[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2193-S2194]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Congressional Review Act Resolution

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, just weeks after making it harder to stop 
discrimination in mortgage lending, the Senate is now on the verge of 
voting to make it harder to stop discrimination in auto lending.
  About 40 years ago, Congress passed the important civil rights law 
called the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. That law said companies 
couldn't discriminate when offering a loan. It was a simple idea: Loan 
terms should be based on creditworthiness, not on the color of 
someone's skin.
  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the Federal 
agencies responsible for enforcing that 40-year-old law. The CFPB found 
out that when auto dealers were helping customers get financing for a 
car loan, minority customers were often given worse loans than their 
White counterparts. The underlying reason was something called a dealer 
reserve, where the lenders providing the financing for a car loan gave 
the dealer discretion to mark up the interest rate on the loan and the 
dealer could keep some of the additional profit from the markup. The 
problem was the growing evidence that dealers marked up loans higher 
for minorities than for Whites with similar credit profiles.
  In 2013, the CFPB issued guidance to these lenders about how they 
could make sure they were complying with the Equal Credit Opportunity 
Act. They could institute more rigorous oversight of their auto 
financing process to get rid of these discriminatory practices or they 
could stop using the dealer reserves that facilitated these 
discriminatory practices and just pay dealers a flat fee per loan 
instead.
  After issuing the guidance, the CFPB found that a few auto lenders 
were not following the guidance. It entered into settlements with Fifth 
Third and the financing arms of both Honda and Toyota. These 
settlements returned millions of dollars to people who had been charged 
more for car loans simply based on the color of their skin.

[[Page S2194]]

  A lot of auto dealers and auto lenders don't like the CFPB's 
guidance, which brings us to today, when the Senate is about to vote on 
reversing this guidance and prohibiting the CFPB from ever issuing 
similar guidance again.
  This is part of the broader Republican attack on the efforts to fight 
economic discrimination. House Republicans have passed multiple bills 
that would make it harder to enforce fair lending laws. Since assuming 
control of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney has taken steps to undermine the 
agency's Office of Fair Lending.
  The vote today is also a troubling followup to the recent bank 
deregulation bill that just passed the Senate. That bill reduced data 
reporting requirements for 85 percent of the banks in this country, 
making it harder for Federal agencies to monitor mortgage lending, 
uncover discrimination, and enforce the law. Now the Senate is 
considering rolling back guidance that explains how lenders can avoid 
discrimination when providing auto loans.
  Let's be clear. Discrimination in auto lending is alive and well. The 
National Fair Housing Alliance recently sent two people--one White, one 
non-White--to eight car dealerships in Virginia. Even though the non-
White person had better credit than the White person in each instance, 
the non-White person ended up with a more expensive loan half of the 
time. Think about that--better credit and paid more for the loan. In 
fact, in those cases, the non-White person would have paid $2,500 more 
over the life of their loan than the White person with worse credit.
  The last thing we should be doing is making it harder to crack down 
on that kind of discrimination. As a wide array of civil rights and 
consumer groups recently wrote, ``Discrimination in auto lending 
continues to extract billions of dollars a year in extra loan payments 
from borrowers of color; Congress should be taking action to end this 
injustice, not interfering with efforts to enforce fair lending laws.''
  A vote in favor of the resolution today is a vote to support the 
Trump administration's systemic dismantling of fair lending laws in 
this country. It is a vote in favor of Mick Mulvaney's efforts to leash 
up the CFPB's Office of Fair Lending. It is a vote in favor of allowing 
some auto lenders and dealers to continue to charge African Americans 
and Latinos hundreds and thousands more just because of their race.
  I urge all of my colleagues to oppose this resolution.
  Thank you.
  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.
  Ms. STABENOW. 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 Senator from Michigan.