[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 7, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2793-S2796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5,
UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE OFFICE OF THE
COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY RELATING
TO THE REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS UNDER THE BANK MERGER ACT
Mrs. BLACKBURN. 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. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Nomination of Michelle Bowman
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, this week, the Senate Banking Committee--
the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs--advanced
the nomination of Michelle ``Miki'' Bowman to be the Vice Chair for
Supervision at the Federal Reserve. Miki Bowman is my constituent. She
is a Kansan, a native of Morris County. Miki has deep roots in rural
America.
After graduating from the University of Kansas, followed by Washburn
University's Law School, she came to Washington, DC, working across
Capitol Hill and the executive branch. Like many good Kansans, Miki
eventually found her way back home, and she became the vice president
at Farmers and Drovers Bank, a community bank in Council Grove, KS.
That occurred in 2010. In 2017, Miki became the Kansas State bank
commissioner, where she was responsible for overseeing hundreds of
State-chartered banks, trust companies, money transmitters, and other
nondepository entities.
When President Trump chose Miki to serve as the community bank
representative on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, it was clear
she was a great choice, the right choice to give small lenders and
rural communities a voice at the Fed. Not only did Miki exceed the
qualifications for the position set by law, but her time living and
working in rural Kansas helped guide her decision making.
With immense experience working in and supervising community banks, I
am confident Miki will continue to be a champion for those community
banks but really, more importantly, for those those community banks
serve, the people of States like mine and the Presiding Officer's. She
will serve those people and those communities well.
The Vice Chair for Supervision plays the critical role of overseeing
the regulatory environment and the supervision of many of our Nation's
financial institutions, large and small. This Vice Chair position will
be responsible for both rightsizing regulations for smaller lenders and
finalizing the Basel III Endgame.
Not only do I trust Miki's professional experience, but I have come
to know her as an independent, forthright, intelligent, quality
individual with a demonstrated record of service to her State and
Nation. Miki will make an excellent Federal Reserve Vice Chair for
Supervision. I look forward to voting to confirm her nomination here in
the full Senate, and I urge my colleagues to support her confirmation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Louisiana.
S.J. Res. 13
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I have said before--and I want to make
this really clear--I don't hate anyone. I don't. I look for grace
wherever I can find it, and when I say my prayers, one of the things I
ask my Maker for is, ``Please, God, don't let me hate,'' because
sometimes it is hard here in Washington.
You know, there have been many a morning when I have gotten up in my
overpriced Capitol Hill apartment, and I am walking over here to the
Capitol, and I give myself a pep talk. I talk to myself. I say:
Kennedy, today you are going to follow Jesus.
And by 10 o'clock, I still want to follow Jesus, but I also want to
slap the hell out of somebody.
So it is important that we remind ourselves: Don't hate.
And I don't hate anyone. And that includes President Biden. But
President Biden and his people had the remarkable ability to take
something that wasn't broken and try to fix it. They would take
something that wasn't broken in government and take it apart, loosen a
few screws, and then it would be broken.
In a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to vote to try to
repair some damage that President Biden's folks did in that regard. It
has to do with banks.
As you know, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency--I will
call it the OCC, so you will know what I am talking about. The OCC
regulates our banks, and that includes big banks but also small banks.
We have got more small banks in America than we have big banks.
In fact, our smaller banks throughout this wonderful country make
most of the loans to ordinary people. At a lot of the big banks, now,
if you are just an average small businesswoman or businessman and you
need a loan, you go to the larger banks, and they won't even see you.
You have to go to a small bank to get that loan.
Small banks merge all the time. You have probably seen it in your
local communities. Why do small banks merge a lot? Well, one of the
reasons is they can provide better services to their customers.
Another reason that small banks tend to merge a lot is because maybe
they want to move into a new geographical area, and they can't do it
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alone. So they will merge with another bank in that area.
A third reason that small banks merge a lot is because they think,
when they discuss their merger, that together they will be stronger and
more profitable, and therefore, can make more loans.
But another reason is to try to comply with Federal regulations. I
mean, our Federal regulations with respect to a bank will take your
breath away. There are a bunch of them, and it costs so much to comply
with rules and regulations by the Federal Government.
Our rules and regulations now cost the American businessperson about
$2 trillion a year. And I am not saying all of those are banking
regulations or not, but the cost of those regulations gets passed on to
consumers, and that is why, in part, products and services have
increased in price.
But there are so many Federal rules and regulations that a small bank
will often say: You know, I can't comply with all of this loan. I have
got to get help. And we have got to spread the costs.
So that bank will merge with another bank and have more people in it,
and it will be cheaper through economies of scale, which I know, Mr.
President, you understand because you are a very successful
businessperson. But they can spread the cost through economies of
scale.
So small banks merge all the time. Now we recognize that. The Office
of the Comptroller of the Currency, OCC, back in 1995, saw this coming.
And the OCC, at that time, said: We want to devise a way for small
banks to be able to merge fairly easily, but, at the same time, we at
the OCC want to be able to make sure that what they are doing in this
merger is not a risk to the consumer.
So the OCC, in 1995, issued what is called the Bank Merger Guidelines
of 1995. Their rule for the merger of small banks was pretty simple.
The OCC devised this short questionnaire where, if you were two small
banks and you wanted to merge, you had to answer yes or no to 14
separate questions--very simple, very straightforward. To 14 questions,
you answered yes or no.
And then the OCC--the folks at OCC--could look at your answers and
see if they thought there was any risk to consumers. And the OCC also
adopted a rule that said: Look, if we don't give you an answer within
15 days, because we are busy--the OCC said--your merger is
automatically approved.
Short, sweet, very effective. We haven't had problems with our small
banks, and none of these mergers--hundreds have taken place since 1995,
which have actually made the financial system in America stronger and
created virtually no risk.
Well, President Biden's people at the OCC decided that it wasn't
broken; so they were going to fix it. Again, I don't hate anybody, but
you have got to call it like you see it.
I think the folks at President Biden's OCC got up one day and thought
there was an award for being stupid. They took this very simple and
effective rule and procedure, and they turned it on its head. What they
did was tier-one-level moronic.
Here is what they did. They threw out the old rule. They said: We are
going to have a new rule, and the new rule is instead of these--this
was in 2013--instead of these 14 simple yes-or-no questions, we are
going to make all of these small banks submit so much paperwork to us
that you could stack that paperwork right here and stand on it and
practically paint the ceiling.
They threw out the 14 simple yes-or-no questions. They said that now
these small banks--these are small banks, now, community banks--have to
submit reams and reams of evidence: We, at the OCC, will start making a
decision based on 19 criteria. The banks will have to prove that they
complied with 13 of what the OCC call positive indicators, and the
banks will have to show that they do not align with six of what the OCC
started calling negative indicators.
The procedure, not only did it require reams of evidence, but just
trying to read their rule that they put out, it was written in
Sanskrit. You would have to hire a bucketload of lawyers to be able to
just understand the rule.
Then President Biden's people said: Not only that, we are going to
throw out this 15-day rule that, if you don't hear from us within 15
days, your merger is automatically approved.
Well, it threw the merger process for small banks that was working
beautifully into total disarray. It just made the whole process more
expensive, less efficient, and more expensive for consumers because the
costs are passed on.
So in a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to reject President
Biden's cumbersome rule. I am not going to suggest that we not regulate
small bank mergers. I am going to suggest that we go back to the
procedure that we were using since 1995, which worked, and that we go
back and adopt that procedure. That doesn't mean that the OCC can't
revisit it at some point.
But let me just be blunt. What President Biden's OCC people did was
put together a plan--a new rule--that looks like it was put together by
a heroin addict with a socket wrench. I mean, it is the most convoluted
thing you have ever seen.
If we vote yes today--and I hope we do--then we will reject this rule
and go back to doing it the old way.
Budget Reconciliation
Mr. President, since I have a few minutes, I am going to move to
another topic, reconciliation, which you are very familiar with. Thank
you for all of your contributions to it, by the way, as we put together
the bill.
The American people may be a little confused about what
``reconciliation'' means. As you know, a reconciliation bill is just a
budget bill. That is all it is. It deals with spending of taxpayer
money.
And why is it important?
Well, first it is going to be important to try to lower the prices
that are gutting the American people like a fish. Inflation--President
Biden's inflation--was simply pernicious. I don't know of another word
for it.
It got to the point--I don't know about in your State, but in my
State, you know, people shouldn't have to sell blood plasma to be able
to go to the grocery store. They shouldn't. And make no mistake--we all
know this--those high prices were man-made. Again, no disrespect, but
that man's name was Joe Biden, and that is true.
The first goal of our reconciliation bill is to try to help get those
prices down. How are we going to do that? No. 1, we are going to reduce
government spending.
Why does that matter? Well, how did we get the inflation? We got the
inflation because President Biden's favorite form of spending was more.
I said many times if the White House during President Biden's term had
discovered life on Mars, they would have sent it money immediately. And
it was all this money that they injected into the economy, trillions of
dollars, Inflation Reduction Act and the America Rescue Plan. They
spent all this money. We had all of this money that came into the
economy chasing too few goods, created demand, supply constant, and we
had inflation.
So we are going to try to get those prices down--we, meaning this
Congress--by reducing the government spending, which will reduce the
stimulus to the economy, which, if we do it right, ought to lower
interest rates. That is step 1 that we are going to try to achieve in
reconciliation.
The second part of reconciliation, we are going to continue to try to
reduce the rules and regulations. All of these rules and regulations
have a price.
And when you are adding $2 trillion in costs that fall on the backs
of businesswomen and businessmen, to stay in business they have got to
pass the costs of all those rules and regulations on to the consumer.
So if we can get rid of some of these rules and regulations, like we
are going to continue to do in a few minutes when we vote on a rule to
get rid of the Biden rule I was just talking about, if we can reduce
those rules and regulations, goods and services will cost less.
The third thing we are going to try to do in reconciliation or our
``budget bill,'' if you prefer that term, is redesign the Tax Code so
that it looks like somebody designed it on purpose.
Since 1990, average GDP growth in America has been 2 percent a year.
Now, that is just not acceptable. When we hit 2.5 percent now of GDP
growth, we are so happy we want to go have a toga party. Two and a half
percent is not acceptable.
We have got to start growing again at a normal rate. What used to be
normal for America was 3 percent. Now,
[[Page S2795]]
how are we going to do that? We are going to do that by encouraging
businesswomen and businessmen to invest in their businesses and grow
their businesses and hire more people.
And the byproduct of that is that wages will go up, and that way
people will be making more money so they will be able to afford this
inflation that President Biden left us with.
So the first goal of reconciliation is to try to reduce these prices,
to try to kill inflation dead, but there is a second equally, some
would say more, important reason, as the Presiding Officer well knows.
In 2017, this Congress, during President Trump's first term, passed the
2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We cut taxes by $4.3 trillion. And, boy,
did it work.
The economy took off like a SpaceX rocket ship. Within a year, median
household income in America had gone up $4,400, and people at the lower
end of the wage scale enjoyed more tax benefits and more money in their
pocket than people at the other end.
That is why I have to laugh when my Democratic colleagues say: Well,
you know, this was a tax cut for the rich. No, all you have to do is
look at the data. Unless you do your research on Twitter, you know that
it helped people at the lower end of the wage scale more than those at
the upper end. That is the good news.
The bad news is that those tax cuts expire at the end of this year.
So we are going to try to extend them and make them permanent in our
reconciliation bill. And if we don't, if we don't, then we are going to
have a $4.3 trillion tax increase on the American people--$4.3
trillion.
I want the Presiding Officer to think about that when some of our
colleagues try to throw up roadblocks to the reconciliation bill. In
effect, what they are saying is, they want to raise taxes on the
American people by $4.3 trillion. That is the most important thing we
want to do in our reconciliation bill. It is not the only important
thing, as I mentioned, but it is clearly the most important fact.
If we raise taxes right now, $4.3 trillion on the American people,
this economy will begin a journey to the center of the Earth. We cannot
let it happen.
Now, I don't want to minimize the importance of the role that
reconciliation will play in lowering prices and lowering inflation.
That is important. But worse than inflation is depression, and if we
don't extend these tax cuts and make them permanent, we are going to be
in a depression. And that is really what the reconciliation bill is all
about.
I thank the Presiding Officer for his time, I will end like I began.
I am not saying everything President Biden and his people did was
wrong, but on this rule that they promulgated to hurt small banks, it
was just disastrous, and we are going to try to fix it today. And my
colleagues will vote with me on this.
We will return some sanity to the merger rules for small banking.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote
no on S.J. Res. 13. President Trump promised that he would lower costs
for American families on day one. He promised to cap interest rates on
credit cards at 10 percent, and so what is it that the Senate is
prioritizing today? Making it easier for banks to merge, raising the
cost of credit for small businesses and households, and eroding banking
services in local communities.
This resolution would undo commonsense provisions and improvements to
the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency bank merger review
framework after decades of that office rubberstamping deals that have
reduced competition in the banking sector and put community banks all
across this country out of business.
Now, we have witnessed small banks just vanishing from our local
communities over the past several decades. These are the banks that are
deeply rooted in our neighborhoods, that do the painstaking local
lending that many small businesses rely on.
Regulators' long record of rubberstamping bank mergers has resulted
in scores of branch closures, leaving consumers with fewer choices when
it comes to whom to trust with their money.
Between 2006 and 2021, the Federal Reserve approved more than 3,500
consecutive mergers without denying a single one--not even one single
no. With the regulators completely asleep at the switch since 1990, the
number of banks in the United States has declined from more than 18,000
to fewer than 5,000.
The biggest banks have been the beneficiaries of this consolidation
because they have grown even bigger. In the mid-1990s, the 20 biggest
banks in this country held a total of 15 percent of all bank assets--
the 20 biggest had 15 percent of all the assets.
Today, the top 20 hold more than 65 percent of all bank assets, and
the concentration at the very top is even more extreme. The biggest
four banks alone hold more assets than the next 75 banks combined.
This problem can be life or death for small businesses that can't get
ahold of anyone at a big bank who understands the local economy or the
nuances of their business or their credit needs.
At a big bank, you get a 1-800 number and a cookie-cutter product
developed in some far-off headquarters. The problem is even more dire
in low-income neighborhoods where research shows that predatory lenders
and check cashers proliferate as bank consolidation increases.
Concentrating power into a few financial giants and money centers
reduces competition, and it results in Americans paying higher prices
for their banking services. That means higher credit card interest
rates, higher fees, higher auto loan payments, and unaffordable
mortgages. And when these banks become too big to fail, the entire
economy feels the pain when those banks' risk-taking blows up, and
taxpayers are the ones who have to foot the bill when Wall Street comes
in here demanding bailouts.
In recent years, regulators started to wake up to the fact that a
highly consolidated banking sector is bad for consumers and bad for our
economy. Bank supervisors and antitrust enforcers have been taking a
careful look at the rules that guide how mergers are scrutinized, and
they finally--finally--began to apply the law, as written by Congress,
and they retired the rubberstamp.
In 2024, the OCC, which oversees most of the very largest banks,
finalized improvements to the bank merger framework, creating a more
comprehensive process and a more transparent process. First, the new
rules will end the practice that allows certain mergers to be
automatically approved just 15 days after the closing of the public
comment period.
This resolution would reinstitute automatic approval just as Elon
Musk's, his DOGE, guts the very staff that are reviewing these bank
merger applications. It is a dangerous combination to actually say: We
are going to do these automatic approvals, give them a really short
period of time, and then cut the number of people who are there in the
regulatory Agencies to be able to review the mergers.
Second, the updated rules also ensure that all applicants provide
regulators with the information they need to weed out harmful
transactions and to ensure that the OCC is more transparent about how
it weighs certain factors when making a determination for whether to
approve or deny a merger, and all that would go away.
The OCC's final rule is a commonsense step to revitalize the bank
merger framework after decades of lax review. Passing this resolution
would turn back the clock, raise costs for Americans at a time when
they can least afford it, and choke off credit even more for the small
businesses that need it most.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. It is bad for
consumers, bad for small businesses, and, ultimately, that means it is
bad for our economy.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Under the previous order, all time is expired.
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The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third
time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading
and was read the third time.
Vote on S.J. Res. 13
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
Ms. BALDWIN. 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. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: The
Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton).
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 237 Leg.]
YEAS--52
Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young
NAYS--47
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--1
Cotton
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 13) was passed, as follows:
S.J. Res. 13
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress
disapproves the rule submitted by the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury
relating to ``Business Combinations Under the Bank Merger
Act'' (89 Fed. Reg. 78207 (September 25, 2024)), and such
rule shall have no force or effect.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The Senator from Kansas.
____________________