[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18024-18025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            ACCOUNTABILITY FOR LARGE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, before long, two must-pass pieces of 
legislation will come to the floor, a highway bill and a government-
funding bill. It is like ringing the dinner bell for Wall Street banks. 
The lobbyists are swarming this place. They want to roll back financial 
regulations, and they are working every contact they can to attach 
these rollbacks to anything that moves.
  It is a pretty neat trick. They probably can't get a rollback of 
financial regulations passed out in the open where Americans can see 
what is happening and see which Senators and which representatives 
voted to gut the rules for Wall Street banks. So they slipped these 
rollbacks into must-pass legislation, which gives the financial 
industry's friends in Congress a lot of cover.
  Of course, it is not just Wall Street that is trying this. Lobbyists 
and their Republican allies want to weaken the rules protecting 
workers, retirees, and our environment. They want to defund Planned 
Parenthood, attack civil rights laws, and shove all kinds of other 
provisions that would be terrible for our country. But, as in so many 
things, Wall Street is the true master of this strategy.
  It has been almost 1 year since Citigroup lobbyists wrote a provision 
to blast a hole in Dodd-Frank and, at the last minute, got it attached 
to a government funding bill. Since the government would have shut down 
if the funding bill hadn't passed, that Citigroup amendment made it 
through tacked on the back of the funding deal.
  The provision that got blown up last year was called ``Prohibition 
against Federal Government bailouts of swaps entities.'' The idea 
behind the rule is pretty simple. If a bank wanted to enter into 
certain risky deals--such as the credit default swaps that had been at 
the heart of the 2008 crisis--it had to bear all of the risk itself 
instead of passing it along to taxpayers. That was the provision that 
Congress repealed.
  Because Democrats weren't willing to shut down the government, Wall 
Street won that round. But this isn't over. Congressman Elijah Cummings 
and I decided to hunt down the impact of the Citigroup amendment. We 
opened an investigation, and today we released our findings.
  There are lots of details, but here is the takeaway. The FDIC 
estimates that the provision written by Citigroup lobbyists last year 
allows a few banks to put taxpayers on the hook for risky swaps with an 
estimated value of nearly $10 trillion. And what does it mean to load 
up on swaps such as this? The FDIC said: ``Generally speaking, large 
volumes of derivative activity conducted by a [bank] would be expected 
to increase its risk profile.
  And who is gobbling down most of this $10 trillion of risk? Three 
huge banks: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America--three 
banks, nearly $10 trillion.
  Now $10 trillion is a lot of risky business. Just remember, the whole 
TARP bailout was less than $1 trillion. Now a few banks--a few too-big-
to-fail banks--are going to keep another $10 trillion in risky business 
on their books. These banks will happily suck down the profits when 
their high-

[[Page 18025]]

stakes bets work out, and they will just as happily turn to the 
taxpayers to bail them out when there is a problem--all of this because 
the lobbyists persuaded Congress to do just one little favor for them.
  Earlier today Congressman Cummings and I asked the Government 
Accountability Office to do more analysis of these issues. But whatever 
the GAO finds, Congress now has 10 trillion reasons to stand up to 
Citigroup and bring back the swaps pushout rule to ensure that working 
families in this country--families with mortgages and student loans to 
pay and kids to take care of--aren't on the hook again, this time for 
$10 trillion of the big banks' risky bets. Congress has one job here. 
Congress should strengthen, not roll back, financial rules before one 
of these banks takes down our economy again.
  But bills to hold the big banks more accountable aren't getting much 
traction around here. Instead, right now people in Congress are talking 
about repealing more Dodd-Frank provisions. That is right. At this very 
moment lobbyists and Senators are plotting new ways to take cops off 
the beat on Wall Street and to weaken, delay or dilute the rules that 
protect consumers and hold big banks accountable and then to hook those 
rollbacks either onto a bill to fund our highways or to keep our 
government open.
  Now, Republicans say: Hey, if you want to get something done, if you 
want to repair our roads or keep the government open, this is the 
price; help the big banks.
  To be fair, Republicans are also getting some help from some 
Democrats. They say: Wall Street accountability is important, but I 
just want to get something done around here for a change; so let's go 
along.
  Well, yes, I want to get something done too. Who doesn't? But I 
didn't come here to carry water for the big banks.
  If Republicans think it is time to talk about financial reform, then 
let's put it all on the table and let's have everyone in Congress--
Democrats and Republicans--declare publicly where they stand. If the 
industry wants to push rollbacks, then I want to make it easier to send 
bankers to jail when they launder money for drug cartels or when they 
rig foreign exchange markets or when they cheat pension funds out of 
desperately needed money.
  If the industry wants to chip away at financial oversight, then I 
want to have a serious, on-the-record conversation about breaking up 
the biggest banks. Let's start with the three that are taking $10 
trillion in risky business onto their books: Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, 
and Bank of America.
  Yes, the American people want us to get something done. They are 
begging us to do some real work, but I don't hear a lot of my 
constituents asking us to water down financial rules and to do more 
favors for the big banks.
  So let's put it to the American people. Are you ready to weaken Dodd-
Frank, to give the biggest banks in the country more chances to take 
more risks and to leave you holding the bag, or is it time for a little 
more accountability--accountability for large financial institutions 
that month after month are in the headlines for breaking the law? Is it 
time to stop pretending and truly get rid of too big to fail once and 
for all? We can let every Republican and every Democrat vote in 
Congress on these questions. Let's do it with microphones on and the 
cameras rolling, but not behind closed doors and out of public view.
  We need to vote on a highway bill. We need to vote on a government 
funding bill. And if there is anyone in this Chamber, Republican or 
Democrat, who thinks they can slip goodies for Wall Street into these 
bills without a fight, they are very wrong.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.

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