they do so in a way that is tailored to 
their communities.
  I would like to emphasize the role that community banks and credit 
unions play with respect to small businesses especially. We talk a lot 
about Main Street businesses in this body. As the ranking member of the 
Small Business Committee, I am keenly aware of the need to provide our 
small businesses with adequate resources and support, including through 
access to capital. This is especially the case for underserved 
communities, where the bigger banks simply don't have a presence.
  There are provisions in this bill that will help. For example, for 
credit unions, the bill changes the designation of certain real estate 
loans which have previously been classified as business loans. This 
will free up capital for small business lending. It is through changes 
like these that we can carefully tailor regulations, address regulatory 
unfairness or duplication, and help our local lenders.

[[Page S1713]]

  In Maryland, we are fortunate to still have a good number of these 
local institutions. We have almost 90 credit unions in Maryland who 
have about 1.9 million members. These credit unions serve many of the 
Federal workers that we in Congress work with every day. They provide 
services and support for our Department of Defense employees, our 
Library of Congress employees, our National Institutes of Health 
employees, and our State and county workers who keep our communities 
going. Because of their close ties with their membership, these credit 
unions and others like them are able to offer special services that big 
banks may not have the incentive to provide.
  Similarly, our community banks remain strong. There are 54 community 
banks chartered in the State. Our community banking sector employs over 
35,000 Marylanders. These banks have withstood the Great Recession and 
even the Great Depression. For instance, Eastern Savings Bank in 
Baltimore was established in 1905, pulled through the chaos of the 
Depression in 1929, and still operates four service branches throughout 
Maryland today, with a customer base of primarily local residents. All 
of our Maryland community banks are essential to our urban, suburban, 
and rural communities. They are critical to economic growth in my 
hometown of Baltimore. They provide nearly half of the industry's small 
business loans, despite making up less than 20 percent of the banking 
industry's assets.
  It would be naive to ignore the fact that the number of these 
institutions is shrinking. They have a difficult market to navigate. 
One-size-fits-all regulations can exacerbate this trend. This doesn't 
mean that we should not provide oversight of this sector of our 
economy; however, I think carefully considering ``tailoring'' our 
approach to regulating is more than appropriate here. I think we can 
all agree on this principle. Many of the credit union and community 
bank provisions we are considering, standing alone, have broad 
bipartisan support. If those provisions stood alone, my vote on such a 
bill would be a yes.
  S. 2155, of course, contains more than community bank and credit 
union provisions, and I share some of the concerns voiced by my 
colleagues on this bill, especially regarding consumer protections in 
certain industries. At the same time, I cannot stress enough how 
important it is to strengthen our credit unions and community banks. I 
look forward to continuing to work on these issues, especially on small 
business lending, with my colleagues going forward.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today I wish to discuss the Economic 
Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.
  While I would welcome regulatory reform for the small banks and 
credit unions in Minnesota that didn't cause the financial crisis, I'm 
concerned that this bill is a missed opportunity to improve consumer 
protection and that it reduces the regulatory oversight of larger 
banks, which could increase systemic risk in the financial system and 
put taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts.
  I have long believed that Minnesota's community banks and credit 
unions play a vital role in our communities and are deserving of 
regulatory relief. I was one of the first Democrats to support 
legislative action in past Congresses and helped develop and champion 
numerous proposals for reform for the community banks and credit 
unions.
  Unfortunately, title IV of the bill, especially section 401, which 
raises the asset threshold for enhanced supervision from $50 billion 
all the way to $250 billion, goes too far and threatens to increase 
systemic risk. The community banks and credit unions in Minnesota with 
which I have spoken in recent weeks have acknowledged they would have 
preferred a bill that was limited to regulation that directly affected 
them, and I would have welcomed the opportunity to cast a vote in favor 
of such a bill, but I will not vote in favor of this bill.
  Thank you.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, today I wish to speak about some specific 
provisions S. 2155.
  I was proud to be one of the original drafters of Dodd-Frank 
legislation. We didn't get everything right in that bill. With the 
benefit of 8 years of hindsight, we have been able to see what has 
worked and what hasn't.
  Most of what hasn't worked well has been the excessive burdens put on 
community banks. The bill the Senate considered today, one that I am a 
proud cosponsor of, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and 
Consumer Protection Act, does a lot of good for community banks and 
many regional banks by reducing some of the compliance costs these 
banks face, so that they may better compete and end the phenomenon of 
``too small to survive.''
  Since the crisis, however, what has worked best is increased capital 
requirements and an updated capital planning regime for medium and 
large-sized banks. Put simply, no amount of prudential regulation on 
products or business lines can substitute for requiring banks to keep 
robust capital cushions. Ensuring that banks hold significant loss 
absorbing, capital is the best protection we have against the failure 
of banks during a crisis. It is also the best tool we have to make sure 
that even in an economic downturn, banks still have the ability to lend 
to creditworthy borrowers, so that we can rebound quickly from a 
downturn.
  Critically, S. 2155 makes no changes to the risk-based capital regime 
for regional and large banks that has been the centerpiece of the 
Federal Reserve's post-crisis work.
  The international Basel III capital accord was agreed by banking 
regulators in 2010 to 2011. As implemented in the US, Basel III 
requires a minimum Common Equity Tier 1, CET1, ratio of 4.5 percent, up 
from 2 percent in Basel II. Minimum tier 1 capital increased from 4 
percent in Basel II to 6 percent in Basel III, which includes 
additional 1.5 percent on top of the required CET1 ratio. The U.S. has 
finalized rules to implement two additional capital buffers on top of 
this 6 percent baseline tier 1 capital requirement: a mandatory capital 
conservation buffer, as adjusted by a risk-weighted capital surcharge 
on U.S. G-SIBs, and a discretionary countercyclical buffer, which the 
Fed can use to require additional capital during periods of high credit 
growth.
  These risk-based capital requirements, as implemented by the U.S. 
banking regulators, have formed a core part of the U.S. bank regulatory 
response to the financial crisis. S. 2155 changes none of these 
requirements for regional and large banks.
  An important complement to risk-based capital requirements is 
supervisory stress testing. Stress tests help make sure that banks have 
adequate capital to absorb losses and more still to lend even in a 
serious recession so that they will be able to continue to lend to 
households and businesses. S. 2155 did not modify the requirement that 
banks larger than $250 billion must continue to undergo annual 
supervisory stress tests. Regional banks between $100 billion and $250 
billion must also continue to undergo what Chair Powell called before 
the Banking Committee meaningful, strong, and frequent stress tests.
  Let me make clear: S. 2155 uses the same language as Dodd-Frank to 
describe the stress test that should apply to banks between $100 
billion and $250 billion because we believe the stress tests applied to 
those banks should continue to be meaningful assessments of the capital 
adequacy of those institutions under severely adverse conditions. The 
requirement in section 401 to conduct stress tests of those banks would 
be satisfied by continuing to apply the section 165 supervisory stress 
tests to those banks. We have chosen to single out stress tests for 
banks between $100 billion and $250 billion because we believe it is 
the most important enhanced prudential standard in section 165 of Dodd-
Frank.
  We believe it is prudent for the Federal Reserve to have discretion 
to apply the other enumerated enhanced prudential standards in section 
165 to those or a subset of those banks as part of the strong and 
tailored regime that should apply to those banks going forward. Indeed, 
under the bill, the Fed can apply an enhanced prudential standard to 
those banks for financial stability reasons or simply to ``promote the 
safety and soundness'' of a bank, which is a low standard. Although the 
Fed is the entity that is best positioned to make the determination for 
many enhanced prudential

[[Page S1714]]

standards, Congress believes that meaningful, strong and frequent 
stress tests are non-negotiable.
  Supervisory stress tests alone, however, do not set any capital 
ratios or limit any capital actions by the banks. The Federal Reserve's 
Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, CCAR, framework, however, 
integrates supervisory stress testing with risk-based capital 
requirements to assess the overall capital adequacy of banks, making it 
the most important supervisory tool the Federal Reserve has for larger 
banks. Specifically, CCAR requires evaluations of whether each bank's 
capital provides an adequate buffer for the losses that would be 
incurred during the stress scenarios, whether its risk management and 
capital planning processes are appropriately well-developed and 
governed and how its dividend or buyback plans could affect its ability 
to remain viable in stressed conditions. The Federal Reserve may 
object--and has objected--to a capital plan based on quantitative or 
qualitative concerns. If it does, the bank is not permitted to make any 
capital distribution without Fed authorization.
  The Federal Reserve, without direction from Congress, has taken 
actions under both former Chair Yellen and Chair Powell to refine the 
CCAR process to reduce regulatory burdens. For example, in 2016, the 
Fed announced that smaller banks subject to CCAR would not need to be 
subject to the same qualitative requirements as larger, more complex 
banks. That was a sensible change.
  Congress has shown it knows how to exercise its article I prerogative 
in many places in S. 2155 to adjust, tailor, and modify thresholds for 
applicability for rules that apply to banks that have $50 billion or 
more in assets, but Congress has not made any changes to CCAR in S. 
2155. The omission of CCAR and the capital plan rule from the changes 
that S. 2155 has made to section 165 and some regulations affecting 
some banks is intentional and reflects the continued importance this 
Congress places upon the continued existence of a robust CCAR process 
and the premise that the Fed will continue to use this most important 
supervisory tool appropriately.
  That covers risk-based capital, but let me reiterate a point I made 
in my prior floor speech on this bill, about the importance of the 
leverage ratio. Basel III requires 3 percent tier 1 capital divided by 
the bank's average total consolidated assets. The U.S. implementation 
goes further and requires a minimum leverage ratio of 6 percent for 
SIFI banks and 5 percent for their bank holding companies. That is 
generally a good thing. One of the many lessons of the financial crisis 
was that regulators and bankers alike should approach risk modeling 
with a degree of humility. A strong leverage ratio is an important 
backstop to risk-based requirements that depend on banks and 
regulators' abilities to predict the future.
  Current and former Federal Reserve officials from Governor Tarullo, 
to former Chair Volcker, and former Chair Yellen, to Chair Powell have 
said that the leverage ratio should in general not be the binding 
capital constraint for banks, as it tends to be for the custody banks 
today. The leverage ratio is meant to be, in the words of Jay Powell, 
``an important backstop to the risk-based capital framework,'' but 
noted that ``it is important to get the relative calibrations of the 
leverage ratio and the risk-based capital requirements right'' because 
``doing so is critical to mitigating any perverse incentives and 
preventing distortions in money markets and other safe asset markets.''
  Let's be clear. Section 402 provides relief to only three banks: Bank 
of New York Mellon, State Street, and Northern Trust. I have seen some 
raise the concern that the language in section 402 could be read to 
provide relief to a broader set of banks. That is not a credible 
reading of the statutory language or our legislative intent. Section 
402 says that, in order to receive relief, a ``custody bank'' must be 
``predominantly engaged in custody, safekeeping, and asset servicing 
activities'' to gain the benefit of this provision. This provision does 
not mean that, if a bank has a large custodial business, it should get 
relief, nor is this an invitation to exclude other assets from the 
calculation of total assets for purposes of the leverage ratio. This is 
a targeted fix for a narrow problem.
  So what is the net result of all this technical capital planning and 
stress testing work that the Federal Reserve and other banking 
regulators have developed since 2008? Today, U.S. G-SIBs are have two 
times the amount of capital than they had precrisis. Even if we went 
through an economic downturn worse than the financial crisis, banks 
would have 50 percent more capital after absorbing losses than they did 
in 2008. The substantial increase in capital extends to banks that are 
smaller than the G-SIBs. The common equity capital ratio of the 34 bank 
holding companies in the 2017 CCAR has more than doubled from 5.5 
percent in the first quarter of 2009 to 12.5 percent in the first 
quarter of 2017. This reflects an increase of more than $750 billion in 
common equity capital to a total of $1.25 trillion by the first quarter 
of 2017.
  That is exactly where we should be.
  I am proud to have contributed significantly to both Dodd-Frank and 
the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. S. 
2155 is in many ways as notable for what it doesn't do, particularly 
with respect to capital requirements, as much as what it does do.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, today I want to make a few remarks on S. 
2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection 
Act.
  Section 213 of S. 2155, making online banking initiation legal and 
easy--the intent of this provision, which I introduced as an amendment 
during Committee consideration of S. 2155, is to facilitate the ability 
of financial institutions to reach new and potentially underserved 
consumers by making it possible to offer products and services to 
consumers through online and mobile applications. I would like to 
clarify that, with respect to references in this provision to 
``copies,'' ``scans,'' or other reproductions of a consumer's 
government-issued identification, this is, intended to apply to all 
methods of obtaining information from an identification card, including 
color and black-and-white copies.
  Section 215 of S. 2155, reducing identity fraud--with respect to 
section 215 of the bill, ``reducing identity fraud,'' the intent is to 
provide options for permitted entities to crosscheck consumer 
information with the Social Security Administration, SSA, in such a way 
that is efficient for those entities, as well as the SSA. In 
particular, the intent of this provision is to allow a service provider 
or other permitted entity to contact the SSA's Consent Based Social 
Security Number Verification database pursuant to appropriate consent 
provided to a permitted entity--such as a creditor--and to then provide 
the ``yes/no'' response from SSA to permitted entities who request such 
information in the future. In this way, creditors can receive the 
important validation of a name, date of birth, and Social Security 
number as part of the consumer report they receive when underwriting a 
credit application. This would result in fewer inquiries made to and 
received by the SSA. Furthermore, as mentioned, this provision would 
require consumer consent as part of the normal credit application 
process, similar to how creditors request consumer consent to obtain 
consumer credit reports in connection with an application. Under 
section 215, consumer consent can now be given via electronic signature 
obtained by the creditor or other permitted entities. Nothing in this 
provision would require consumers to fill out extra forms, provide 
extra signatures, or do anything that would significantly alter their 
expectations for a seamless application experience. The goal is to 
inform consumers of the possible inquiry to the SSA and allow them to 
provide consent via the chosen method by the creditor, which now 
includes electronic signature.
  The second point I would like to clarify regarding section 215 is the 
importance of ensuring the SSA will implement this section with all 
deliberate speed, with no unreasonable delay to the process. As the 
author of this provision, it is my expectation that the SSA will have 
the database described in this section operational within 1 year of the 
bill's enactment, assuming the appropriate reserve of user fees. Every 
day that goes by without the

[[Page S1715]]

SSA implementing the changes called for in section 215 will lead to 
more children unknowingly becoming victims of synthetic identity theft 
and having their credit ruined.
  Section 310 of S. 2155, credit score competition--the word 
``competition'' in the title of section 310, ``credit score 
competition,'' is the heart of the intent of this part of the bill.
  When enacted into law, Section 310 will put in place a mechanism by 
which credit score model developers may submit their models to Fannie 
Mae and Freddie Mac for validation for use by the enterprises, if the 
models meet validation criteria that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have 
established. Lenders will be able to choose the model that they wish to 
use. The end result of enactment of section 310 of S. 2155 will be a 
competitive market between the developers of empirically derived, 
demonstrably predictive, and statistically sound credit scoring models, 
with appropriate regulatory oversight from the Federal Housing Finance 
Agency under which both consumers and lenders would benefit. A lack of 
such a market thus far in the mortgage finance arena has stifled 
innovation in credit scoring.
  Section 310 allows for more than one credit score model provider to 
have a validated model for use by the enterprises. The Director of the 
FHFA is given the responsibility to see that the validation process is 
undertaken in a timely manner for all applicants and that the 
methodology and results behind each validation decision is released to 
the public.
  Unlike the request for input the FHFA issued in December 2017 on this 
subject, section 310 does not make specific reference to any credit 
score model provider. That is deliberate. Section 310 opens the 
enterprises up to use any model that is able to pass the validation 
process.
  Some critics have raised the specter that providing mortgage lenders 
the opportunity to choose among credit scoring models validated and 
approved by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might trigger ``a race to the 
bottom.'' That is prohibited under section 310, as validated models are 
first deemed to not threaten the safety and soundness of the 
enterprises in order to be used.
  Ms. WARREN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Climate Change

  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the devastating impacts 
of climate change in my home State of New Hampshire and across our 
country. I want to start by commending our colleague Senator 
Whitehouse, who has been a fierce advocate for this issue and, as of 
yesterday, had taken to the floor 200 times to call on Congress to wake 
up and protect our environment.
  I am proud to represent a State whose beautiful natural resources 
strengthen our economy, create jobs, and support our high quality of 
life, but we are already seeing the real impacts of climate change in 
New Hampshire--impacts with major consequences.
  Last year, the ``National Climate Assessment'' report reinforced what 
has long been clear: Human activity is the driving force behind our 
changing climate, and the United States is experiencing more extreme 
weather events, including dangerous heat, heavier rainfall and more 
flooding, and larger wildfires as a result, threatening both our long-
term economic growth and the well-being of our citizens.
  Many people in New Hampshire, particularly on our sea coast, are 
concerned about what these stronger and more frequent storms will mean 
for their families, their homes, and their businesses. Rising sea 
levels and greater precipitation have heightened the risk of flooding 
on our coasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association 
estimates that New Hampshire sea levels are expected to rise between 
six-tenths of a foot and 2 feet by 2050 and between 1.6 feet and 6.6 
feet by 2100. In just the last 2 weeks, our State has been hit by three 
nor'easters. This is not normal.
  You can see here, the flooding that impacted streets and homes in 
Portsmouth, NH, during one of these storms. This chart depicts a photo. 
We have to help our people adapt to these changes, these direct threats 
they face. This starts with focusing on efforts like coastal resiliency 
to help vulnerable communities prepare, improving our infrastructure, 
and developing resilience strategies to help plan ahead of storms and 
extreme weather events. At the local level, people on New Hampshire's 
seacoasts are already doing great work to be proactive and address 
these challenges head-on, so we must support their efforts.

  We must also keep working to mitigate climate change, which is why I 
am continuing to push to cut carbon emissions, conserve and protect our 
natural resources, and build a stronger clean energy future.
  Unfortunately, President Trump has been focused on an agenda that is 
based on climate change denial and has stacked his administration with 
climate change skeptics who have placed the priorities on big oil 
companies over the protection of our natural resources.
  According to a recent Politico report, President Trump has chosen at 
least 20 people to serve as agency leaders and advisers who have 
publicly disagreed with the settled science on climate change. He has 
left key positions vacant, including a science adviser at the Office of 
Science and Technology Policy--an unprecedented move over the last 
several decades in which the office has existed. This clear disdain for 
science and failure to acknowledge the reality of the dangers of 
climate change are seen throughout the administration's policies.
  Last year, President Trump recklessly withdrew the United States from 
the Paris climate agreement--failing to listen to the voices of 
environmental and business leaders who supported this agreement. The 
United States of America now has the distinction of being the only 
country in the world that is not supporting it.
  EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is working to repeal the Clean Power 
Plan, which is critical to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and 
helping our citizens, our businesses, and our economy thrive. We have 
seen several clean air and clean water protections rolled back.
  In addition to reversing environmental protections, the 
administration is taking further steps that can carry extreme risk for 
our environment. This includes the irresponsible plan to open up 90 
percent of our Nation's coastal waters--including New Hampshire's 
seacoast--to the dangers of offshore drilling.
  We are clearly seeing the impacts of climate change. Our citizens are 
calling on us to act, but the lack of leadership from this 
administration and the actions they have taken that exacerbate our 
climate and environmental challenges are--to put it mildly--
irresponsible.
  We need to take proactive steps to protect our environment, not roll 
back key protections. We need to help communities threatened by a 
changing climate, not put the profits of Big Oil first. We need to 
stand up for science, not deny it.
  I will keep working to address climate change and to achieve a 
cleaner environment and stronger energy future that will help our 
citizens, our economy, and our businesses thrive. I urge my colleagues 
to do the same.


                   Recognizing Spaulding High School

  Mr. President, I am proud to recognize not just an individual but the 
entire Spaulding High School community as our Granite Stater of the 
Month for the compassion and commitment to helping others that they 
displayed following the horrific shooting in Parkland, FL.
  In the wake of the senseless violence in Parkland, Spaulding music 
staff and students met to discuss how they could help survivors and 
memorialize the 17 lives which were taken at Marjory Stoneman Douglas 
High School.
  During this dark time, the Spaulding students wanted to focus on 
expressing their love and how to best send comfort to their peers in 
Florida. This led Spaulding students, teachers, and faculty to start an 
initiative--with the members of the band, the color guard, and the 
Junior ROTC playing a leading role--to collect money to support the 
Stoneman Douglas community.

[[Page S1716]]

  In the days that followed, students passed around buckets to collect 
donations, with each student giving what he or she could. In an 
enthusiastic show of support, the Spaulding community raised $3,271 in 
just 2 days.
  Students wanted to do more, so they also presented the Spaulding High 
School Music Department Glass Eagle Leadership Award to the Stoneman 
Douglas Music Department, as that is also the mascot of their school. 
The Junior ROTC group also sent one of its Challenge Coins to 
acknowledge the Parkland students' bravery and resolve.
  Two of the school's music teachers--Joanne Houston and Cheryl 
Richardson--recently flew to Florida to present the gifts to Stoneman 
Douglas's principal and vice principal.
  The selfless support for Stoneman Douglas by the Spaulding High 
School community exemplifies the compassion of the Granite State.
  In New Hampshire and throughout our country today, school communities 
are engaging in walkouts and demanding action to prevent future acts of 
gun violence. I know members of the Spaulding student body are planning 
a walkout, too, and I am profoundly grateful to see our young people 
speaking out and being powerful forces for change.
  I am incredibly proud of these young leaders. We, as a country, must 
meet them in this moment.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              The Economy

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, this week we are debating an important 
piece of legislation that is going to streamline and simplify 
government regulations. We are going to make it easier and cheaper for 
families to get access to loans from their local banks. This 
legislation is good for communities, and it is good for the American 
economy.
  This is just the latest action we have taken in Congress over the 
past year to help give the American economy a boost. The economy is 
responding, and the American people are doing better because of it.
  Here is a headline from the New York Times on Friday: ``The Economy 
is Looking Awfully Strong.'' That is the headline in the New York 
Times--``The Economy is Looking Awfully Strong.'' This article was 
about the jobs report that came out last week. It said that the report 
``can be summed up in four words: The economy is humming.''
  The U.S. economy has already created over 552,000 new jobs in just 
the first 2 months of this year--over half a million new jobs in the 
first 2 months of this year. There are half a million more people 
working today compared to when Republicans passed this tax relief law. 
If we want to go back a little, there are more than 3 million new jobs 
since President Trump was elected in November of 2016. That is a real 
number to look at. That is the moment when people said they had enough 
of slow-growth policies from the Democrats in Washington and elected 
Donald Trump President. That is the moment when businesses realized 
things were going to be different with Republicans in charge.
  More people are working now. And do you know what else? They are 
being paid more. According to the Commerce Department, the take-home 
pay of working people in America increased by $40 billion in January. 
They say it is directly because of the tax relief law that Republicans 
passed last December.
  More than 4 million workers are also getting a bonus or a pay 
increase. Four hundred companies have said that is because taxes went 
down. They are sharing the savings with their workers. These are people 
who work at Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Starbucks, and other 
businesses that have familiar names all across America. They are also 
people who work in smaller businesses, like the Jonah Bank in Wyoming, 
at branches in Casper and in Cheyenne. It is not a nationally known 
bank, but it is very important in our State and in our communities. 
Some people who are getting bonuses work at places like Taco John's. 
That is another business that is important to the people of Wyoming. 
When I was in the State senate, Taco John's was a place I went 
regularly to eat lunch. It is one of many Taco John's facilities around 
the State of Wyoming and around the West. Republicans cut taxes, and 
working Americans are seeing more money in their paychecks as a result.
  This is what we see in terms of confidence. This new survey came out 
recently where they talked with the heads of midsized companies all 
around America, and this is what they say: 89 percent of the business 
leaders are confident in the U.S. economy and the economy's prospects 
for the year. U.S. economic confidence soars--in 2016, 39 percent; in 
2017, 80 percent; and in 2018, now 89 percent. The American people 
realize we have now beaten back 8 years of bad policies from Democrats 
in Washington. As soon as President Trump took office, we saw 
confidence soar, and I don't know that it has ever been higher.
  Americans are feeling better about the U.S. economy. They are also 
feeling better about their own personal situations. That is the key--
people's own personal situations. That is certainly the case in my home 
State of Wyoming.
  The polling company Gallup looked at overall economic confidence 
State by State. They found that Wyoming is the most confident State in 
the country when it comes to America's economy. Attitudes about the 
economy turned positive immediately after Donald Trump was elected 
President in 2016. You could feel it. You could feel the confidence. 
You could feel the optimism. You could feel the positiveness in the 
people of Wyoming. People living in 43 out of the 50 States now have a 
positive view of the economy, and Wyoming, of course, is No. 1.
  People I talk to at home--I was in Cody, WY, this past weekend, as 
well as in Sheridan and Riverton and Casper and around the State 
talking to people in various communities. The people I talked to about 
the economy will tell you it is because businesses are hiring again. 
People are doing better. They see their take-home pay going up. They 
see their taxes going down. They see that Republican policies are 
making their lives better. They see that Republican policies are also 
making the economy stronger. They see that Republican policies are 
making it easier for people to achieve their dreams and to enjoy their 
lives. It comes from tax relief. It comes from cutting regulations, as 
we are doing this week.
  What are the Democrats offering? Well, last week, the Democratic 
leader came to the floor and said he wants to raise taxes by $1 
trillion. That is what the leader of the Democratic Party said on the 
floor of the Senate last week. He wants to raise taxes by $1 trillion. 
Is he serious? A trillion dollars? Raising taxes? Taking away from 
people the tax cuts they have just started to enjoy?
  More people have jobs. The economy is humming. The New York Times 
says the economy is humming. Ninety percent of working Americans have 
increases in their take-home pay. That is because of the tax cuts this 
body passed. Democrats want to reverse it all. That is what we hear on 
the floor of the Senate. They want to take back the money. They want to 
roll back the progress we have made. That is their plan--raise taxes. 
That is what we hear from the Democrats.
  Senator Schumer came to the floor of the Senate, and he said: ``There 
are much better uses for the money.'' That is what he said on the floor 
of the Senate. That is what the Washington Democrats always say. They 
have better uses for the money than the American people do. They have a 
better idea, they always say, about how to use somebody else's money. 
They want higher taxes. They want more Washington spending because they 
think they know best. They don't think the money should go to pay 
increases or bonuses for working Americans. Really? They think it 
should go to Washington? I think American families know how to spend 
their paychecks better than any Washington Democrat ever will.

  Democrats say they want to use this $1 trillion in new taxes to pay 
for infrastructure. We all know that America's infrastructure--our 
roads, our bridges,

[[Page S1717]]

our dams, our waterways--are in desperate need of attention, but as 
chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I can tell you 
that I am committed to improving this situation by working with the 
President and working on both sides of the aisle. If Democrats want to 
talk about a robust and fiscally responsible infrastructure plan that 
is going to help the American economy, then I am ready to have that 
conversation, but if all they want to do is talk about raising taxes on 
American families, they are wasting their breath.
  There is a very big difference between Republicans and Democrats in 
Congress: Republicans want the American people to keep more of their 
hard-earned money. Democrats want Washington to take more of people's 
money. Republicans want new policies that grow the economy, create 
jobs, and inspire confidence in a brighter future. Democrats want the 
same old tax-and-spend policies that have failed for years. Their 
policies have led to slow growth, stagnant wages, and a terrible lack 
of confidence in our economy.
  Republicans promised that our ideas will do better, and the results 
from the tax cuts and the tax relief speak for themselves. The economy 
is strong. Confidence is off the charts.
  The American people deserve this chance to have a brighter future. 
That is what Republicans are offering, and that is also what 
Republicans are delivering.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I want to associate myself with the 
comments of the esteemed Senator from Wyoming. I think he described 
very well the extremely positive impact that tax relief is having on 
our country, on economic growth, on job creation, and on higher wages 
and incomes for hard-working Americans.
  I rise today, however, to talk about the Economic Growth, Regulatory 
Relief, and Consumer Protection Act and the important reforms we are 
making to spur economic development, facilitate more lending, and 
reduce burdensome regulations on our community banks and credit unions.
  The Dodd-Frank Act was enacted in 2010 following the financial crisis 
in an attempt to reduce systemic risks the financial sector posed to 
the economy. This far-reaching law touched every aspect of the 
financial system, including many small community banks and credit 
unions around the country and in my home State of North Dakota and 
across this Nation, in North Carolina and in every State in the Union. 
These community banks and credit unions are not what pose the systemic 
risks that Dodd-Frank was passed to address.
  At almost 850 pages long, Dodd-Frank required more than 10 regulatory 
agencies to write almost 400 new rules, which added more than 27,000 
new Federal restrictions on American businesses. Think about that 
regulatory burden--more than 27,000 new Federal restrictions on 
American businesses.
  Compliance costs to implement these Dodd-Frank rules have exceeded 
$36 billion--I repeat, $36 billion--which is ultimately passed on to 
consumers. It required nearly 73 million paperwork hours. In fact, 
agencies were still writing Dodd-Frank regulations after the law was 
passed. These costs hit small banks and credit unions especially hard, 
harming the driving forces of economic growth in rural areas and in our 
underserved areas. These financial institutions provide critical 
funding for credit for families and small businesses, especially in 
rural areas and in underserved areas. Rural States particularly feel 
that impact, like my home State of North Dakota.

  Because of their small size, community banks and credit unions have a 
more difficult time complying with excessively complex reporting and 
paperwork requirements. Compliance costs have hastened bank closures in 
small towns, leading to a growing number of places with no bank 
branches--meaning, not having financial services for consumers.
  Nationwide, more than one in five U.S. banks have disappeared; that 
is more than 1,700 institutions--or more than one small bank or 
financial institution every business day--that have shut down since 
Dodd-Frank was enacted. That means less access to financial services 
for consumers across this country, particularly those who don't live in 
our large urban areas.
  Since Dodd-Frank was signed into law, North Dakota has lost over one-
fifth of its credit unions, with the number of credit unions in North 
Dakota declining from 47 in 2010 to 35 today. The number of community 
banks in North Dakota similarly dropped from 90 in 2010 to 74 today. 
These institutions have been forced to merge and consolidate due to the 
overly burdensome regulatory compliance costs associated with Dodd-
Frank.
  The ultimate loser, of course, from these increased regulations, 
compliance costs, and the subsequent consolidation ends up being the 
very consumer that Dodd-Frank was intended to protect. Whether you are 
shopping for a loan to fund an innovative startup business, operating 
capital for your family farm, or seeking a mortgage to purchase your 
first home, fewer banks and fewer credit unions means fewer options for 
consumers.
  In North Dakota and in rural communities Nationwide, our community 
banks and credit unions serve just that--the communities. They serve 
their local communities. They are not only savings and lending 
institutions for hard-working neighbors, local businesses, farmers, 
ranchers, and community members, but they are willing to work with 
borrowers facing circumstances unique to their rural community. They 
know their customer. They know their community. They know their service 
area.
  Rural community banks and credit unions typically make loans that 
don't fit the standard mortgage mold. Properties that are not cookie-
cutter residential properties are very common in rural markets. Rural 
lenders tend to use their knowledge of the market and the customer to 
structure loans that work for both the borrower and the bank. In other 
words, they make a loan fit the customer, rather than trying to make 
the customer fit a one-size-fits-all loan program with too much 
regulation. That might require using multiple pieces of property as 
collateral for the loan or utilizing a short-term loan to assist with a 
renovation that is paid off with the sale of a crop.
  Documenting assets and cash to close a loan may look very different. 
For example, livestock in a feedlot waiting for sale or crops ready for 
harvest or in storage silos may substitute for cash in the bank that 
would typically get a borrower to qualify for a loan under the 
standardized approach where one size is supposed to fit everyone.
  The fundamental purpose of community banks and credit unions is to 
serve their local communities. In North Dakota, they do this by forging 
personal relationships with the small businesses, farmers and ranchers, 
and individuals in their communities. By knowing their customers, they 
are able to offer products tailored to each individual who comes into 
the bank.
  Dodd-Frank undermines this fundamental purpose by forcing banks and 
credit unions to fit their customers into a one-size-fits-all mortgage 
lending product called ``qualified mortgages.'' While this may work for 
urban and suburban lenders who sell their mortgages to the largest Wall 
Street banks, we have seen that it does not work in our rural States 
and our rural areas.
  The bill we are now considering provides relief to rural customers by 
deeming certain mortgages held by lenders with less than $10 billion in 
assets as qualified mortgages, allowing community banks and credit 
unions to expand the types of mortgages they offer while maintaining 
critical consumer protections--meaning more choice and more opportunity 
for financing for consumers across the country. This means that our 
community banks and credit unions in our State and across the Nation 
will be able to offer a wider range of credit products and better serve 
the small businesses, farmers and ranchers, and hard-working 
individuals in our communities.
  Another important issue facing our rural communities is a critical 
shortage of appraisers. The appraisal is a key component of the home-
buying process and is important to both borrowers and lenders. The bank 
wants to know that the home financing they provide can be supported by 
the collateral, and the borrower wants to make

[[Page S1718]]

sure they are not paying more than the home is worth.
  In rural areas, including my State and many others, conducting 
appraisals can be more complex than in suburban and urban areas because 
there are fewer sales and fewer comparable properties. This makes it 
vitally important that there are local appraisers who are familiar with 
the area they are working in. However, we are seeing a dramatic 
shortage of appraisers right now in our State and I know in other 
States as well. For example, of the 53 counties in our State, 29 have 
no resident appraisers. This means that all properties sold in those 
counties are appraised by appraisers from outside the county, sometimes 
from across the State. This can lead to significant wait times for an 
appraisal to be completed, as well as the potential for inaccurate 
appraisals.
  This bill provides relief for home buyers in rural areas by exempting 
rural mortgage portfolio loans of less than $400,000 from being 
required to have a certified appraisal if the lender is unable to find 
a State-certified or licensed appraiser to perform that certified 
appraisal within 5 days. This will help reduce the cost to consumers 
and streamline the already time-consuming home-buying process.
  Additionally, this bill helps further protect consumers from identity 
theft and other predatory practices by requiring credit bureaus to 
provide consumers with one free freeze alert and one free unfreeze 
alert per year. These tools will empower consumers to take more control 
over their credit and better protect themselves from potential fraud.
  This legislation also includes a provision I cosponsored that would 
provide protections for bank employees who disclose the suspected 
exploitation of a senior citizen to a regulatory or law enforcement 
agency. This will encourage whistleblowers to come forward and protect 
senior citizens from financial exploitation.
  Additionally, I have filed an amendment, which I am urging my 
colleagues to support, that would help our farmers weather the low 
commodity prices and economic downturns in farm country. I have heard 
from many farmers and bankers across the country that the current Farm 
Service Agency, or FSA, loan program levels are outdated and do not 
reflect the current ag economy.
  My amendment would increase the maximum direct loan amount for the 
Farm Operating and Farm Ownership Programs to $600,000 from the current 
level of $300,000. It would also increase the maximum guaranteed loan 
amount for these programs from $1.39 million to $2.5 million. This 
would allow new and beginning farmers to purchase land and equipment or 
provide necessary operating capital to help farmers endure through the 
downturn in commodity prices. I will continue to work with my 
colleagues on that amendment.
  In conclusion, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer 
Protection Act provides real regulatory relief to our community banks 
and credit unions. I believe this will benefit consumers across this 
country. It empowers lenders to sell products tailored to their 
customers, assists rural communities impacted by the shortage of 
certified appraisers, and provides enhanced consumer protections from 
identity theft, fraud, and predatory practices.
  It is past time that we provide regulatory relief to the community 
banks and credit unions across this Nation. Passing this bill will 
further economic development, increase lending in rural communities, 
and alleviate the onerous requirements placed on our small community 
financial institutions by Dodd-Frank. I urge my colleagues to support 
this bill.
  I yield the floor to the distinguished senior Senator from the great 
State of Alabama.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I rise today, as my colleague from North 
Dakota has just done, to speak in support of Senate bill S. 2155, the 
Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.
  In response to the 2008 financial crisis, many individuals 
overreacted to the role that smaller institutions played. In the rush 
to react, these institutions became overregulated. But since the 
drafting and enactment of Dodd-Frank nearly 10 years ago, Congress has 
looked for ways to lessen the damaging effects it has had on our 
financial system in America. As a result of the Dodd-Frank Act, 
thousands of pages of Federal mandates were imposed upon even the 
smallest of financial institutions.
  Community banks all across the country are the key source of lending 
and other financial services on Main Street throughout this Nation. I 
believe we should not, and must not, continue to require them to comply 
with the same regulations as our largest financial institutions that 
are, perhaps, subject to systemic risk.
  This bill before us today fixes that by offering a commonsense 
approach to ensure that our small and medium-sized financial 
institutions are no longer subject to excessive regulation that has 
choked the life from them in the country.
  Senate bill S. 2155 is a result of almost 10 years of negotiations 
among Members of both parties. This legislation was negotiated in good 
faith between Republicans and Democrats to find common ground. In a 
time when partisan politics have derailed many efforts, the bill before 
us moved through regular order out of the Banking Committee, where a 
lengthy and robust amendment debate occurred. Many of us in this body, 
including the Presiding Officer, have spent hours upon hours 
negotiating since the enactment of Dodd-Frank to get to this point 
today. This is a bipartisan bill. This is a good product.
  Time and again, I have advocated for conducting thorough cost-benefit 
analysis on financial regulations. I believe it is Congress's role, 
when tasked with oversight authority, to ensure that the costs of rules 
from Washington do not outweigh the benefits for consumers. However, 
even a simple examination of the activities of small and medium-sized 
banks shows that their practices provide no systemic risk to our 
financial system.
  Many Dodd-Frank regulations are inappropriate for these institutions 
in the country. This has become abundantly clear to most of us. As 
regulatory overreach progressed, community banks and, in turn, local 
economies began to fall on hard times.
  In the 115th Congress, I believe the dynamics have shifted. Beginning 
with our work to reform our Nation's tax system, the economy has been 
performing well. Unemployment has dropped; the total number of 
individuals returning to the workforce has increased. In the Senate, we 
now have a unique opportunity to unlock the chains of stagnation that 
have halted the growth of a lot of our small business.
  Community financial institutions provide more than 60 percent of 
small business loans in this country. Too often, it is easy to forget 
that the personalized touch of community banks has been what started 
the process for success of some of the most accomplished businesses in 
the United States of America. I believe we must pass this bill if we 
want that to continue--if we want to keep creating jobs in this country 
and opportunities for our people.
  In response to my friends from the other side of the aisle who oppose 
our efforts here, I have one simple message: The Economic Growth, 
Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--the bill we have before 
the Senate now--is a thoughtful, bipartisan effort to correct and 
rightsize regulations that were hastily prepared. This product is 
designed to help Main Street, not Wall Street.
  This is a good bill. I hope my colleagues will join me and others in 
support of it.
  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. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I want to address two issues today. One, 
briefly, is the issue of guns about which many of our Democratic 
colleagues have come down to speak. Then I want to speak about the 
financial services regulatory reform bill we will be voting on later 
today.

[[Page S1719]]

  



                            Gun Legislation

  Mr. President, first, on the former topic, a number of our Democratic 
colleagues have been down here, and we have heard a real passion and 
concern about the victims of gun violence in our country. I certainly 
understand and respect their passion. I have spent a lot of time 
working to find sensible measures that will help address this in ways 
that do not infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding 
citizens. It does feel like we are at a somewhat different moment here, 
so I hope we can choose to get something done--something constructive--
and stop talking past each other and find where there is common ground. 
I suggest four steps by which we ought to be able to find reasonable 
consensus in the Senate, ought to be able to get to 60 votes, and be 
able to at least modestly make some progress in this space.
  One is a bill that has been introduced by Senators Cornyn and Murphy, 
a bipartisan bill that is called Fix NICS. The fact is, our background 
check system is only as good as the data that is in the system, and we 
have an inconsistent quality of data. The data is provided, generally, 
by the States. Some States provide excellent, comprehensive, up-to-date 
data--other States, not so much. The Cornyn-Murphy bill would encourage 
better compliance and better data from the States. Better data means we 
would have a better NICS system.
  A second piece of legislation is a bill I have introduced with 
Senator Coons, and the sort of nickname for this legislation is ``Lie 
and Try.'' Our legislation would make it possible for more States to 
prosecute people who commit felonies when they attempt to purchase 
firearms; that is to say, it is those people who knowingly lie about 
their own criminal backgrounds--who deny their criminal histories--in 
the hope that they will be able to somehow circumvent the NICS system 
and buy firearms. It actually happens every day in America that 
convicted felons, who obviously know they are convicted felons, deny 
that and attempt to buy firearms they are not entitled to.
  Our legislation would simply require the FBI, when it discovers that 
someone has committed this sort of felony, to inform the law 
enforcement in the State from which that person comes so the State 
would be able to prosecute, if it would choose to. It is only about 
enforcing the laws on the books. I often hear from my friends who are 
Second Amendment supporters, as I am, that we ought to do a better job 
of enforcing the laws on the books. This is an opportunity to do 
exactly that.
  A third opportunity for us is to recognize that the people whom we 
deem to be so dangerous that we will not allow them to fly on planes--
the people on a terrorist watch list who could show up at airports with 
valid IDs and boarding passes, and we will not let them get on a plane 
as we think they are that dangerous--should also not be allowed to walk 
into gun stores and buy firearms. Senator Collins and Senator Heitkamp 
have introduced legislation. I am a cosponsor of it. It states that if 
someone is so dangerous that we believe them to be a terrorist and we 
won't let them fly, then we also will preclude them from legally buying 
a firearm.

  Lastly, Manchin-Toomey is legislation that Senator Manchin and I 
introduced some years ago, and the idea behind this legislation is 
simply to require a background check on commercial gun sales. Whether 
they occur at a gun show or over the internet, these commercial-scale 
transactions ought to be subject to a background check so that we can 
determine whether the prospective buyer is somebody who we all agree 
shouldn't have a firearm--a dangerously mentally ill person, someone 
who has committed a violent criminal act, someone who is otherwise 
simply disqualified from having a firearm. The only way we can actually 
achieve that is if we have some mechanism to determine whether a person 
is disqualified in this fashion. So Senator Manchin and I have 
legislation that will do that without infringing on the absolutely 
essential constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.
  These four items would be very constructive--fix NICS, ``Lie and 
Try'' legislation, a ``No Fly, No Buy'' bill, and the Manchin-Toomey 
legislation. I hope we are going to make some progress in this space, 
and those would be candidates for doing so.
  Mr. President, let me shift to S. 2155, the legislation we will be 
voting on later today. This legislation is long overdue.
  Let me be very clear about this. The financial crisis we experienced 
is a decade behind us now. The Dodd-Frank financial services regulatory 
bill--a massive construct that wildly overregulates financial 
services--was signed into law 8 years ago, and we have done nothing 
really meaningful to roll that back over these last 8 years.
  This bill is the result of years of bipartisan work, an untold number 
of hearings, and an extraordinary amount of testimony, and now we have 
a product that we are going to, I hope, pass later today to begin to 
roll back some of this excessive regulation.
  I thank all the Democratic and Republican Members who worked to get 
this product to where it is today. Senator Shelby, when he was chairman 
of the Banking Committee, laid much of the groundwork for this. 
Chairman Hensarling in the House, the chairman of the House Financial 
Services Committee, has done great work in this space. Of course, 
Chairman Crapo, as chairman, has done an outstanding job.
  We are at a point where we are very close to finally making some 
progress on this overregulation.
  I will disclose up front that I have my own personal experience and 
bias in this space, having worked with a great group of men and women 
in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. We launched a community 
bank back in 2005, and it was an amazing experience, a great 
experience. It was a very successful bank.
  Back in 2005 when we launched, I was shocked to learn how heavily 
regulated a small, tiny, startup, brandnew community bank was. It 
seemed to me that we needed permission from the regulators to change 
the color of the drapes in the lobby of the bank, and this was all 
before Dodd-Frank was passed. Dodd-Frank came along several years later 
and made things much, much worse--way too prescriptive, way too much 
discretion of power in the hands of regulators, a terrible trickle-down 
effect whereby extensive regulations that were purportedly meant to 
constrain large financial institutions also imposed huge costs on small 
banks. We have gotten to the point where, arguably, small banks are now 
too small to succeed.
  Thirty years ago we had 14,000 banks in America, and today we have 
fewer than 5,000. The trend toward consolidation in banking was 
underway before Dodd-Frank, but Dodd-Frank dramatically worsened it. 
One data point makes it very clear. Before the financial crisis, before 
Dodd-Frank came along, we used to routinely launch, on average, over 
100 banks per year across America. It was an ordinary thing for a group 
of business folks to come together and decide they were going to launch 
a bank to serve their community. It is a great thing when people do 
that because it introduces new competition, new choices for consumers, 
and new access to capital. There were over 100 per year routinely for 
decades. From the time that Dodd-Frank was passed up through to this 
year, we have had five new banks start up in America. We have 
completely destroyed the entire de novo banking industry, and there is 
a price for that. There is a price to communities, there is a higher 
cost of credit, there is less available capital, and that doesn't serve 
anyone well.
  Our legislation, this bill we are going to vote on later today, is 
going to improve the overall regulatory environment. At the same time, 
it is going to make improvements for consumers. Let me touch on a few 
of the features.
  One is designed to improve access to mortgage credit. Section 101 of 
the bill provides regulatory relief for financial institutions if they 
originate a mortgage and keep that mortgage on their portfolio.
  When a financial institution originates a mortgage and sells it, 
which is a very common practice, there is this sense that the financial 
institution doesn't care about the borrower's ability to repay. It 
happens not to be true, but there are very, very extensive regulations 
that are very onerous, and they make it more difficult for borrowers to 
meet the criteria that are acceptable. Well, if the bank is keeping the 
loan on

[[Page S1720]]

its own books, then it should be obvious to everyone that the bank has 
every incentive to make sure the loan is made to someone who can repay 
it. So this section provides some relief and some more flexibility so 
that the bank can actually make a loan that works for that consumer 
rather than one that works for whatever bureaucrats have decided.
  Section 107 allows relief from some of the regulations in the 
manufactured housing space. It is based on legislation that I 
introduced with Senator Donnelly. This will help consumers who are 
using manufactured housing, which is one of the most affordable ways of 
having a home.
  There are consumer protections like section 301, which protects 
consumers' credit by giving consumers greater control over their credit 
reports.
  There is section 302, which protects veterans' credit by helping 
prevent medical debt from improperly harming a veteran's credit report.
  There is help for community banks--the very small banks that are not 
systemically important to their neighborhood, much less the entire 
economy. They are wildly overregulated. This diminishes that burden 
modestly. It simplifies, for instance, their capital requirements.
  Section 202 exempts very small community banks from the Volcker rule. 
Why would we need to exempt them from it? Not so they can engage in the 
proprietary trading or the kinds of investments that the Volcker rule 
precludes, but it recognizes that community banks don't do that anyway. 
They have never done that. They end up, instead, having to spend a 
whole lot of money proving that they don't do that which they have 
never done. It doesn't make any sense. This regulation relieves them of 
some of that burden.
  Section 210 will allow very small banks to have a little bit more 
time between the onerous exams they are subject to periodically. It is 
still very onerous, but at least there is some relief here.
  There is a change in how we treat bank holding companies. We have, 
unfortunately, as a result of Dodd-Frank, this concept of too big to 
fail. We have enshrined it in law by creating what we call SIFIs, or 
systemically important financial institutions. These are officially 
designated ``too big to fail.''
  Frankly, no institution should be too big to fail, but it happens 
under Dodd-Frank automatically when a bank hits $50 billion. That is a 
ridiculously low threshold, so this bill takes that automatic SIFI 
designation up to $250 billion. Frankly, it shouldn't be automatically 
based on the size of the institution; it should be driven by the 
conduct of the institution, the kind of business they do. But at least 
we are raising the threshold from $50 billion to $250 billion.
  By the way, this is problematic, actually, for banks that are a 
little larger than $250 billion. They still have this onerous, complex, 
expensive regime that they have to comply with, while their 
competitors, which might be just a few billion dollars smaller, are 
relieved of this burden. So there is an unfairness in this. I intend to 
work with regulators to basically have this SIFI designation reflect 
the activity of the institution rather than just the size.
  There is another provision, section 402, which deals with the 
supplementary leverage ratio, which goes by the acronym SLR. The SLR is 
basically a minimum capital ratio. It takes a look at the entire 
balance sheet of a bank and says: Regardless of what those assets 
consist of, we are going to have a minimum capital requirement. That, 
of course, is in addition to all the specific capital requirements that 
are associated with the various category of assets. That whole 
regulatory regime remains in place, so we have both simultaneously.
  This legislation has a very, very narrow exception for this secondary 
SLR capital requirement. It simply holds that for those handful--there 
are really only three custody banks, banks that have as their principal 
activity the custody of securities for other financial institutions. 
When they take custody-related cash and they put it on deposit with the 
Fed or another central bank, that is a risk-free transaction. There is 
no risk to an American bank having a dollar-denominated deposit with 
the Fed; therefore, this legislation recognizes that you should not 
have to be hit with an additional capital requirement for such a 
transaction. That is a constructive feature.
  Some have mischaracterized this and suggested that, oh my goodness, 
we could have deposits with the Turkish central bank or the Greek 
central bank. That is clearly factually wrong. The criteria for 
eligibility is very, very narrow, and it is only at the most secure 
central banks in the world, and by the way, mostly it is the Fed.
  A quick additional word about this too-big-to-fail doctrine. I feel 
very strongly that no institution should be too big to fail, and no 
institution should get a taxpayer bailout. Some of my colleagues seem 
to agree with that and have been very critical of a bailout that would 
occur for a financial institution.
  I would suggest that the best way to avoid taxpayers having to bail 
out a financial institution is not to attempt to prescribe every 
conceivable activity through massive regulation but, rather, have a 
bankruptcy code that allows the failure to be resolved in bankruptcy. 
The people who should be wiped out in the event of a failure of a 
financial institution are the shareholders and unsecured creditors, not 
taxpayers.
  So for those of my colleagues who have come down here and expressed 
great concern about potential bailouts, join me in my legislation, 
which adds a chapter to the Bankruptcy Code so that we can successfully 
resolve even a very large and complex financial institution where we 
should, which is in bankruptcy, and not pose a risk to American 
taxpayers. Senator Cornyn and I have legislation that would do that. It 
really, over time, can completely end the debacle of too big to fail, 
and that would be a very constructive development as well.
  Let me conclude by saying that this bill, S. 2155, which is called 
the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, is 
very aptly named. The goals expressed in the title are actually 
achieved in this legislation. I am confident we will make progress on 
all of these fronts if and when--and I think we will--we pass this 
legislation later today.
  I certainly urge my colleagues to support this, but my last plea is 
that this not be the last word on financial regulatory reform. This is 
a constructive step in the right direction, but it is a modest step 
forward. Much more needs to be done if we are going to have a safe but 
robust competitive financial system that is capable of fueling the 
economic growth that our economy is capable of.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader.


                               Gun Safety

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, most people cannot remember what happened 
in the first grade--I have vague memories of being a first grader--but 
there are certain things that may happen even at a young stage in your 
life that will be remembered.
  My 6-year-old granddaughter, who attends first grade in Brooklyn, NY, 
a few weeks ago was told by her teacher what to do if a shooter, if a 
gunman came into the first grade classroom. My little granddaughter was 
told: Don't stand by the window; you could get shot. If they enter the 
classroom with a gun, get down on the floor.

  Is there any sane person in America who believes that is what the 
Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment to 
the Bill of Rights--the right to bear arms--that we would have reached 
a point in America where the prospects of gun violence in the first 
grade classrooms and all the way through school, through high school, 
and college would become a reality in America? I can't imagine anyone 
in their wildest dreams would have imagined that possibility.
  Today is March 14. On February 14, a gunman went into a high school 
in Parkland, FL, and killed 17 people--14 students and 3 members of the 
faculty. It is not the first, by any means. Ten years before it, at 
Northern Illinois University, a gunman killed five there and injured 
many others. The list goes on and on and on.
  This gunman who went into Parkland, FL, wasn't carrying a handgun. He 
was carrying an AR-15. It is a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to 
embellish with a high-capacity magazine that could kill 30 people at a 
time.

[[Page S1721]]

  Why? Why on Earth would that man, 19 years of age, be allowed to buy 
a weapon that was created to be used by the military--a military 
assault weapon, a weapon that sometimes our police may need, but hardly 
ever an individual American could need or want to buy for a legitimate 
sporting or hunting purpose?
  But he did, and 17 were dead after that rampage.
  There has been a lot of reaction to that--more than I expected, I 
will be honest with you, because mass killings have become way too 
common in America. Something happened there--something we saw across 
America today. High school students in that high school came out and 
said: Enough, we are fed up with the laws of this land and the 
politicians who refuse to change them. We are fed up with the fear that 
comes with just going to school in America. We are fed up with those 
who say the Second Amendment requires us to live in fear.
  They have marched in towns across America today. They have marched on 
Washington. They have come to my office and visited with me. I believe 
they have become a major force in the national debate. I commend them. 
I encourage them. I hope they will continue.
  What can we do? You know, politics is tough. It ain't beanbag, as 
they used to say. There are forces like the National Rifle Association 
and the gun lobby that threaten the political existence of Members of 
Congress if they vote the wrong way. I know they came after me when I 
was a Member of the House. They almost got me. It was a tough election 
year. I managed to survive it, but they poured money in and tried to 
beat me. I have never had their support since, and that is OK with me. 
But for a lot of Members of Congress, they are just not willing to risk 
it, not willing to anger the National Rifle Association.
  Do you remember when President Trump had the meeting 2 weeks ago? He 
called in the students and parents and others. He let the cameras roll, 
and they continued the meeting so America could witness it. He 
admonished the Members of Congress there: Don't be scared of the 
National Rifle Association. Don't be petrified by the NRA. We have to 
do something.
  President Trump came out for universal background checks. In a way, 
it is not a very bold and courageous position because 97 percent of the 
American people agree with it. Even gun owners agree with the premise 
that we should do everything in our power to have a background check to 
keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons and mentally unstable 
people. The President came out for that 2 weeks ago, and he also said: 
Why in the world do we let someone 19 years of age buy a military 
assault weapon? We don't need these assault weapons.
  I thought to myself: What a break; here is a Republican President who 
is finally standing up to the gun lobby and supporting positions that 
are overwhelmingly supported by the American people.
  My fellow Senator who is now presiding over the Senate has shown that 
on a bipartisan fashion we can move forward on universal background 
checks. He came together with Senator Manchin of West Virginia on a 
measure that I supported and one that I think we should revisit. I felt 
so encouraged 2 weeks ago.
  Well, what has happened since? That group left the White House and a 
couple of days later, the National Rifle Association came in for lunch 
and the President reversed his position. It is nothing new. I saw him 
do exactly the same thing on DACA and Dreamers. He reversed his 
position and now, instead of universal background checks that will keep 
guns out of the hands of those who would misuse them, they are 
supporting a bill that is good but is not all we need, called Fix NICS, 
which fills some of the information in the background checks for 
purchasing firearms.
  The 17 lives in that high school in Parkland, FL, are worth more than 
this weak response by President Trump and by some in Congress. We must 
do better.
  Let me tell you that the issue here is more than just the safety of 
high schools. A few weeks ago--in fact, a day before the shooting in 
Parkland, FL--an amazing member of the Chicago Police Department, 
Commander Paul Bauer, was downtown for a training session and heard on 
his radio an alert that there was a fugitive escaping. Being a man of 
duty, he responded to join in the pursuit and was cornered in a 
stairwell by a man who pulled out a gun with a high-capacity magazine, 
shot him six times, and killed him right in that stairwell. This was an 
amazing police officer with a great wife and daughter, from Bridgeport, 
in the city of Chicago. Our whole city was in grief over that loss.
  They tried to figure out where the gun came from? Where did that 
criminal get that gun? It was purchased legally outside Madison, WI. It 
was then sold, without a background check, to another person who, in 
turn, sold it on the internet with no background check to a person with 
a record of felony arrests and convictions. It completely defied the 
system and made the argument again, sadly, of why universal background 
checks--not just at Federal licensed dealers but also at gun shows and 
on the internet--are absolutely essential. The Fix NICS bill does not 
solve that problem. We must solve that problem.
  Secondly, on the military assault weapons, today at the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, we talked about the impact of an assault weapon 
and a bullet that is fired. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who has 
followed this terrible incident in Parkland and has spoken out so 
eloquently, reminded us that firing a bullet in a handgun may mean that 
that bullet passes through your body and injures an organ. Firing a 
long gun, a rifle, or a semiautomatic weapon like the AR-15 does 
dramatically more damage. The bullet may enter your body in a small 
way, but it comes out on the other side with a wound the size of an 
orange and, in the process, tumbles through your body, ripping through 
tissue, ripping through arteries, ripping through organs, and creating 
a situation that is difficult and sometimes impossible to repair.

  Why would anyone need a weapon like that? You sure don't need it to 
go hunting. If you need an AR-15 to go shoot a deer, for goodness 
sakes, you ought to stick to fishing. You obviously don't have the 
skill necessary. To own it just to own it? Some do. They are 
collectors, I imagine. But opening those sales to 18-, 19-, or 20-year-
olds makes no sense whatsoever, and that is what the students from 
Parkland and around the country are saying today. I couldn't agree with 
them more.
  As for high-capacity magazines, why do you need 30 rounds? Why do you 
need 60 rounds? What is that all about? It is being used in weapons 
that are designed to kill other human beings--not just a few, but many.
  As for bump stocks, I never heard of a bump stock until a few months 
ago, when the Las Vegas mass shooting occurred, killing innocent people 
at a country and western concert. We have banned machine guns in 
America for decades. Well, leave it to the firearm manufacturers. They 
found a way to create a mechanism that takes a semiautomatic weapon--
meaning that you have to pull the trigger each time for each round--and 
turns it essentially into an automatic weapon, where you can hold the 
trigger and use the recoil and it just sprays the bullets until you 
empty the magazine, with something called a bump stock.
  I can't imagine why we haven't just flat out passed a bill to ban 
bump stocks after what happened in Las Vegas, but this Congress, this 
Senate is frozen by the gun lobby.
  All across America today, young people are stepping up. I asked a 
teacher, Ms. Posada, who testified before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee today: What is it about the students in your school? Why have 
they become such national leaders, outspoken on this issue and 
inspirational on this issue to me?
  She said: That is the way we trained them, to be part of an America 
where they can participate and be a leader, and they are.
  I encourage them to continue to put the pressure on all of us, 
starting with President Trump, who may switch his position again. He 
went from all for gun safety to the gun lobby position in a matter of 
days. Maybe he will come back again to some more reasonable position.
  Put the pressure on Congress too. We have run out of excuses, haven't 
we?

[[Page S1722]]

More and more innocent Americans have been killed, and the best we can 
come up with is that over 200 years ago, when some men sat down to 
write our Bill of Rights, that Second Amendment gave the authority to 
individuals to buy any and everything they want to buy in the name of 
the right to bear arms. I don't think that is what they had in mind at 
all.
  We cannot continue to let the NRA and the gun lobby have veto power 
over gun policy in America. We are facing an epidemic of violence with 
hundreds of Americans shot every day--from Commander Bauer in Chicago; 
to the kids in Parkland, FL; to Las Vegas; to DeKalb, IL. The list goes 
on and on and on. We have to put the safety of our kids and our 
neighborhoods ahead of the gun lobby's agenda, which is just to sell 
more guns.
  We have to have the courage as a Senate to bring a bill to the floor 
and to open it to amendments. We don't do that anymore in the Senate. 
There was a time when the Senate was a great deliberative body, and now 
the Senate is not. The silence of the Senate, when it comes to this gun 
safety issue, is deafening. Americans know it well, and the question 
now is whether we will do everything within our power to reduce the 
number of shootings, to keep our communities safe, and to spare more 6-
year-old first graders that horrible lesson they may remember forever--
to hit the floor when the shooter comes in the classroom.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). The Senator from Texas.


                             Fix NICS Bill

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have listened to the remarks of our 
distinguished colleague from Illinois who is the Democratic whip. I 
agree with a number of things he says and disagree with some others, 
but I do think we need to keep this in the appropriate context. We are, 
in fact, talking about a provision of the Bill of Rights, the Second 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and I hope we would never treat any 
of those essential guarantees of American rights that precede the 
creation of our government casually. It is important that we protect 
all of our rights. The right to worship according to the dictates of 
our conscience, the right to petition our government for the redress of 
just grievances, the freedom of association, and the freedom of the 
press are also part of the Bill of Rights, just like the Second 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  There are a number of things that we can agree on, and I have been 
talking about one of them for some time now--the so-called Fix NICS 
bill. It is probably not very well-labeled or branded because ``NICS'' 
is short for the National Instant Criminal Background Check 
System. Basically, what it does is fix the broken background check 
system to make sure that convicted felons, people who have been 
dishonorably discharged from the military, people who have been 
adjudicated mentally ill, people who have committed acts of domestic 
violence--and a number of other categories--cannot legally purchase 
firearms. Why? Because current law prohibits it.

  We have already passed those laws, but as we saw in Sutherland 
Springs, TX, one Sunday morning not long ago, 26 people lost their 
lives and 20 additional lives were forever changed when they were shot 
by a gunman who had lied and obtained firearms when he was disqualified 
under the law from purchasing them.
  The FBI maintains the background check system, and it wasn't their 
fault because the background check system is only as good as the 
information that is uploaded into the background check system. When 
somebody goes into a store and tries to purchase a firearm and lies, 
the background check system catches them and they are denied that 
purchase. That is how it is supposed to work.
  Recently, the attitude among some here in Washington seems to be that 
this bill somehow doesn't go far enough. There are other ideas I am 
more than willing to debate and vote on, some of which I actually agree 
with, but none have the bipartisan consensus and support that this 
particular Fix NICS bill has.
  I was just told that now we are up to 70 bipartisan cosponsors. In 
other words, 70 out of 100 Senators, on a bipartisan basis, support 
this fix to our broken background check system because they know that 
if it had been working the way Congress had intended, 26 people would 
still be alive in Sutherland Springs, TX, and 20 more who were shot and 
wounded would not have had to suffer those grievous injuries and the 
painful recovery.
  For example, as the Democratic leader--as well as some others--has 
said: ``If we only pass Fix NICS, we'll be right back here after the 
next shooting, in nearly the same place.'' He said that ``we won't have 
done our job.''
  Well, as I said, if there are other things that enjoy broad 
bipartisan consensus, let's get them done. But if the attitude is that 
we will not even vote on what we agree on because we want to do more, 
we will never get anything done around here. Why not vote on what we 
have agreed on, what people are supporting, and then, in addition, we 
can work on other ideas.
  As I said, at least 36 Senate Democrats have already cosponsored the 
Fix NICS bill. That is 75 percent of the Democratic caucus, and the 
numbers have been steadily rising. I hope they will go even higher.
  I am grateful to the Democratic leader from New York. He, himself, is 
a cosponsor of the bill, as is the Senate majority leader, Mr. 
McConnell. I have never seen a piece of legislation involving a 
controversial subject like gun rights get such broad bipartisan 
support. It is truly unique. We ought to be grateful we have found a 
place where we have such broad bipartisan agreement and, more important 
than that, a provision that will save lives in the future.
  If the shooter at Sutherland Springs had gone into the gun store to 
purchase a gun and he lied, had the background check system worked as 
it was supposed to work, he would not have been able to legally 
purchase a gun because it would have revealed the fact that he was 
disqualified from doing so.
  Each of these tragedies involves different circumstances. The 
shooters are always different. They obtain firearms in particular ways 
and use them to perpetrate their crimes according to different plans 
and in different settings.
  I have already talked about the shooter in Sutherland Springs, who 
actually was convicted of a felony after choking and kicking his wife 
and cracking his stepson's skull. He was discharged dishonorably from 
the military. He was detained in a mental health facility because he 
was mentally ill. Yet he was able to lie his way into possession of 
these firearms, forever changing the world of innumerable families in 
Sutherland Springs, TX.
  Under Federal law, he should have been prevented from purchasing 
these firearms. Were it not for the breakdown in our background check 
system, he wouldn't have obtained them. He would have been caught lying 
when trying to buy these firearms and possibly prosecuted, and 26 
people would still be living their lives, and the people who were 
worshipping that Sunday morning at the First Baptist Church in 
Sutherland Springs would still be doing so in that same location. It 
has now been turned into a memorial for those who lost their lives that 
day.
  This is preventable loss of life. That is more than enough reason to 
pass Fix NICS. I disagree with those who say that it doesn't do much. 
If it saves lives, it does plenty. If our system had worked properly--
and ensuring it does in the future is what my bill aims to do--
Annabelle Pomeroy, the 14-year-old daughter of the pastor at First 
Baptist, would still be here, and Ryland Ward, a 6-year-old boy who 
survived, would not have been shot five times.
  It is simply incorrect to characterize this bill as a pittance. It is 
inaccurate to suggest that it really wouldn't do anything, that it 
somehow is just window dressing or maybe a political fig leaf. That is 
demonstrably false. Tell that to the families who lost loved ones that 
day. They wish our background check system had stopped the gunman. Each 
of them suffered a terrible trauma because it didn't.
  It is also not true to say that Washington has been feckless or 
absent in the wake of not only Sutherland Springs but Las Vegas, 
Parkland, and all the rest.
  On the issue of bump stocks, I agree with the Democratic whip, the 
Senator from Illinois. These attachments to a semiautomatic rifle 
turned it into an

[[Page S1723]]

automatic rifle. I have never heard of such a thing before, but if 
automatic weapons are already illegal, why in the world would we want 
to allow an appliance attached to a gun to turn a semiautomatic weapon 
into an automatic weapon? I am glad the President has said that those 
should be regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and 
be unavailable.

  We know that a lot of people lost their lives in Las Vegas; 58 
concertgoers in Las Vegas lost their lives because of a man in a hotel 
room, shooting down into a country music concert. There were 851 people 
injured. The scope of the carnage was unbelievable.
  We have also learned that mental health problems are some of the 
reasons people do these sorts of things. We passed a law, most notably 
last December, called the 21st Century Cures Act, which provides new 
authority for families, when their loved ones are becoming a danger to 
themselves or others, to apply to a court to get assisted outpatient 
treatment to make sure they follow their doctors' orders and take their 
medications. Then we train law enforcement on how to save lives in the 
event of an active shooter incident.
  We know the problem at Sutherland Springs was that the Federal 
Government hadn't uploaded the information into the background check 
system, which would have prevented the purchase of the firearm. But we 
know the problem is present, as well, in the States.
  In Ohio, we learned that there have been failures to upload 
conviction records from at least 90 municipal courts--one that may have 
allowed those barred from owning weapons to purchase them in violation 
of the law.
  Since the shooting in Texas, the Department of Defense has 
retroactively uploaded 4,000 additional records of those dishonorably 
discharged from the military into the background check system. Under 
current law, these are people already prohibited from purchasing 
firearms, but, of course, if the military didn't upload them, no one 
would ever know, and they would be able to lie and purchase firearms.
  One news account stated that since 2015, the number of people barred 
from owning firearms because they were dishonorably discharged has 
hovered at around 11,000 people, according to FBI statistics. Now it 
stands at over 15,000. It is clear evidence that the background check 
system isn't working the way it is supposed to. We need to make sure 
that Federal agencies are uploading these records in real time, as they 
are required to do.
  We are taking action in other ways. I am also cosponsor of a 
bipartisan bill called the NICS Denial Notification Act. It is 
sponsored by a bipartisan pair of Senators--the Senators from 
Pennsylvania and Delaware. This bill will alert State law enforcement 
about people who lie and try to buy guns. If people go in and lie, the 
background check system catches them, and then they are turned away. 
Under current practice, that is never reported to the law enforcement 
agencies, but it would be if that legislation were passed. When people 
do this, their actions may be indicative of criminal behavior. That is 
why the bill would insist that Federal authorities notify State police 
within 24 hours if it is determined a person has lied in an attempt to 
buy a gun.
  Meanwhile, the Attorney General has announced that U.S. attorneys 
will be instructed to more aggressively enforce laws that criminalize 
gun buyers who lie on their background checks. I think all of this will 
help be a deterrent, and, yes, I do think it will contribute to the 
saving of lives.
  The Justice Department will also increase the presence of law 
enforcement officers at schools and review the way they respond to 
public tip-offs with regard to safety threats.
  We know the shooting in Parkland, FL, was a catastrophic failure at 
almost every level--from the public education system, to local law 
enforcement, to the FBI, to mental health providers. Looking back at 
this shooter, local law enforcement actually intervened with him about 
40 times. This was a blinking red light. People should have paid 
attention and done something about it. We are now trying to make sure 
they have the resources and the training necessary to intervene when 
people are obviously a danger to themselves and others.
  One way we are going to do that is with the bill offered by the 
senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch--the STOP School Violence Act. This 
bill would authorize $50 million annually for safety improvements, 
including teacher training and training students on how to prevent 
violence and developing anonymous reporting systems for threats of 
school violence. It would give schools money for physical improvements, 
such as metal detectors or bulletproof windows or doors. This is a 
great step. It is not controversial, and we ought to get it done and 
get it done now.
  As the President has said: ``We cannot merely take actions that make 
us feel like we are making a difference. We must actually make a 
difference.'' One way we can do that is by passing Fix NICS.
  Just this afternoon, a diverse community of victims' rights groups, 
law enforcement officers, gun violence prevention groups, and 
prosecutors sent a letter to the minority and majority leaders, asking 
them for a vote on a clean version of Fix NICS before the upcoming 
Easter recess. They said it would ``improve key elements of the 
background system, particularly domestic violence criminal history and 
protective order records.'' That is really an important point because 
so much of the gun violence we see in America is in the context of 
domestic violence--people violating protective orders, people 
assaulting the person they are married to or living with. We need to 
focus on this and do something about it.

  This group of victims' rights advocates, law enforcement officers, 
gun violence prevention groups, and prosecutors call the Fix NICS bill 
a bipartisan, bicameral, commonsense, and noncontroversial bill. So why 
can't we pass it? Why can't we do it today?
  They made a point to note in their letter that the vote should be 
clean; in other words, not conditioned upon or attached to other 
controversial measures we can't pass. I think they are absolutely 
right. I hope all of us will listen to this good advice and get this 
done.
  We tried to get an agreement a couple of weeks ago to take up the 
bill and vote on it. If we did it today, it would pass this afternoon, 
but there was an objection to doing so, saying, well, there are other 
things we need to do too. Perhaps that is true, but to condition what 
can pass--what does enjoy broad bipartisan support and what will save 
lives--on things that will not pass and that aren't achievable means we 
have a strategy of either everything or failure. That usually ends up 
with us going back home emptyhanded, having nothing to show for our 
efforts.
  The people we represent deserve better. This institution should step 
up and listen to those who are calling upon us to do something, and 
doing something that will save lives, while respecting the rights of 
all Americans under the Constitution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 10 years ago today, March 14, Bear Stearns 
was on the verge of collapse. Despite its 85-year history, despite its 
relationship with nearly every bank on Wall Street, the bank suddenly 
found itself on the brink. On this very day, March 14, Bear Stearns 
lost $3.5 billion in market value. The bank was in the midst of a free 
fall. In the course of one week, Bear Stearns went from trading for $65 
per share to being bought for $2 a share in a sweetheart deal 
orchestrated by the Fed over the course of a weekend. Nearly overnight, 
one of Wall Street's most prestigious, almost 100-year-old banks fell 
apart.
  Across the country, families sat at their kitchen tables and started 
to wonder: Will one of us lose our job? Will we have to move? Will we 
be able to retire? Will we lose our house? Will we be able to send our 
kids to college? On this day 10 years ago--March 14, 2008--a headline 
from CNN read: ``Job Losses: The Worst in Five Years.'' The story 
talked about how the economy was hemorrhaging jobs. The article warned 
that the crisis was building, quoting one analyst who said the real 
estate and credit crunch ``was whipping its way through the U.S. 
economy like a Midwestern tornado.''
  In hindsight, we know that things would get a lot worse before they 
got better.

[[Page S1724]]

  Some people say nobody could have possibly seen this coming. Some 
people say the 2008 financial crisis was like the weather--like that 
Midwestern tornado--something out of control that we wouldn't have 
seen, but we know better.
  Advocates in communities--the people who are actually dealing with 
the consequences of this crisis--were sounding the alarm. For years 
before the crisis, they predicted what would happen if Washington 
didn't rein in Wall Street, and clearly they were right.
  A few people in Washington, like Ned Gramlich, saw the problem for 
what it was; that Washington didn't stop the crisis, after it began, 
after it intensified--Congress at least responded. We passed a law that 
created important protections for the financial system, for taxpayers, 
for homeowners to hold banks and watchdogs accountable to prevent 
another crisis, but Wall Street wasn't even close to being ready to 
quit. There was no contrition. Nobody went to jail. In fact, on the day 
that President Obama signed Wall Street reform--what we know as Dodd-
Frank--on the day that bill was signed into law, the top financial 
service lobbyists in this town said: Now it is half time.
  Now, what would that mean: Now it is half time? It meant they lost 
the first half. They lost the battle where people in this Congress 
actually had the guts and the backbone and sloughed off their campaign 
contributions and were unwilling to listen to bank lobbyists tell them 
what to do. They stood up to the bank lobbyists and stood up to Wall 
Street and they did the right thing, but this lobbyist said it was half 
time. So the lobbyists lost the first half, but they were back at it, 
going to the regulators, trying to convince the regulators to weaken 
the rules and not implement the bill.
  Not long ago, another bank lobbyist told us their game plan: ``We 
don't want a seat at the table, we want the whole table.'' This bill 
gives them that. The same group that warned us about the last crisis--
this is what I ask my colleagues to listen to. The same group that 
warned us about the last crisis or that were the regulators who tried 
to fix the last crisis--those same people are opposed to the bill the 
Senate is considering today. That doesn't seem to matter to about 65 of 
my colleagues.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the list of the range of civil rights, labor, and consumer advocacy 
groups that oppose S. 2155.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


List of Current and Former Regulatory Officials and Experts Opposed to 
                                S. 2155

       Former Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee 
     Chairman Christopher Dodd,
       Former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker,
       Former Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo,
       Former Federal Reserve Governor and Deputy Secretary of the 
     Department of the Treasury Sarah Bloom Raskin,
       Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair,
       Former Department of the Treasury Assistant Secretary for 
     Financial Institutions Michael Barr,
       Former Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the 
     Department of the Treasury Under Secretary for Domestic 
     Finance Saule Omarova,
       Former Counselor to Secretary of the Department of the 
     Treasury Antonio Weiss,
       Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Paul Tucker 
     on behalf of the Systemic Risk Council,
       FDIC Vice Chair Thomas Hoenig,
       Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Gary 
     Gensler,
       Former Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission 
     Phil Angelides.


 List of Labor, Consumer, and Civil Rights Organizations Opposed to S. 
                                  2155

       AFL-CIO;
       AFSCME;
       Americans for Financial Reform;
       Better Markets, Part I and Part II;
       Center for American Progress;
       Center for Popular Democracy;
       Center for Responsible Lending;
       Consumer Federation of America;
       Consumers Union;
  CWA;
       Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights;
       Mortgage Coalition (Center for Responsible Lending, 
     National Community Reinvestment Coalition, National Consumer 
     Law Center);
       NAACP;
       National Association of Consumer Advocates;
       National Community Reinvestment Coalition;
       Prosperity Now;
       Public Citizen;
       UAW;
       Unidos;
       Urban League;
       US PIRG.

  Mr. BROWN. People who cleaned up the last crisis are warning us not 
to pass this bill. Experts from both parties are warning us, the 
authors of Wall Street reform. Barney Frank said he would vote no if he 
were in the Senate. Chris Dodd, in an op-ed today, writes that the 
bill's changes amount to ``chipping away at the ability to conduct 
comprehensive and effective oversight.''
  Now, people are saying this isn't a major scale-back of Dodd-Frank, 
but Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank both say they would vote no 
because they recognize it as damaging to the work we all did.
  Experts like Paul Volcker, head of the Federal Reserve; Sheila Bair, 
head of FDIC, Republican appointment by President Bush, used to be 
chief of staff for Senator Bob Dole; Dan Tarullo, who was effectively 
the head of supervision of regulation for the Federal Reserve, wants us 
to vote no. Sarah Bloom Raskin, who was at the Federal Reserve and then 
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury; Gary Gensler, who is head of the 
Commodities Future Trading Commission; Tom Hoenig, a Republican who is 
at FDIC and earlier was the Fed president; Antonia Weiss at the 
Treasury Department; Paul Tucker, international banker from England--
international regulator; Phil Angelides, a former California State 
Treasurer who ran the Commission that examined what happened in the 
bank crisis--they all wrote to the Senate. They all outlined a combined 
28 pages' worth of concerns about this bill, and my colleagues just 
say: Oh, this is just helping the small community banks and some of the 
regional banks a little bit.
  Well, not exactly. That is what happens here. We start off wanting to 
help the small banks; we start off helping some of the midsized 
regional banks that generally do a good job--banks like Huntington and 
Fifth Third and Key Bank--but then Wall Street gets involved, and Wall 
Street drives a bigger and bigger hole in this bill and gets more and 
more help and more and more breaks and look where we are.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
letters from two of these financial experts.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                             The Volcker Alliance,


                             Working for Effective Government,

                                                February 21, 2018.
       Dear Senator Brown: I appreciate your letter seeking my 
     views on the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer 
     Protection Act, S. 2155. I am pleased that the Senate Banking 
     Committee has forged ahead with meaningful, bipartisan 
     financial reform to ease the unnecessary regulatory strain on 
     small banks, helping them flourish as an engine of economic 
     prosperity. I appreciate your leadership and dedication, and 
     that of Senator Crapo, to this bill over the last two years 
     and congratulate the bipartisan coalition of senators on the 
     Committee who have worked diligently to advance this 
     legislation.
       Your letter sought my views on three sections of the bill. 
     Specifically: (1) Section 401, which would exempt some 
     important banks from stringent prudential standards, such as 
     those for capital, leverage, stress testing, and resolution 
     planning; (2) Section 402, which would relax leverage 
     limitations on custodial banks; and (3) Section 203, which 
     would exempt small banks from the Volcker Rule ban on 
     proprietary trading. I offer the following observations and 
     possible alternatives for your consideration.
       First, section 401 would raise from $50 billion to $250 
     billion the asset threshold at which banks begin to face 
     increasingly tougher prudential standards. Eight years 
     following the passage of Dodd-Frank, it is appropriate to 
     reexamine whether the $50 billion asset threshold is set too 
     low. Indeed, there may be an opportunity to raise it without 
     endangering financial stability. However, an increase to $250 
     billion would go too far. It would have the effect of 
     substantially reducing the regulation of 25 of the 38 largest 
     banks to which these standards now apply, notably including 
     the operating subsidiaries of several large foreign banks.
       Clearly the distress or failure of some of these banks 
     could trigger reactions spreading broadly to the financial 
     system. To take specific examples, Countrywide, National 
     City, and GMAC, standing well below the $250 billion mark, in 
     fact, required billions of dollars in official capital 
     assistance and debt guarantees either for themselves or their 
     acquiring institutions. Failure of the large U.S. operating 
     subsidiaries of foreign banks could pose similar risk. I urge 
     consideration

[[Page S1725]]

     of raising the threshold to, say, $100 billion but building 
     in additional flexibility for regulators to implement the 
     standards below that.
       Second, section 402 is a highly technical provision that 
     relates to so-called custodial banks, institutions that 
     specialize in safeguarding assets of their clients, including 
     mutual funds, pension funds, asset managers, and other 
     institutions. Given their size and importance to the 
     financial system, some such banks, of which the sizable BNY 
     Mellon and State Street stand out, are required to maintain a 
     minimum supplementary leverage ratio (``SLR''), a measure of 
     equity capital to total exposure.
       Section 402 would mandate bank regulators to amend their 
     regulations to allow ``custodial banks'' to exclude deposits 
     they hold at the Federal Reserve and certain other central 
     banks when calculating their SLR. While there may be reasons 
     to adjust the SLR calculation for custodial banks, including 
     during a crisis to facilitate the banks' ability to serve as 
     a safe-haven for deposits, regulators already have broad 
     authority to make those adjustments. They also are best 
     positioned to decide how and when to exercise that 
     discretion.
       Section 402 does so preemptively, reducing leverage capital 
     requirements for at least two of the most systemically 
     important custodial banks by as much as 30 percent at a time 
     when they should be building their capital cushion. It also 
     would put Congress under pressure to expand the exclusion. 
     Claims will be sure to arise that other banks in competition 
     with the big custodial banks should have similar capital 
     relief: that temptation should be resisted.
       Finally, section 203 would exempt from the Volcker Rule 
     banks with assets of less than $10 billion and whose trading 
     assets and liabilities are no more than five percent of total 
     assets. I'm in strong agreement with the aim of reducing 
     unnecessary regulatory burdens on traditional community 
     banks, not just from the Volcker Rule, but also more broadly. 
     Community banks play a vital role in serving the needs of 
     small businesses and do not require the full panoply of 
     regulation or frequent full-scale examination.
       An alternative to section 203 would be to simply relieve 
     small banks from demonstrating compliance with the rule, 
     while, at the same time tasking the bank regulators in their 
     normal supervisory roles to detect persistent violations and 
     demand remediation. This would have the advantage of 
     preventing a small bank or a group of small banks protected 
     by the Federal bank ``safety net'' from benefitting from 
     risky proprietary trading activity. I know from my long 
     experience in banking and savings and loan regulation that 
     plausibly small loopholes can be ``gamed'' and exploited with 
     unfortunate consequences.
       I thank you for the opportunity to comment on this 
     important piece of legislation and look forward to its swift 
     passage.
           Sincerely,
     Paul A. Volcker.
                                  ____



                                           Harvard Law School,

                                     Cambridge, MA, March 5, 2018.
     Hon. Michael Crapo,
     Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 
         U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Sherrod Brown,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban 
         Affairs, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Crapo and Senator Brown: As we approach the 
     tenth anniversary of the height of the financial crisis, it 
     is critical that we not lose sight of the core concerns that 
     rightly motivated members of both parties to seek regulatory 
     mechanisms to guard against systemic risk and to promote 
     financial stability. With the pending consideration of S. 
     2155 by the full Senate, I wanted to take this opportunity to 
     reiterate some of the points about the regulatory structure 
     we have discussed in the past, especially as they apply to 
     this bill.
       While S. 2155 begins from the sound premise that some 
     refinements are desirable in the way various statutory 
     requirements have been tailored, I have a number of 
     disagreements with specifics of the bill. Rather than 
     rehearse all of those, I want to focus on the three features 
     that raise particular concerns about financial stability, in 
     hopes that they could be omitted or at least clarified. As I 
     will explain in more detail below, I would urge the following 
     changes:
       1. Clarification that banking organizations with assets 
     between $100 and $250 billion will continue to be subject to 
     the annual stress test and CCAR process of the Federal 
     Reserve;
       2. Clarification that the higher section 165 threshold 
     established by the bill applies to the worldwide assets of 
     foreign banking organizations; and
       3. Deletion of Section 402 of the bill, which would make 
     certain changes to leverage ratio requirements.
       With respect to the first two of these changes, while there 
     is widespread--though by no means universal--agreement that 
     the $50 billion level is too low a threshold for many of the 
     section 165 requirements, there is considerable disagreement 
     over how much it should be raised. There is a case to be made 
     for the $250 billion level chosen in S. 2155, though 
     personally I think that is too high. In considering how to 
     raise the threshold, the most important consideration is to 
     align enhanced prudential standards with the risks to safety 
     and soundness and financial stability actually associated 
     with various groups of banks.
       As you know, I have for several years advocated a limited 
     number of changes to the statutory thresholds established in 
     the Dodd-Frank Act for certain additional regulatory 
     requirements. My reason for suggesting these changes was my 
     conclusion, both from my own analysis and from discussions 
     with supervisory staff when I was still a member of the Board 
     of Governors of the Federal Reserve, that the benefits of 
     some of the important prudential requirements added by Dodd-
     Frank were considerably less significant for the smaller 
     banks within the range established by the different 
     thresholds. In these instances, it seems better policy to 
     allocate more of the risk management and compliance resources 
     of banks, and of the supervisory resources of the banking 
     agencies, to the important risks actually faced by banks of a 
     certain size and activity mix. For instance, the expense 
     incurred by small banks with minimal trading assets and 
     liabilities just to ensure that they are complying with 
     Volcker Rule regulatory exemptions seems quite 
     disproportionate to any safety and soundness benefits.
       When it comes to the threshold for the more stringent 
     prudential standards mandated by Section 165 of Dodd-Frank, 
     this same calculation should apply. That is, which of these 
     requirements deliver significant safety and soundness 
     benefits for particular sizes of banks? The answer, I 
     concluded after several years of experience, is that the 165 
     requirements deliver relatively small benefits for the safety 
     and soundness of banks that currently have between $50 and 
     $100 billion in assets, and many deliver only moderate 
     benefits for banks somewhat above that size. For example, 
     special liquidity requirements (on top of normal supervisory 
     assessments of liquidity management) seemed of limited 
     prudential utility for medium-sized commercial banks engaged 
     in the conventional business of taking deposits and making 
     loans.
       But S. 2155 calls into question the post-crisis prudential 
     measure that is essential for the safety and soundness of 
     these banks, and for the stability of the financial system in 
     the face of major asset shocks. Section 401(e) of the bill as 
     reported out of Committee instructs the Federal Reserve to 
     conduct supervisory stress tests of banks with between $100 
     and $250 billion ``on a periodic basis.'' This provision is 
     obviously meant to indicate that these banks are not exempted 
     from the stress testing requirements created by Section 165. 
     Yet the provision is quite vague, with little indication of 
     what kind of test is contemplated for these banks. This 
     language might be interpreted benignly, simply to indicate 
     that this set of banks will remain in the stress testing 
     program even though they will have been removed from other 
     section 165 requirements. Of more concern is an 
     interpretation that these banks not be in the stress test 
     every year, though the results of the test--whenever it is 
     conducted--could still be used as the analytic basis for the 
     general authority of federal banking agencies to set capital 
     requirements on a bank specific basis. And then there is a 
     very troublesome interpretation that these banks not be in 
     the current Federal Reserve stress testing process, including 
     the Comprehensive Capital Annual Review (CCAR). Instead, they 
     would be in some different, ill-defined kind of stress 
     testing program.
       Although liquidity and concentration limits beyond those 
     applicable under pre-existing statutory requirements for 
     insured depository institutions are only obliquely related to 
     the risks faced by banks currently in this size range, 
     capital shortfalls are a risk. Loans gone bad, with the 
     resulting impairment of capital positions, are the principal 
     risk associated with the traditional lending that dominates 
     the activities of most of these banks.
       A number of banks of this size received TARP funds in late 
     2008 in order to buttress their capital positions. While 
     other, smaller banks also received TARP funds, the difference 
     is precisely in the aggregate size of this group of banks. 
     Together, just the domestically owned firms falling in this 
     range hold $1.5 trillion in assets (compared to less than 
     $300 billion in assets for those between $50 and $100 
     billion). There is good reason to believe that these regional 
     lending institutions share the risks associated with shocks 
     to commercial real estate prices, residential real estate 
     prices, and the financial situation of consumers. Thus there 
     could also be systemic implications of stress among this 
     group of banks. The current CCAR program of the Federal 
     Reserve helps build the resiliency of banks to these serious 
     problems, thereby decreasing the chances of systemic stress 
     or the unavailability of lending to even creditworthy 
     businesses and households that results when the capital 
     positions of banks are compromised.
       To remove this protective measure would be to undermine a 
     key achievement of the post-crisis period. Accordingly, as 
     the first feature of the bill that should be changed, I urge 
     the Senate, should it proceed with this legislation, to 
     remove any ambiguity as to whether these banks will remain in 
     the quantitative side of the CCAR program on an annual basis. 
     The Federal Reserve has already exempted these banks from the 
     qualitative part of the CCAR and has taken steps to simplify 
     some of the procedural and reporting requirements associated 
     with it. I suspect the Board of Governors would be amenable 
     to doing more along these lines. But we should not risk the 
     improvement in

[[Page S1726]]

     the resiliency of the U.S. financial system that the stress 
     testing program has brought about by ensuring that regulatory 
     capital requirements take into account the changing economic 
     and financial risks faced by sizeable banks that together 
     provide credit to large proportions of American households 
     and businesses.
       The second feature of the bill that raises concerns of a 
     systemic nature is also related to the $250 billion 
     threshold, as it applies to foreign banking organizations 
     operating in the United States. As you know, since the 
     financial crisis the Board of Governors has required certain 
     foreign banking organizations with more than $50 billion in 
     assets other than branch assets to establish intermediate 
     holding companies in the United States. (Some foreign banking 
     organizations already had such holding companies.) In raising 
     the $50 billion threshold to $250 billion, the bill may raise 
     the question as to whether foreign banking organizations with 
     less than $250 billion must now be excluded from the 
     application of section 165 requirements.
       I should say first that I do not think this is the best 
     reading of the wording of S. 2155. That is, I think the best 
     reading is that worldwide assets of large foreign banks are 
     be the basis for determining if they are covered by section 
     165, with the Board of Governors having continuing authority 
     to determine what level of U.S. assets of these large global 
     banks is the appropriate threshold for section 165 regulatory 
     measures promulgated in its regulations. I understand that 
     Chairman Powell indicated something along these lines in his 
     Senate testimony last week. However, it does appear that 
     there are other interpretations being advanced, including by 
     Secretary Mnuchin, whose testimony before the Senate Banking 
     Committee in January seemed to suggest that foreign banking 
     organizations with between $50 and $250 billion in assets in 
     the United States would be exempted from Section 165 
     prudential measures by S. 2155.
       This result would be a grave regulatory mistake, one that 
     is almost incomprehensible in light of experience during the 
     financial crisis and the profile of many large foreign 
     banking organizations in the United States today. As I 
     explained above, many of the special section 165 requirements 
     are not especially relevant to nearly all the U.S. banks 
     currently holding less than $250 billion in assets. But that 
     is precisely because they are traditional commercial banks, 
     taking deposits and making loans. The U.S. operations of many 
     foreign banking organizations, on the other hand, contain 
     substantial proportions of assets in broker dealers and other 
     non-traditional-banking operations, where funding runs, 
     cross-activity counterparty exposures, and resolution 
     challenges are very significant risks. Indeed, the broker-
     dealer operations of many of these banks are more significant 
     in the United States than in their home countries. They are 
     also susceptible to having their parents seek dollars from 
     them in order to meet obligations of parts of the foreign 
     banking organizations outside the United States.
       Moreover, in sheer dollar terms, the group of foreign 
     banking organizations with between $100 and $250 billion is a 
     very important part of the U.S. financial system, holding 
     about $1.4 trillion in assets. Some of the foreign banking 
     organizations falling in this category are among those that 
     were most affected by the financial crisis; some have 
     encountered significant problems since then. U.S. regulators 
     do not have a window into the global liquidity positions, or 
     authority over the global risk management practices, of these 
     firms.
       Again, like Chairman Powell I believe the best reading of 
     S. 2155 is that it does not affect the authority of the 
     Federal Reserve to apply section 165 standards, as 
     appropriate, on foreign banking organizations with over $250 
     billion in worldwide assets--the change from current law 
     being that it would not be required to do so for foreign 
     banking organizations with between $50 and $250 billion in 
     worldwide assets. But, given the enormous gap in the 
     regulation of systemically important foreign banking 
     operations in the United States that would result from a 
     different interpretation by a regulator or court in the 
     future, it is very important that this ambiguity be 
     clarified. In an environment in which judicial deference to 
     the interpretation of a possibly ambiguous statute by the 
     administering agency is no longer so predictable, it is 
     incumbent on Congress to eliminate such ambiguity wherever 
     possible.
       The third feature of the bill that raises potentially 
     systemic concerns is section 402, which contains an oddly 
     and, I think, inappropriately targeted change in the leverage 
     ratio applied by the banking agencies. Removing funds 
     deposited with central banks from the denominator of the 
     leverage ratio only for banks ``predominantly engaged'' in 
     the custody business is troublesome for at least two reasons.
       First, removing any assets from the denominator risks 
     sliding down the slippery slope of removing others. While 
     central bankers may argue their interests in not having 
     monetary policy affected at all, treasuries and finance 
     ministries may then argue their interests in not having 
     sovereign debt included. And, as we have already seen in the 
     Treasury Department's report in June 2017, some will go even 
     further, such as by arguing that margins posted in central 
     clearing facilities should be excluded, presumably to 
     encourage more central clearing. While these proposed 
     exclusions may be justified on the ground that the assets in 
     question are utterly risk-free (a clearly incorrect 
     proposition for central clearing margin), that argument 
     misconstrues the rationale of a leverage ratio, which is 
     precisely to serve as a backup mode of capital regulation by 
     measuring and controlling total leverage, not riskiness. 
     Going down this path of excluding assets from the denominator 
     would, in addition to being ill-advised legislative policy, 
     threaten the post-crisis improvement in the leverage of major 
     U.S. banks.
       Second, it is hard to see the rationale for excluding a 
     particular type of asset from the denominator of the leverage 
     ratio only by reference to a bank's dominant form of activity 
     in ``custody, safekeeping, and asset servicing.'' Banks other 
     than custody banks engage in this activity. Taking this kind 
     of approach is very much out of keeping with the 
     traditional--and wise--practice of Congress in avoiding 
     legislating the details of capital requirements. It will 
     invite lobbying efforts for changing other details and, 
     thereby, risk both the coherence and the integrity of 
     regulatory capital requirements.
       As I think you know, I am sympathetic to the situation of 
     State Street and Bank of New York. But, as I have suggested 
     previously, there is a much sounder way to address that 
     situation. Their difficulties stem from the fact that the 2% 
     enhanced supplemental leverage ratio add-on is applicable to 
     all eight systemically important U.S. banks, whereas the 
     risk-weighted capital surcharge varies based on the systemic 
     importance of each bank. Thus State Street and Bank of New 
     York have, in effect, higher leverage ratio ``surcharges'' 
     than they do risk-weighted surcharges. This reverses what 
     should be, and has been, the traditional role of the leverage 
     ratio as a back-up to guard against excessive leverage build 
     up in good economic times that can come to grief in bad ones 
     (though the crisis revealed the pre-crisis leverage ratio 
     requirement, like risk-weighted capital requirements, to be 
     insufficiently robust). Modifying the enhanced supplemental 
     leverage ratio requirement by stipulating that it would not 
     exceed the risk-weighted surcharge, or by making it 
     proportional to that surcharge would be a much more 
     defensible policy approach.
       My understanding, based on public statements from Federal 
     Reserve officials, is that the banking agencies are planning 
     to make changes to the leverage ratio. I anticipate that 
     those changes will relieve the State Street and Bank of New 
     York situations, though I hope without going so far as to 
     erode the value of the leverage ratio more generally by 
     encouraging the untrammeled growth of repo and other short-
     term, runnable funding back closer to pre-crisis levels. In 
     any case, this anticipated action by the regulatory agencies 
     should address the situation of the clearings banks without 
     the damage to the framework for capital regulation which that 
     Section 402 would entail.
       To recapitulate: In the interests of protecting financial 
     stability and guarding against systemic risk, I would urge 
     the Senate to:
       1. Make clear that banks with between $100 and $250 billion 
     in assets will continue to subject to CCAR stress testing and 
     resulting capital distribution constraints;
       2. Make clear that foreign banking organizations with $250 
     billion or more in worldwide assets are subject to more 
     stringent prudential restraints within the discretion of the 
     Board of Governors; and
       3. Remove Section 402.
       Thank you for your consideration of these admittedly 
     lengthy comments on S. 2155. As always, please let me know if 
     I can be of any further assistance.
           Sincerely,
                                             Daniel K. K. Tarullo.

  Mr. BROWN. So the question is, Why do we ignore these pleas? Let's 
recap the problems with this legislation.
  First, the bill puts American taxpayers at risk of another bank 
bailout. It weakens stress tests for all large banks. In spite of what 
my colleagues say, everybody that has commented on this bill--so many 
experts that have commented on this bill understand that this is not 
just about community banks; it is not just about the regional midsized 
that go up to $250 billion. We can stress test for all large banks; 
JPMorgan Chase, $2.5 trillion in assets; Bank of America, $2.3 
trillion; Wells Fargo, $1.9 trillion. As if they haven't had enough--
done enough, made enough mistakes, violated the public trust enough 
times. Citigroup, $1.9 trillion. These four banks--JPMorgan, Bank of 
America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup--hold 51 percent, more than half of 
all industry assets, $8.6 trillion.
  These banks have had a really good run since the crisis, since the 
bailout. Remember, people didn't go to jail even though people in my 
ZIP Code, in my community, in my State and in Pennsylvania and all over 
the country--people lost savings, their homes, and their jobs. These 
banks, which are more profitable than they have ever been in the last 
couple of years, got a huge tax break just last December, and now we 
are doing them a favor by weakening the stress test. All the country's 
biggest banks took about

[[Page S1727]]

$239 billion in taxpayer bailouts. Without rigorous annual stress 
tests, taxpayers can once again be on the hook if too-big-to-fail banks 
collapse and we don't have the right tools in place to see it coming.
  Second, this bill opens the door to weaker oversight of foreign 
megabanks operating in the United States, the same banks that 
repeatedly violated U.S. law. These are banks like Deutsche Bank in 
Germany, the Trump business organization's personal bank; Santander in 
Spain, Barclays in Britain, Credit Suisse, and UBS in Switzerland. 
These are banks that violated Iran sanctions. They are banks that 
repossessed cars from American service men and women who were serving 
overseas. These are banks that were fined by the Federal Government, 
and we are doing these foreign banks a favor in this bill.
  Third, with the change of just one word, this bill forces the Fed to 
weaken the rules even for the largest banks with more than $250 billion 
in assets. Former CFTC Chair Gary Gensler wrote to the Senate this 
month and said this change ``may subject the government to additional 
lobbying and possible litigation from individual banks seeking 
specially tailored rules.''
  We know all of these regulators put in place by the Trump 
administration--most of them with ties to Wall Street, and we know the 
White House now looks like an executive retreat for Wall Street 
executives--we know these regulators are going to bend over backward 
for the big banks, and if they don't, they are going to be sued by the 
foreign banks and by other big banks to open up those loopholes even 
more.
  Senator Dodd, one of the authors of the original bill, identified 
this $250 billion threshold as the No. 1 reason he can't support the 
bill. He said: ``It raises the danger of a cascading economic effect.''
  Fourth, this bill makes another change to allow big banks to borrow 
more money than they can afford, which, once again, puts taxpayers and 
our economy at risk. The New York Times described this provision as 
weakening rules ``aimed at keeping banks from being able to take big 
risks without properly preparing for disaster.''
  The Washington Post reported that JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup may 
get a combined $30 billion windfall--$30 billion windfall--if this 
provision passes. I am not making this up. This is what analysts are 
saying this bill will do.
  Fifth, this bill chips away at key mortgage rules put in place after 
the last crisis. It includes provisions that weaken transparency, 
inclusiveness, and fairness in mortgage lending. The bill makes it 
easier for lenders to mislead families into mortgages they can't 
afford, and takes away those families' right to take the bank to court. 
It strips away key data used to monitor trends in mortgage lending and 
spot discrimination against communities of color.
  There was an amendment to fix that from Senator Cortez Masto that the 
Republicans will not allow us to offer.
  We know that in too many places across the country, people of color 
are far more likely to be turned down for a loan for no good reason. 
Without this data, we will not know when that redlining is happening.
  Sixth--and this may be the most awful of all. For reasons I can't 
even pretend to understand, this bill helps Equifax. It is the same 
Equifax that let hackers steal 148 million Americans' personal data. 
More than half the adults in this country had their personal data 
breached because of Equifax--their birth dates, Social Security 
numbers, and addresses--the same Equifax whose former executive was 
just today charged with insider trading for dumping his stocks just 
before the company announced its data breach failure.
  In exchange for a small provision helping servicemembers watch their 
credit, this bill forces them to give up their right to take Equifax to 
court the next time the company's recklessness exposes sensitive 
financial data.
  If that weren't bad enough, the bill also gives Equifax a big new 
business opportunity. This will give a company that put half the 
American population at risk of identify theft the power to decide who 
can get a mortgage.
  What do the American people get in exchange for these goodies to big 
banks and to Equifax? They get to pick up the check. The Congressional 
Budget Office confirmed that this bill would increase the probability 
of a big bank failure and a financial crisis adding to the deficit. 
Even after the addition of language offsetting some of the costs of 
this bill, the legislation would increase the deficit by $455 million. 
Let me repeat that. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office found 
that this bill will increase the probability of a big bank failure and 
a financial crisis. So don't tell me this bill doesn't roll back Dodd-
Frank for the biggest banks.
  In this town, no one seems to be able to find a single dollar when we 
need to solve our pension crisis or invest in infrastructure or remove 
toxic lead from kids' homes, but when the Big Bank lobbyists come 
calling, the Senate waives its budget rules to do Wall Street's 
bidding.
  Let me also remind my colleagues how hard it was to enact the reforms 
we passed after the last crisis.
  Do you remember that lobbyist said that it was only halftime after 
one of the few times in this body's recent history that Wall Street 
actually lost, when we did the right thing 10 years ago?
  In the move up to that bill, the Senate considered 14 separate 
Republican amendments, where there were votes taken, to Dodd-Frank and 
another 12 from Democrats. Of those 26 amendments, 5 of them were 
adopted, 5 Republican amendments, 10 Democratic amendments. They were 
voted on in a Senate where the Democrats were in the majority and gave 
both parties the opportunity to amend the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BROWN. During the conference committee, televised live on C-SPAN 
for 48 hours, 17 Senate Republican amendments were accepted and 22 
amendments from Senate Democrats. Contrast that with today: No 
subsequent amendments were adopted. I credit Chairman Crapo for at 
least allowing amendments, but that is as far as it went. On the Senate 
floor, it has been worse. Democrats and Republicans alike were 
completely shut down, not able to offer a single amendment.
  We know how this place has worked the last year. All decisions are 
made down the hall in the majority leader's office. The tax bill was 
written there. The healthcare bill was written there. This bill was 
written in a way that there are no amendments allowed on the floor, no 
debate, no deliberation, no changes.
  Lastly, fundamentally, the problem with this bill is that we are 
entrusting the profiteers from the last crisis, the deniers of the last 
crisis, with implementing big-bank giveaways. I am not willing to put 
blind trust in the people who failed us before. Regulators Quarles, 
Mulvaney, Otting, and Mnuchin are the people we are expecting to 
regulate and save us from another bailout, save us from another 
financial crisis, and save us from another implosion in our economy. 
These are the people who failed us so spectacularly in the past, with 
such grave consequences, and we are expecting them to protect us the 
next time. Nothing in their public record has earned them this trust.
  This is the collective amnesia crowd--the crowd who forgets what I 
talked about at the beginning of the speech about what happened 10 
years ago--but Ohio families haven't forgotten. People across this 
country still struggle. People who have lost savings haven't been able 
to entirely rebuild them. People who lost jobs are often in lower 
paying jobs as a result. People who lost their homes--in my part of 
Cleveland, I still see the devastation caused by this financial crisis, 
the tens of thousands of homes in Greater Cleveland that were 
foreclosed on. These are the people we are sent here to serve. What 
this bill does for them and the issues facing their lives is impossible 
to see.
  I urge my colleagues to reject this bill. I urge my colleagues to 
fundamentally ask themselves whose side they

[[Page S1728]]

are on. Are you going to vote yes on this and side with special 
interests and Wall Street, or are you going to vote no and side with 
taxpayers and homeowners and students and workers?
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, the time to vote has come, and we are a few 
minutes over. This is one of those times when the Senate is on a very 
tight timeline, so I will have the majority of my speech put into the 
Record. I just wanted to respond in one quick way to some of the 
comments my colleague from Ohio has just made.
  A lot of attacks on this floor have been made saying that this bill 
rolls back the regulatory authority of the Federal Reserve and exposes 
all of our large banks to much greater risk or much less supervision 
than they would have had before and on and on. We knew these attacks 
were coming. They came in the Banking Committee when we had the markup 
on this bill.
  Basically, I want to read a series of questions and answers I had 
with the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve about these types of 
allegations being made about the bill--a bill which is designed to deal 
with credit unions and community banks and the smaller sector of our 
economy, not the big banks--all these attacks about rolling back the 
protections against big banks.
  I asked Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell whether it was accurate, 
if this bill were passed, that the Federal Reserve would still be 
required to conduct supervisory stress tests for any bank with total 
assets between $150 billion and $250 billion to ensure that it has 
enough capital to weather economic downturns.
  He answered: Yes, it is.
  I asked, if this bill were passed, whether it was accurate that the 
Federal Reserve would still have sufficient authority to apply any 
prudential standard--let me repeat that--any prudential standard to a 
bank with between $100 billion and $250 billion in total assets if the 
Fed determined that was appropriate.
  He answered: Yes, that is true.
  I asked whether it was accurate that this bill does not weaken 
oversight of the largest globally systemic banks.
  He answered, correctly, that yes, that was correct.
  Then I asked whether it was accurate that the Federal Reserve applies 
enhanced standards to international banks based on their global total 
consolidated assets--meaning that our bill would not exempt banks like 
Deutsche Bank and Santander from section 165 of Dodd-Frank.
  He answered: That is correct.
  I want to repeat this, because this keeps coming up. The Chairman of 
the Federal Reserve said that this bill does not exempt G-SIB foreign 
banks, such as Deutsche Bank and Santander, and that we do not 
eliminate the ability of our Federal Reserve to correctly and properly 
supervise our banks.
  We are going to go back and forth over this, but this bill is 
designed to protect community banks and credit unions. That is why we 
have such bipartisan support for it.
  Mr. President, we have been able to highlight the benefits of the 
Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act on the 
Senate Floor over the last week, and I am glad we have the opportunity 
to continue that discussion this week.
  I have been very encouraged by my colleagues' support for this 
critical piece of legislation. I thank each of those Senators, 
including many members of the Banking Committee, for their support, 
interest, and involvement in the many discussions, hearings, and 
personal conversations we have had to improve this bill. I also thank 
all those who voted on the motion to invoke cloture on substitute 
amendment No. 2151, as modified, to S. 2155.
  Since the bill passed out of the Banking Committee, supporters have 
worked in good faith to include provisions that different Members have 
offered, including those who do not support the bill.
  The substitute amendment we offered last week reflects the additional 
provisions that the bill's supporters were able to agree on, 
collectively.
  To ensure that everyone understands what the substitute amendment 
does, let me take a few minutes to explain the changes from the bill 
that passed out of committee.
  This amendment makes both technical and substantive changes to 
further improve economic growth, regulatory relief, and consumer 
protections.
  This substitute makes changes to the appraisal provision in our bill 
to add definitions and provide detail on criteria for efforts to 
document and contact appraisers.
  It also strengthens the HMDA provision by adding a ``bad actor'' 
prohibition, limiting the universe of lenders who can take advantage of 
the relief to those that do not have ratings of ``need to improve'' on 
their last two CRA exams or one rating of ``substantial non-
compliance'' on their last CRA exam.
  It adds further consumer protections on who can take advantage of 
transitional licenses and adds liability protections for government 
officials who carry out their official duties.
  It modifies a provision by raising the threshold from $15 billion to 
$20 billion for those Federal savings associations that wish to take 
advantage of charter conversions.
  It modifies the existing provision dealing with applying the 
Expedited Funds Availability Act, which governs bank deposit holds, to 
add Guam to the list of American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the 
Northern Mariana Islands which would receive the benefit.
  It clarifies the current international insurance provision so that 
the Treasury, Fed, and Federal Insurance Office report to Congress on 
studies regarding consumer and market impact of international insurance 
capital standards is only required with respect to final standards.
  It also changes the date at which point Treasury and Fed reporting 
requirements on international insurance regulatory and supervisory 
forums terminate from December 31, 2022, to December 31, 2024--this 
aligns with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors' 
planned timeframe for implementing its insurance capital standard.
  It promotes construction and development on Main Street by ensuring 
that the Federal Reserve appropriately treats certain commercial real 
estate loans in its rules.
  It helps reduce identity fraud by directing the Social Security 
Administration to accept electronic signatures as consumer consent for 
financial institutions trying to verify customer ID and root out 
synthetic ID fraud.
  It uses part of the Fed's discretionary surplus as a pay-for.
  It expands the existing credit freeze provisions by increasing the 
circumstances where Americans can get a free credit freeze, and 
clarifies that an incapacitated person receives the same protections as 
a minor under the age of 16.
  It also adds a provision that gives free and ongoing credit 
monitoring to Active Duty servicemembers who are serving and 
sacrificing for our country.
  It adds a provision which helps protect veterans from predatory 
lending by requiring VA lenders to demonstrate a material benefit to 
consumers when refinancing their mortgages.
  It adds a section requiring Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to establish a 
process for validating and approving credit score models, and requires 
FHFA to establish standards and criteria for such processes.
  The language requires that any credit score model must meet a series 
of criteria related to predictiveness, accuracy, safety and soundness, 
and other metrics in order to be approved, to ensure that this will not 
undermine the quality of underwriting at Fannie and Freddie.
  The substitute adds important reports: a GAO report on Puerto Rico 
foreclosures; and a report on children's lead-based paint hazard 
prevention and abatement, which is a serious issue in many of our 
States.
  It also makes permanent certain protections for members of uniformed 
services under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.
  It also makes further clarifications to the section about enhanced 
supervision and prudential standards for certain banks, by lowering the 
asset threshold above which banks have to pay assessments and requiring 
the Fed

[[Page S1729]]

to adjust such charges to reflect the fact that the cost of supervision 
and regulation of certain institutions will be reduced as a result of 
this legislation.
  It also clarifies that this bill does not affect the legal effect of 
the Federal Reserve's final rule on foreign banking organizations, and 
the bill does not limit the Federal Reserve's legal authority to 
require intermediate holding companies, apply enhanced prudential 
standards, or tailor regulations for certain foreign banking 
organizations.
  The amendment also adds a new Encouraging Capital Formation title, 
which includes five capital formation and securities bills that passed 
the Senate by unanimous consent last year, as well as a bill to help 
companies take advantage of further ways to raise capital and ease 
burdens on certain publicly traded investment companies.
  Lastly, the bill provides additional protections for borrowers and 
cosigners of private student loans, and requires the Treasury 
Department to study and promulgate best practices for higher education 
financial literacy.
  All of these additions improve the bill and strengthen the core 
themes of the existing provisions; namely, improving economic growth, 
regulatory relief, and consumer protections.
  I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this amendment.


                      Amendment No. 2152 Withdrawn

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. Chairman, before I yield, I withdraw my amendment No. 
2152.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  The amendment is withdrawn.


                Vote on Amendment No. 2151, as Modified

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on agreeing to 
amendment No. 2151, as modified.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. 
Heinrich) is necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 67, nays 31, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 51 Leg.]

                                YEAS--67

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Carper
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Warner
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--31

     Baldwin
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Casey
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hirono
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Smith
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Heinrich
     McCain
       
  The amendment (No. 2151), as modified, was agreed to.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No. 
     287, S. 2155, a bill to promote economic growth, provide 
     tailored regulatory relief, and enhance consumer protections, 
     and for other purposes.
         Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Bob Corker, Ron Johnson, 
           John Barrasso, Cory Gardner, Steve Daines, Mike Crapo, 
           Deb Fischer, Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Rounds, Jeff 
           Flake, John Kennedy, Johnny Isakson, James Lankford, 
           Bill Cassidy, John Cornyn.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on S. 
2155, a bill to promote economic growth, provide tailored regulatory 
relief, and enhance consumer protections, and for other purposes, as 
amended, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  Mr. DURBIN I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) 
is necessarily absent.
  The PRESDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senator in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 67, nays 31, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 52 Leg.]

                               YEAS---67

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Carper
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Warner
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--31

     Baldwin
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Casey
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hirono
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Smith
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Heinrich
     McCain
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 67, the nays are 
31.
  The motion is agreed to.
  The Senator from Idaho.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
stand in recess until 5:45 p.m. today; that when the Senate reconvenes, 
all postcloture time be considered expired and the Senate vote on the 
motion to waive; and that following the vote on the motion to waive, 
the bill be read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the 
bill, as amended.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________