[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 16482]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   THE BIG BANKS ARE MAKING BIG BUCKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Al Green) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, once again, I am honored to stand 
in the well of the Congress of the United States of America, although I 
am sad to bring the news that I shall share with you.
  I am saddened by something that has happened in this Congress. The 
big banks are making big bucks. They are doing very well, and they just 
received a big bonus from Congress.
  The big bonus is this: if you do business with them, you will have to 
participate in arbitration, and you won't be allowed to sue them to 
resolve your dispute by way of litigation. Congress has decided that 
the big banks making the big bucks can force you to go to arbitration, 
and you will have to pay a fee to negotiate your way through the 
arbitration process. I think that there is something wrong with this 
picture.
  There is something wrong with this picture when we realize that one 
bank--and I will just single one out, I won't go through all of the 
entirety of the industry, but one bank, Wells Fargo, one bank, opened 
3.5 million accounts in the names of persons without their consent. In 
the names of customers, 3.5 million accounts without the consent of 
customers.

                              {time}  1100

  This one bank, Wells Fargo, paid $185 million as a part of the 
resolution. This one bank, Wells Fargo, paid $80 million for enrolling 
customers into auto insurance that they didn't need. One bank, Wells 
Fargo, paid $2.8 million in refunds to customers. One bank, Wells 
Fargo, in 2012, illegally foreclosed on servicemembers' homes and 
autos--one bank, Wells Fargo--and for this, they paid $311 million. 
This was about $125,000 per servicemember.
  So we find ourselves in a circumstance where banks that do these ugly 
things to customers won't have to go to court. They won't have to face 
a jury. They will simply require the customer to negotiate with them. I 
find this quite shocking, to be quite frank with you, and I am very 
saddened by it, because I know that, if you take from the bank, you 
will go to court. But, apparently, Congress has concluded that, if the 
bank takes from you, you go to the bank and negotiate.
  It is a sad state of affairs.

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