[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 143 (Monday, August 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5949-S5951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, Americans are getting pretty tired of how 
much power special interests have in this town. That is why we created 
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look out for the millions 
of ordinary Americans who don't have armies of lobbyists. The Bureau 
was supposed to be an independent watchdog--a place free from Wall 
Street influence, which is pervasive around here pretty much all of the 
time.

  Remember what happened last year when powerful corporations demanded 
that Congress overturn a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule that 
guaranteed customers who were harmed by their bank would have their day 
in court? You might think protecting Americans' right to their day in 
court is something we would all agree on. Wall Street is so powerful, 
the Vice President of the United States had to come to this Chamber in 
the dead of night so that he could break a tie on behalf of Wall Street 
to vote to repeal.
  We have seen in this town a collective amnesia about what happened a 
decade ago. People forget that a decade ago people lost billions of 
dollars in wealth. People lost billions of dollars in their businesses. 
People lost jobs. People lost their homes. Over and over, we have heard 
those stories about what happened a decade ago. We saw it in our 
communities. I see it where my wife and I live in Cleveland. Yet the 
Banking Committee in this Congress, this Senate, seems to have 
forgotten about what happened 10 years ago. They are already going back 
to weakening the rules to help Wall Street, as if Wall Street doesn't 
have enough.
  Imagine if the same people who voted to repeal the rule we talked 
about a moment ago were in charge of deciding whether the Consumer 
Bureau could start an investigation into one of the big banks or payday 
lenders or credit bureaus like Equifax. That is what would happen if we 
put Congress in charge of the Consumer Bureau's budget.
  Do we think this current crowd in charge wouldn't do Wall Street's 
bidding, wouldn't punish the Bureau every time it tries to hold the big 
banks accountable? That is why it is independent. We don't want 
Congress to be able to cut its budget every time it goes after the bad 
guys.
  If the Consumer Bureau decides it wants to go after a payday lender 
that has preyed on veterans and servicemembers outside of Wright-
Patterson Air Force Base, if the Consumer Bureau decides that it wants 
to clamp down on discrimination in auto lending, we don't want Congress 
at the behest of Wall Street, at the behest of the auto industry--auto 
dealers in this case--to be able to cut their budget. That is clearly 
what they do.
  This year, under Mick Mulvaney, we have already seen what having a 
Consumer Bureau that is accountable to Wall Street rather than regular 
Americans looks like. Mulvaney has canceled enforcement actions against 
payday lenders. He has gutted the office responsible for going after 
discriminatory lenders. He encourages big banks to throw even more 
money at Members of Congress. I believe he went in front of the 
American Bankers Association--one of the big trade associations. He 
went in front of them and said: If you want to get your way with 
Congress, you have to put more money in, you have to give more campaign 
contributions.
  This was the President's appointed head of the Consumer Bureau. 
Perhaps most despicably, earlier this month, he announced he would no 
longer--get this--protect servicemembers and their families from shady 
lenders that tried to cheat them by ending the CFPB's

[[Page S5950]]

monitoring for violations of the Military Lending Act.
  Just today, the head student lending watchdog at the Consumer Bureau 
resigned. He said in his letter of resignation that ``it has become 
clear that consumers no longer have a strong, independent Consumer 
Bureau on their side.''
  Because of Mulvaney, because of the White House looking like a 
retreat for Wall Street executives, this leader in the Consumer Bureau, 
who is fighting to protect students who have been defrauded by 
financial institutions, said that it is ``clear that consumers no 
longer have a strong, independent Consumer Bureau on their side.''
  We created that Bureau 8 years ago. I pushed to include that office, 
the Student Loan Ombudsman, because I know hard-working families 
struggle with enormous education loans but rarely get any help from big 
banks or services or even their own government. The office was meant to 
be an independent check on the Education Department, which is even more 
important now that it is run by a Secretary, a billionaire, who doesn't 
seem to understand or care about the struggles that so many working 
families face.
  Right now, we have surpassed $1.5 trillion--that is $1,500 billion--
in student loan debt in this country. That debt has ripple effects for 
families for our entire economy. More than 1 million Americans are 
forced to default on their student loan debt every year. That is 3,000 
new defaults every single day. A disproportionate number of those are 
students who had borrowed to attend a for-profit school--schools that 
we know often trick and mislead Americans into taking out huge 
predatory loans; schools that spend way more time recruiting, 
marketing, advertising, and helping students get loans than they do 
coaching and mentoring and ultimately helping in the job search for 
these students when they finish. That is why we need a truly 
independent watchdog looking out for those students. That was the job 
of the outgoing Student Loan Ombudsman, but he has not been able to do 
his job, protecting students, because of Director Mulvaney.
  In his resignation, he confirmed what we all suspected--that Mulvaney 
is not independent. He is working for the same special interests as the 
rest of this administration. Rather than letting the career staff at 
CFPB do their jobs enforcing the law, Mulvaney has put a bunch of 
political lackeys in charge of the Consumer Bureau while independent 
experts are forced out of the agency.
  When the CFPB had an independent Director, it recovered $12 billion 
in relief for 29 million Americans. They had been harmed by Wells Fargo 
or a payday lender or a credit bureau like Equifax. Think of that: 29 
million Americans had recovered $12 billion from these companies and 
these banks that had cheated them. The student loan office was able to 
return $750 million specifically to students who had been preyed upon 
by for-profit schools or predatory collectors.
  Under Mulvaney, the CFPB doesn't do its job. That is why it is so 
important for the Senate to demand an independent leader to be in 
charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--not Mick Mulvaney, 
not his protege, Kathy Kraninger. We need someone fighting back against 
these corporations that take advantage of hard-working families, not 
taking orders from Wall Street.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                        Remembering John McCain

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I look across the Senate and see 
Senator McCain's desk silent, draped in black, under a vase of white 
roses, and it breaks my heart. I am here to say my farewell, and I have 
a bit of a predicament, which is that I am a very ordinary man, here to 
try and give tribute to a very extraordinary man.
  John McCain was an extraordinary man--extraordinary in his suffering 
and resilience, extraordinary in his ideals and principles, 
extraordinary in his courage and devotion, and extraordinary, too, in 
the devotion he engendered.
  We met when I was a new Senator and he already a legend. His battles 
for campaign finance reform and against corrupting earmarks were 
legendary. He could make a point here on the Senate floor with 
legendary drama and punch and declarative force. He could also be 
unreasonable, and he took a completely unreasonable liking to me. Our 
politics did not match. I could offer him nothing. Yet he befriended 
me, and, as so many colleagues know, John's friendship was a treasure.
  John showed courage in many ways, but he showed real courage in 
friendship. When an attack was mounted on one of Hillary Clinton's 
staffers, he came straight to the floor to defend her publicly. When 
someone attacked the character of Senator Obama at a political event, 
he said: No, I know him. He is a good family man.
  Loyalty attracts loyalty, and John was loyal. We traveled a lot 
together--to Afghanistan and Iraq, to Munich, Mali, Mongolia, and 
Macassar, to many, many places but, most poignantly, to Vietnam.
  My dad served 5 years in Vietnam. He told me about his colleague, 
Admiral McCain, whose son was a POW, who had been shot down and wounded 
terribly but refused early release. As a boy, I went with my father to 
Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon the night our POWs returned from 
captivity. John had left straight from Hanoi and did not pass through 
Tan Son Nhut, but I witnessed how frail and ill and pale and battered 
his fellow POWs were as they clamored out of the helicopters into the 
glare of the TV lights.
  I was ready to revere any man who had been through that, and to find 
that this man was so friendly and cheerful and feisty and irreverent--
that put me irrevocably into the McCain fan club. I noticed I was not 
alone. One telling measure of a man is his staff. John attracted people 
of exceptional talent and ability, who became so devoted they would 
walk through fire for him.
  John attracted the admiration of foreign leaders, not just from great 
powers but from remote and struggling countries. When we traveled in 
Libya, John was received like Lafayette. He had been there when it 
counted, when freedom there was in the offing. He was beloved in 
Ukraine. He had spoken at the Maidan when freedom there was in the 
offing. He spent an icy New Year's Eve with Ukrainian troops on their 
frontline.
  In Vietnam, John was revered. I don't know any celebrities, but I do 
know what traveling with a celebrity is like because I have traveled 
with John McCain in Vietnam. The statue that stands in Hanoi by the 
lake where he was shot down calls him an air pirate, but he was treated 
everywhere as a hero. And you had to know he liked the air pirate 
thing.
  Wherever we went in the world, he wanted to meet with prisoners, with 
the opposition, with whoever was pursuing freedom for their country. 
John McCain was America's most vigorous and loyal ambassador of 
freedom.
  He was fiercely proud that one place he was not welcome was Russia. 
Putin had banned him. ``No more holidays in Siberia,'' John laughed. 
Mark my words, one day even Russia will turn toward freedom, and when 
it does, John McCain will be revered there.
  John made a big difference in a great many ways, but the one I want 
to close with is the Senate.
  Senators are often stuffy. John was not. If there was ever a Senator 
entitled to take himself seriously, it was John. Yet he didn't. He 
effervesced the stolid Senate, to the occasional annoyance of some of 
our colleagues. Here, too, John engendered lifetime loyalty and 
affection and respect. Lindsey and Joe and Kelly were his great 
amigos--none greater than Lindsey, but many of us loved him well.
  Millions of Americans saw John McCain give the famous C-SPAN thumbs 
down that put an end to repeal and replace. They probably did not see 
what happened next. Having just cast what was a devastating vote for 
many of his colleagues, he went back to his seat. From my seat here 
across the Chamber, I saw John's colleagues gently start moving toward 
him. They may have hated his vote, but there was nevertheless this 
gentle flow of bodies moving to stand around and near him. His friend 
Dan Sullivan of Alaska was one who came down from the back row just to 
stand near John in the aisle. Hate the vote; love the man. This place 
can be complicated.
  John could be annoying. In Munich, accepting an award for John, his 
beloved Cindy said: ``I love him--most of

[[Page S5951]]

the time.'' His temper could be explosive. I read once of a man 
nicknamed for a South American volcano because he ``constantly fumed 
and regularly erupted,'' and I thought of John. He loved a good fight 
and was eager to pile in. ``A fight not joined is a fight not 
enjoyed,'' he would say.
  An extraordinary man is not a flawless man, and in his full humanity, 
John gave the rest of us mortals hope. You need not be perfect to try 
to be extraordinary. Well, he was extraordinary. I think we all found 
in him qualities of affection, principle, courage, and drama that were 
extraordinary. And at the end of the day, as compass needles turn 
toward true north, you knew where he would be pointing.
  I will quote some of his last public words here:

       Though the true radiance of our world may at times seem 
     obscured, though we will suffer adversity and setbacks and 
     misfortune--never, ever stop fighting for all that is good 
     and just and decent about our world and each other.

  I will never forget and will always treasure our friendship, but what 
I will revere is the way John McCain pointed true north at what was 
good and just and decent about our world and each other.
  His hero, Robert Jordan, in ``For Whom the Bell Tolls,'' said, as he 
died, ``The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate 
very much to leave it.'' We hate very much, John, that you have had to 
leave it. God bless you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
notwithstanding rule XXII, the postcloture time on the Johnson 
nomination expire at 10:40 a.m. on Tuesday, August 28.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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