[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2407-2434]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nomination 
of Steven T. Mnuchin, of California, to be Secretary of the Treasury, 
which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Steven 
T. Mnuchin, of California, to be Secretary of the Treasury.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I yield my postcloture debate time to 
Senator Wyden.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  Ms. HASSAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Recognition of the Minority Leader

  The Democratic leader is recognized.


                          Cabinet Nominations

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, candidate Trump ran a populist campaign 
that promised so much to working America. Many of those themes were 
actually echoed in his inaugural address, but ever since President 
Trump took the oath of office, he has gone about breaking promise after 
promise to the working people of this country.
  A predictable pattern is beginning to emerge. This President uses 
populist rhetoric to cover up a hard-right agenda. We still hear the 
remnants of candidate Trump's populism in his speeches, but his actions 
as President don't match up. Just an hour after he had delivered 
populist words on the steps of the Capitol in his inaugural address, 
the President signed an Executive order--his first, I believe--that 
jacked up the price on Americans trying to afford a mortgage.
  Ever since, we here in the Senate have been working through the 
President's Cabinet, which is filled not with champions of the working 
class, not with people who came from the working class but with a slew 
of superrich nominees, Washington insiders, and corporate types who 
have spent their whole careers sticking it to the working man.
  A President's Cabinet provides insight into how they will govern and 
what their priorities will be. The President has shown his hand by 
selecting the most anti-working class Cabinet we have ever seen.
  The slate of nominees we will soon consider, including Steve Mnuchin 
for Treasury, Andrew Pudzer for Labor, and Rick Mulvaney for OMB, show 
the yawning gap between the President's audacious promises to working 
America and the practical reality of his administration, which is 
steadily stacking the deck against them.
  This evening we will debate the nomination of Steve Mnuchin for 
Treasury, a Cabinet post that will have oversight over Wall Street.
  Candidate Trump spent the campaign lambasting elites and criticizing 
Wall Street. He said:

       I'm not going to let Wall Street get away with murder. Wall 
     Street has caused tremendous problems for us.

  Those are his words, but what does President Trump do? With one of 
his first Executive orders, he started the process to try to roll back 
Wall Street reform, undoing protections we put in place after the 
financial crisis to prevent another one from occurring. He wants to 
eviscerate the one agency that sticks up for consumers when they are 
being ripped off by payday lenders or debt collectors--the CFPB. That 
is a broken promise.
  Candidate Trump said at his rallies: ``When you cast that ballot, 
just picture a Wall Street board room filled with the special interests 
. . . and imagine the look on their faces when you tell . . . them: 
`You're fired!'''
  But President Trump told Steve Mnuchin, a Wall Street insider with 
decades of experience in that board room he described, ``You're 
hired,'' as his Treasury Secretary, no less. That is a broken promise.
  A President who is a true champion for working America would never 
consider unwinding protections that were designed to make our financial 
system more secure and protect hard-working Americans from the risky 
practices too often seen on Wall Street.
  For the Secretary of Labor, the President picked Andrew Puzder, a man 
who once said he prefers robots to human employees because, in his 
words, they are always polite, they always upsell, they never take a 
vacation, they never show up late, there is never a slip and fall, or 
an age, sex, or race discrimination case.
  Secretary Nominee Puzder, the guy who is supposed to be protecting 
laborers--working people--actually said that.
  I want to read it again. It galls me that this man is nominated for 
Labor Secretary. Why does he prefer robots to human employees? 
Secretary Puzder: They are always polite, they always upsell, they 
never take a vacation, they never show up late, there is never a slip 
and fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.
  This is a man who has such disdain for workers that he said the 
minimum wage is a big mistake, and while at CKE Restaurants, his 
company, he continually outsourced American jobs.
  A President who is a true champion of working America would never 
even consider selecting a nominee like Andrew Puzder to run the Labor 
Department. It is another broken promise to the working men and women 
of America. Amazing.
  What President Trump did during the campaign and said during the 
campaign and in his inaugural address is

[[Page 2408]]

almost the exact opposite of what he is doing now. You could not find a 
more anti-labor nominee for Labor Secretary than Mr. Puzder.
  Now, what about OMB? The President selected Representative Mike 
Mulvaney, whose congressional career is a direct rebuke to key promises 
Candidate Trump made to working America. Candidate Trump promised that 
he was ``not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican 
and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.''
  That is a quote from Candidate Trump.
  But who does he choose for OMB? A pick who has relentlessly argued to 
cut both of these programs, including bill after bill that would end 
both Medicare and Social Security as we know it.
  Our new Health and Human Services Secretary--who, unfortunately, 
passed this Chamber because our Republican colleagues are just marching 
in lockstep to the President--is in exactly the same vein.
  A true champion of senior citizens, of the working man and woman, 
wouldn't hire someone like Representative Mulvaney or Representative 
Price to take an ax to the programs they have relied on for 
generations.
  Just 3 weeks in, the administration is stretching the boundaries of 
cognitive dissonance. The President still speaks like a populist but 
governs like a hard-right conservative. He promises to stick up for 
working families, but every decision he has made is rigging the system 
further against them.
  Every American who works hard for their paycheck, who desperately 
deserves fairer overtime pay, who is counting on Social Security and 
Medicare to be there when they retire should look at this Cabinet and 
be very worried.
  I know many working people voted for President Trump in hopes that 
they would change the power structure in Washington, as he promised so 
many times. His Cabinet is the first way to see if he really meant it. 
His Cabinet is the first way to measure: Is President Trump measuring 
up in his Presidency to what he promised in his campaign?
  It turns out President Trump was using populist rhetoric to cover up 
a hard-right agenda, which will be carried out by this bevy of 
billionaires and bankers and hard-right idealogues--broken promise 
after broken promise.
  Candidate Trump said that Washington was a place where ``the hedge 
fund managers, the Wall Street investors . . . and the powerful 
[protect] the powerful.''
  ``But I'm fighting for you,'' he said to working Americans.
  If these first 3 weeks are any indication, that is a broken promise.
  The nominations of Steve Mnuchin, Representative Mulvaney, and Andrew 
Puzder represent broken promise after broken promise after broken 
promise. We Democrats, over the next several weeks, will make clear to 
the American people, as we continue to debate these nominations, that 
what President Trump said on the campaign trail is not what he is doing 
as President. He is breaking his promises to the working people of 
America.
  Many working people who voted for Mr. Trump are depending on him to 
do what he said in the campaign. Reading the tea leaves of the first 3 
weeks, working Americans are going to be deeply, deeply disappointed 
over the course of his Presidency.
  Thank you. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, when you serve as the Secretary of 
Treasury, you are charged with a variety of responsibilities, and right 
at the center of your duties is to address taxes. This is an area that 
the nominee to head the Treasury Department, Mr. Steven Mnuchin, waded 
into very early on after his nomination became public.
  News leaked on November 29 of last year that Mr. Mnuchin was the 
President-elect's choice for Secretary of the Treasury. The very next 
day, Mr. Mnuchin appeared on a CNBC program and confirmed his 
selection. During an extended interview with CNBC, he introduced what I 
have come to call the Mnuchin rule. I will quote Mr. Mnuchin directly 
with respect to what he said: ``Any reductions we have in upper income 
taxes would be offset by less deductions, so there would be no absolute 
tax cut for the upper class.''
  I will repeat that last part of the Mnuchin rule: ``no absolute tax 
cut for the upper class.''
  Mr. Mnuchin is the President's nominee for Treasury Secretary. This 
is a position that has been held by American economic giants like 
Alexander Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, Salmon Chase, Henry Morgenthau and 
Lloyd Bentsen. When a nominee for Treasury Secretary makes a pledge 
like Mr. Mnuchin's, it really ought to mean something. It ought to 
stand for something.
  Unfortunately, it already looks as though the Mnuchin rule is on the 
ropes. The very first act of the 115th Congress and a unified 
Republican government, repealing the Affordable Care Act, shatters the 
Mnuchin rule.
  The Affordable Care Act repeal scheme that Republicans kicked off 
months ago, in my view, is a Trojan horse of tax breaks for the most 
fortunate. Nobody outside the top 4 or 5 percent of earners would get 
any of that break. Most of it would go to households in the top 1 
percent of earners--even then, the top one-tenth of 1 percent--and it 
is paid for by taking insurance coverage and tax cuts for health care 
literally out of the hands of millions of working people.
  Then it is back for another whack at the Mnuchin rule later this 
year. Last week, the New York Times published a story talking about Mr. 
Mnuchin, which said that ``his guarantee appears impossible to fulfill 
either under the tax overhaul that the House Republicans are pushing or 
similar, sketchier proposals that Mr. Trump has offered.''
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the article titled ``Treasury Nominee Vows No Tax Cut for Rich. Math 
Says the Opposite.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                             [Feb. 9, 2017]

   Treasury Nominee Vows No Tax Cut for Rich. Math Says the Opposite.

                          (By Patricia Cohen)

       The newly christened ``Mnuchin rule''--the assurance given 
     by the Treasury nominee Steven T. Mnuchin that ``there would 
     be no absolute tax cut for the upper class''--seems as if it 
     was made to be broken.
       Mr. Mnuchin initially made the statement during an 
     interview on CNBC in November, after President Trump chose 
     him for the cabinet. At Mr. Mnuchin's confirmation hearing, 
     Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, rebranded the comment 
     as a ``rule,'' transforming a throwaway line into a formal 
     pledge.
       Whether it will be kept may become clearer in two or three 
     weeks--the timing Mr. Trump mentioned Thursday for delivering 
     a ``phenomenal'' tax plan.
       Although Mr. Mnuchin said any rate reductions at the top 
     would be offset by the closing of fat loopholes, his 
     guarantee appears impossible to fulfill either under the tax 
     overhaul that the House Republicans are pushing or similar, 
     sketchier proposals that Mr. Trump has offered.
       Redesigning the tax code with an eye fixed on lower rates 
     has been a Republican mission for decades, and one that Mr. 
     Trump adopted. That prospect, combined with a promised 
     regulatory retreat, has pumped up the stock market and fueled 
     optimism among business leaders.
       At the same time, the president has raised expectations 
     among his working-class supporters that ``the rich will pay 
     their fair share,'' and that ``special-interest loopholes 
     that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and for 
     people like me, but unfair to American workers'' will be 
     eliminated. Mr. Mnuchin, soon to be one of the 
     administration's top economic policy officials, promised ``a 
     big tax cut for the middle class.''
       Yet analyses of the president's and the House Republicans' 
     plans consistently conclude that the wealthy will receive the 
     largest tax cuts by far.
       Start with the House blueprint, which at the moment is the 
     closest thing to a working draft that exists. The nonpartisan 
     Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and 
     Brookings Institution, found ``high-income taxpayers would 
     receive the biggest

[[Page 2409]]

     cuts, both in dollar terms and as a percentage of income.''
       How big? ``Three-quarters of the tax cuts would benefit the 
     top 1 percent of taxpayers,'' if the plan were put into 
     effect this year, it said. The highest-income households--the 
     top 0.1 percent--would get ``an average tax cut of about $1.3 
     million, 16.9 percent of after-tax income.''
       Those in the middle fifth of incomes would get a tax cut of 
     almost $260, or 0.5 percent, while the poorest would get 
     about $50.
       That split would worsen down the road, the Tax Policy 
     Center says: ``In 2025 the top 1 percent of households would 
     receive nearly 100 percent of the total tax reduction.''
       Those wary of any potential liberal bias could turn to the 
     conservative-leaning Tax Foundation. Its analysis found a 
     smaller gap between the wealthy and everyone else, but a gap 
     nonetheless. The foundation concluded that four out of five 
     taxpayers would see only a 0.2 to 0.5 percent increase in 
     after-tax income, while those in the top 1 percent of the 
     income scale would save at least 10 times as much, or 5.3 
     percent. That's nearly $40,000 extra for those at the top, 
     compared to $67 for those smack dab in the middle of the 
     income scale.
       ``The Mnuchin rule is already being broken as Republicans 
     look to strip away hundreds of billions of dollars in 
     Affordable Care Act tax credits for working Americans to pay 
     for a giant tax break for the wealthy,'' Senator Wyden said. 
     ``Bottom line is it's unfair to cut benefits that the middle 
     class depends on, all so the wealthy pay a lower rate.''
       Mr. Mnuchin did not respond to a request for comment.
       Republicans argue their plan makes everyone a winner--that 
     lower taxes will unleash an enormous swell of economic 
     growth, raising wages, incomes and tax revenue all around.
       The historical record does not offer much support for the 
     claim that slashing taxes for the most affluent creates 
     growth. Yet even assuming the rosiest of forecasts, the top 1 
     percent, according to the Tax Foundation, would still receive 
     close to a $l00,000 tax cut--32 times as much as a middle-
     income family.
       Mr. Mnuchin has offered his own formula for adhering to the 
     standard he laid down, explaining that ``any reductions we 
     have in upper-income taxes would be offset by less 
     deductions.''
       That would require some otherworldly mathematical magic, 
     however.
       Consider the list of proposals that would reduce taxes on 
     the rich:
       Cut the top income to 33 percent, from 39.6 percent.
       Cut taxes on capital gains, 70 percent of which flow to the 
     top 1 percent.
       Eliminate the estate tax, which applies to a tiny number of 
     people, couples that have estates bigger than $10.8 million.
       Eliminate the 3.8 percent surtax on high earners' 
     investment income that has been used to subsidize health care 
     for poorer Americans.
       End the alternative minimum tax, which currently limits 
     deductions for high earners.
       Lower taxes on cash flow and income that passes from small 
     businesses to their owners, which also primarily benefits 
     wealthier Americans.
       Now, what deductions could be eliminated that would offset 
     all those cuts at the top? There aren't many, said Alan 
     Viard, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise 
     Institute. If Republicans insist on lowering taxes on top 
     wages, capital gains, estates and cash-flow and pass-through 
     income as advertised, ``there's not a lot of latitude to 
     limit itemized deductions further,'' Mr. Viard said.
       Any plan to curb itemized deductions would be partly offset 
     by Mr. Trump's plan to increase the standard deduction. 
     Curtailing mortgage deductions for the most expensive homes 
     is probably a good idea, Mr. Viard said, but that isn't going 
     to do much to raise revenue from those at the top of the 
     income pyramid, and the deduction is already roughly limited 
     to the interest paid on $1 million in mortgage debt.
       Such alternative ideas, however, assume that the Mnuchin 
     rule will have a meaningful impact on what the White House 
     will propose or Congress will debate. Not everyone is 
     convinced that it will. As Mr. Viard said, ``I don't know how 
     much interest there is in fulfilling that statement by 
     Mnuchin, however it's interpreted.''

  Mr. WYDEN. After breaking the Mnuchin rule once, the majority is now 
planning to fast-track a second tax break for the wealthy. This one 
will be even larger; in fact, it could be 10 times bigger or more. My 
guess is that a lot of Americans are wondering what has happened to all 
the campaign talk about fixing the Tax Code and really going out there 
and standing up for the working people. As the Republican nominee, the 
President said he was the guy to repair the country's broken tax 
system. The particulars of the Trump plan were buried deep in the 
business pages and on his Web site, but the broad strokes of the 
message were pitched in rallies across the Nation: Donald Trump alone 
knew how to do the job because he had taken advantage of the rules 
himself, and he was ready to crack down on those who weren't paying 
their fair share.
  One of the few specifics Donald Trump offered on the stump was that 
he would close the carried interest loophole. That, of course, has been 
a favorite of investment fund managers. It would be great if it were 
actually true. In reality, the promise turned out to be pretty much 
just a head fake. Rather than closing the loophole and asking 
investment fund managers to pay their fair share, the Trump plan 
actually gives them a 25-percent tax cut. In fact, the Trump plan 
slashes tax rates for corporations and the wealthy across the board at 
a cost of trillions of dollars.
  The President and Mr. Mnuchin might defend this plan by claiming it 
is a tax cut for the middle class, so I want to spend just a few 
minutes checking in with that part of the plan. If we read the fine 
print, we will notice that one of the Trump tax plan's big casualties 
is something called head of household status. That is a particularly 
important benefit for a lot of middle-income taxpayers because it 
reduces their bills. What would it mean for head of household status to 
go away? Millions of working Americans, mostly single parents, would 
get hit with tax increases.
  Furthermore, the Trump plan eliminates key personal exemptions for 
millions of other middle-income families. It pushes a lot of families 
into higher tax brackets than they are in today. The administration 
touts its proposals for a larger standard deduction and a new child 
care tax credit as the cure-all for its tax increases on the middle 
class and on working people, but the math just doesn't add up. Families 
who are struggling to get ahead today are going to pay higher taxes 
tomorrow.
  So let's recap the Trump tax plan: a multitrillion-dollar tax break 
for the wealthy and corporations and a gut punch of higher taxes for 
working families.
  At this point, it would be generous to say that the Mnuchin rule is 
now on life support. If we wanted to design a tax plan to push more 
Americans out of the economic winners circle, the Trump plan is what 
you would come up with. When I look at the Trump tax plan that Mr. 
Mnuchin would be in charge of spearheading, it looks to me as though 
the administration has zero interest in cleaning out the rot that is 
right at the heart of America's tax system.
  Here is what it is all about, in my view. The Tax Code today is a 
tale of two systems. If you are a wage earner--a welder in Portland or 
a nurse in Louisiana--your taxes come straight out of your paycheck. 
They are compulsory--no special deals. You can even see the numbers 
right on your pay stub. Once or twice a month, out it comes. There are 
no special tax-dodging strategies or loopholes to winnow down the tax 
bill for the welder in Portland or the nurse in Louisiana. You can't 
set up a John Doe, Inc., in a Cayman Islands P.O. box to shield your 
income from taxes.
  But the rules are different for the powerful and the well connected. 
At their disposal are huge armies of lawyers and accountants who 
specialize in tax games. They specialize in tax tricks. With the right 
advice, the most fortunate individuals and corporations in the country 
can decide how much tax to pay and when to pay it. If anybody wonders 
why people in America feel the tax system is rigged and the rules are 
stacked against them, this is a big part of the answer. I intend to 
talk more about that, but I want to come back to highlight the 
difference between the welder in Portland and the nurse in Louisiana.
  When those hard-working Americans are out there working for a wage 
and once or twice a month have their taxes taken right out of their 
paycheck, they know they aren't getting anything special. It is 
compulsory. It is mandatory. They see it on their paychecks. Yet they 
get lots of news coverage and articles and the like, and they will see 
that for those who are fortunate, instead of paying taxes in a 
mandatory and compulsory way, they pretty much get to

[[Page 2410]]

decide what they are going to pay, when they are going to pay it, and 
maybe nothing at all. It seems to me that as we look at the nominee for 
Treasury Secretary, we get a pretty good example of how it does play 
out in terms of taxes for those fortunate few and how his taxes stand 
in sharp contrast to that welder in Portland or that nurse in 
Louisiana.
  Not long after ending a 17-year run at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Mnuchin 
opened a hedge fund called Dune Capital in 2004. He set up an outpost 
in Anguilla and the Cayman Islands. That is not a move you make for the 
infrastructure or the ease of the commute. It is about a zero-percent 
tax rate.
  During Mr. Mnuchin's hearing, he claimed that having those overseas 
funds benefited American nonprofits. When he testified in front of the 
Finance Committee, he said: You know, the main thing we are doing with 
these overseas funds is we are helping churches and pension funds. But 
documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission show something 
quite different. In some cases, 100 percent of his investors were from 
outside of the United States, and setting up overseas allowed Mr. 
Mnuchin to help them avoid paying taxes. What was the end effect? Dune 
Capital was heavily invested in movies. So millions of dollars in 
profits from Hollywood exports, like the movie ``Avatar,'' were 
funneled to an offshore web of entities and investors, giving him the 
chance to skirt a U.S. tax bill.
  At a more recent point in his career, Mr. Mnuchin's bank was up for a 
merger. The deal had the potential to be a personal windfall for him 
and a small circle of others. A foundation Mr. Mnuchin chaired 
reportedly used tax-exempt dollars to fund a write-in campaign pushing 
for the deal's approval. During the public comment period on a 
potential merger, this is pretty much the equivalent of stuffing the 
ballot box.
  Now, as a nominee for a Cabinet position, Mr. Mnuchin could be in 
line for a special elective Federal tax deferral on money made by 
selling stocks and bonds. That is the very definition of getting to pay 
what you want, when you want. We hear a frequent and common defense 
when these kinds of tax tricks are brought into public view. It is true 
that the people who use them are following the laws on the books, but 
the outrage in our tax system, as I have said on this Senate floor, is 
what is legal. That is the real outrage with the American tax system, 
and it is outrageous that the Senate has allowed obvious gamesmanship 
to stay legal. It is outrageous that the administration and its chosen 
nominee for Treasury have shown no interest in changing it.
  When you are the Treasury Secretary, one of your paramount 
obligations is overseeing taxes. The last time the United States 
overhauled its Tax Code--this was in 1986--the Reagan Treasury 
Department played a huge role in that effort, and one of the core 
principles of that reform was treating wages and wealth the same way. 
Democrats and Republicans came together to pass a tax reform bill based 
on fairness. It said that the wage earner--that nurse in Louisiana or 
welder in Portland--their income and the income of those who made their 
money in finance and on Wall Street and the like would be treated the 
same. I see no indication that this administration is prepared to 
repeat that formula.
  The campaign promise to fix the broken, dysfunctional Tax Code--
Donald Trump's campaign promise--lured in a lot of voters. When I heard 
that Mnuchin rule the first time, I said that sounds pretty good--no 
net tax break for those who are the most fortunate. That sounds pretty 
appealing. The tax plans that the administration and Republicans in 
Congress have on offer now will not undo the disgusting unfairness that 
is right at the heart of the American Tax Code. In fact, it is only 
going to get worse.
  This issue has to be at the center of the debate on Mr. Mnuchin's 
nomination. I am particularly troubled by the fact that the evidence 
shows that the Mnuchin rule is already on the ropes.
  I intend to oppose this nominee. I urge my colleagues to do the same.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. COLLINS. 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 David Shulkin

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for 
the nomination of Dr. David Shulkin to be the next Secretary of 
Veterans Affairs. I believe his impressive record of service in both 
the public and private health care sectors as well as his firm grasp of 
VA health care issues make him extraordinarily well qualified to lead 
the Department through the coming period of major reforms and 
continuing transformation.
  Dr. Shulkin has served in numerous executive roles at hospitals 
across the country, including Beth Israel Medical Center in New York 
City, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and the Atlantic 
Rehabilitation Institute. In fact, he has been named one of the top 100 
Physician Leaders of Hospitals and Health Systems and one of the 50 
Most Influential Physician Executives in the country.
  In 2015, Dr. Shulkin brought his extensive experience in the private 
sector to the Department of Veterans Affairs and served as the VA Under 
Secretary for Health. Last year, I had the opportunity to host Dr. 
Shulkin in my hometown of Caribou, ME, as he toured the community-based 
outpatient clinic and our local hospital, Cary Medical Center, to see 
the innovative work being done there to provide veterans with top-
quality health care closer to where they live.
  Cary Medical Center partners with the VA through the Access Received 
Closer to Home or ARCH Program to provide veterans in Northern Maine 
with high-quality care, including specialty care close to home and 
close to their families, rather than forcing them to drive 250 or more 
miles to receive their care at the Togus VA Medical Center in Augusta, 
the location of Maine's only VA hospital.
  This partnership between Cary Medical Center and the VA has been a 
huge success, with an approval rating from our veterans exceeding 90 
percent. Last spring, when we were faced with the potential expiration 
of the ARCH Program, Dr. Shulkin, at my invitation, came to Maine and 
announced his commitment to ensure that veterans using this innovative 
program in our State would maintain seamless community care. He has 
kept his word.
  During his visit to Maine, Dr. Shulkin also toured the Togus VA 
Medical Center, the oldest VA facility in the Nation and the community-
based outpatient clinic in Bangor. I would note that he drove the 4 
hours from Augusta, where the VA hospital is located, to Caribou to get 
a better sense of the distances in our State. Right now, when we are in 
the midst of a fierce blizzard, you can imagine how important it is for 
veterans in need of care to be able to access that care close to home 
in an emergency.
  I was truly impressed, and remain truly impressed, with Dr. Shulkin's 
understanding of the needs of rural veterans and the challenges of 
providing health care in rural settings. While in Maine, Dr. Shulkin 
listened to veterans health care providers, VSO advocates, and the VA 
staff alike to ensure that our veterans received the care they have 
earned through their service to our Nation.
  In fact, he remained in Caribou and had a town meeting in which he 
heard from people representing a variety of views but all of whom 
encouraged him to continue this wonderful program. Dr. Shulkin's 
nomination to be VA Secretary has drawn support from our veterans 
service organizations throughout the country, including the American 
Legion, the VFW, the Disabled American Veterans, the Paralyzed Veterans 
of America, AMVETS, and the Vietnam Veterans of America.
  That does not surprise me because he has demonstrated, in very 
concrete ways, his commitment to the veterans we are serving. At a time 
when bipartisan consensus, unfortunately, has

[[Page 2411]]

been all too rare in this Chamber, Dr. Shulkin's nomination has been 
one of the few areas where Republicans and Democrats have found common 
ground. His nomination was approved unanimously by the Senate Veterans' 
Affairs Committee.
  During this time, when crucial reforms and organizational changes are 
necessary to ensure consistent, high-quality care for our Nation's 
veterans, it is critical that the VA have a talented, experienced, and 
committed leader to spearhead the Department's transformation as we 
seek to improve the quality and timeliness of health care for our 
veterans.
  Dr. Shulkin is an excellent nominee and I urge all of my colleagues 
to support his confirmation.
  Seeing no one seeking recognition, I suggest the absent of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, it is observed that we are being asked to 
confirm a Treasury Secretary who helped bring about the 2008 financial 
crisis and profited off the misery that followed.
  During his campaign, President Trump promised to crack down on Wall 
Street abuses. In one of his campaign ads, the President said that the 
CEO of Goldman Sachs was part of a ``global elite'' that was ``robbing 
our working class.'' He said that on Wall Street, ``It's the powerful 
protecting only the powerful.''
  Given his campaign promises, it is astounding that President Trump 
nominated Steve Mnuchin, someone whose business record embodies the 
worst abuses from the financial crisis, to serve as Secretary of the 
Treasury.
  In the fall of 2008, when I served in the U.S. House, then-Treasury 
Secretary Hank Paulson came to Capitol Hill and painted a dire picture. 
He told us that without drastic intervention by Congress and the White 
House, the entire global financial system would collapse. The situation 
was so dire, he argued, that we could not even pause to provide 
additional, meaningful relief to the millions of families across the 
country facing home foreclosures.
  In the years that followed, we learned a lot more about just how bad 
things were. Many banks sold mortgages to people who couldn't afford 
them, packaged those mortgages into complex financial instruments, 
colluded with ratings agencies, and sold those ``products'' as solid 
investments.
  The American people stepped in with hundreds of billions of dollars 
to bail out Wall Street. But without effective, broad laws in place 
before the financial crisis to prevent predatory lending, millions of 
people lost their homes and trillions of dollars in household wealth. 
Many of those victims have yet to recover.
  That was bad enough as it was unfolding, but in the years that 
followed, we learned more and more about the numerous abuses these 
banks perpetrated on the American people.
  After years of pushing subprime loans on minority homeowners who 
couldn't afford them, foreclosures devastated minority communities 
across the country. According to a 2010 study by the Center for 
Responsible Lending, minority homeowners were 70 percent more likely to 
lose their homes in foreclosure proceedings.
  Many banks also violated judicial foreclosure proceedings when they 
signed hundreds of thousands of foreclosure documents without reviewing 
them, also known as robo-signing.
  Some of my colleagues might argue that it isn't worth rehashing this 
devastating economic history, but I disagree because today we will be 
asked to vote for a Treasury nominee whose questionable business 
practices earned him the title of ``Foreclosure King.''
  As a senior executive at Goldman Sachs for 17 years, Steve Mnuchin 
was an evangelist for the types of financial transactions--credit 
default swaps and collateralized debt obligations--that crashed the 
economy in 2008. He said these instruments were ``an extremely positive 
development in terms of being able to finance different parts of the 
economy and different businesses effectively.'' What was essentially 
just business to him devastated the economy and the lives of millions 
of people.
  As the CEO of OneWest, Mnuchin was deeply involved in subprime 
lending and was responsible for tens of thousands of foreclosures 
across the country. Under Mr. Mnuchin's leadership, OneWest was among 
the worst offenders in robo-signing foreclosure documents. While he 
denied this fact during his confirmation hearing, a vice president at 
OneWest admitted to signing 750 documents per week while spending less 
than 30 seconds on each one. In other words, he was very busy robo-
signing these documents.
  Under Mr. Mnuchin's leadership, a OneWest subsidiary, Financial 
Freedom, foreclosed on more than 16,000 seniors who were living on 
fixed incomes and who had reverse mortgages with that company. In one 
case, the company foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman's home over a 27-
cent debt.
  Hundreds of families across Hawaii who had mortgages with OneWest 
felt the impact of Steve Mnuchin's business practices personally.
  In 2013, I received a letter from Suzanne on the Big Island. Suzanne 
is a retired Navy civilian. She depends on her disability and 
retirement income to afford her modest home in Hilo. She had her 
mortgage through OneWest. When she wrote to me, her home was in court-
ordered mediation pending foreclosure. Suzanne went into mediation in 
good faith, assuming that OneWest would assist her with a loan 
modification. Well, she was wrong. Suzanne and OneWest agreed that 
before she signed any modification, she would receive a written offer 
that included the full terms of the agreement. But during their second 
mediation meeting, in violation of the agreement, OneWest told Suzanne 
that she owed $30,000 more than her records showed and made a 
unilateral offer without disclosing any of the terms, contrary to what 
they had agreed to.
  Suzanne wisely refused to accept the so-called offer. At the time 
that she wrote to me, OneWest was pushing a judge to proceed with her 
foreclosure. ``I can afford my home,'' she wrote. ``I want to keep my 
home, but the difference between $1,300 and $1,500 a month is huge.''
  OneWest has billions and is considering going public this year.
  She went on to say: ``They have made unreasonable offers, lost 
paperwork, ignored requests. All the nightmares you hear about on the 
news, well, consider me a poster child.''
  Suzanne asked us to write to Steve Mnuchin on her behalf, even though 
she knew that OneWest had a record of hanging homeowners like her out 
to dry. She said: ``It seems to me that Mr. Mnuchin was one of the 
architects of our meltdown.'' She is right.
  There are tens of thousands of stories from OneWest customers like 
Suzanne across the country, and Mr. Mnuchin is responsible for each one 
of them as CEO of OneWest. Now President Trump is asking us to confirm 
Mr. Mnuchin to serve as Treasury Secretary.
  Throughout his campaign, President Trump made it clear that he wants 
to dismantle Dodd-Frank, eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau, and roll back financial regulations that would prevent another 
financial crisis. As Treasury Secretary, Mr. Mnuchin would be charged 
with implementing this agenda.
  Credible economists have warned that we could end up in another 
financial crisis. My question is, Who would a Secretary Mnuchin try to 
save--Wall Street or the millions of people who will be adversely 
impacted? His record shows which path Steve Mnuchin would choose. That 
is why I call on my colleagues to oppose this nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page 2412]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Young). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The majority leader is recognized.


                 Welcoming the Prime Minister of Canada

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, later today we will welcome Prime 
Minister Justin Trudeau to the Capitol. Canada is more than just our 
neighbor. Canada is our ally. I am looking forward to a productive 
discussion with him.


                          Cabinet Nominations

  Mr. President, after much unnecessary delay from Senate Democrats, we 
will finally confirm two more key Cabinet nominees this evening--Steve 
Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary and David Shulkin as Veterans Affairs 
Secretary. The President has selected two well qualified candidates to 
lead the charge on strengthening our economy and providing veterans 
with more of the care they deserve. I will have more to say on Mr. 
Mnuchin and Dr. Shulkin tomorrow, but for now I look forward to their 
confirmation this evening.
  After we work with these nominees, we will continue to put the rest 
of President Trump's Cabinet in place.
  It has been really disappointing to see the historic level of 
obstruction by Senate Democrats. I would like to remind our colleagues 
across the aisle of the very real consequences their actions have on 
our country and on the men and women forced to work grueling hours to 
keep the Senate running overnight last week.
  There are so many who worked around the clock to keep the Senate 
operating and I would like to offer some words of thanks now.
  First, I would like to start with our floor staff led by Laura Dove 
on the Republican side and Gary Myrick on the Democratic side. They, 
along with the cloakroom staff and floor teams, worked nonstop to allow 
us to keep the floor running smoothly. So I want to thank them for 
their hard work and dedication.
  I would also like to recognize the Senate pages, who didn't miss a 
beat just 2 weeks into their new job. They are Hailey Maggelet, Cameron 
Mabry, Shelby Hogan, Elizabeth Flachbart, Chris An, Sammy Potter, 
Sydney Jones, Cynthia Yue, Avery Beard, Wade Quigley, Eddie Owens, 
Hannah Seawell, Chloe Smith, Bryant Reynolds, Taylor Ball, Mitchell 
Heiman, Drew Beussink, Harrison Bushnell, Lauren Cavignano, Mitchell 
Durbin, Allie Glassman, Pablo Gomez Garcia, Julia Graham, Savannah 
Hampton, Argenis Herrera, Riley Johnson, Holly Newman, Colin Solomon, 
Katrina Turner, and Kayla Zhu. I know we are all impressed by these 
young men and women, and we all appreciate the role they play in our 
Nation's government.
  There are so many others, like Sergeant at Arms Frank Larkin and his 
Deputy, Jim Morhard, who work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the 
Capitol running smoothly. I would like to thank their team: the 
doorkeepers, the Senate recording and television studio, the Press 
Galleries, the IT and technical support, and the help desk, the 
security and operations teams, the executive office, and the Capitol 
exchange operators, who oversee the many calls that come into Senate 
offices. Many of these teams provided support literally around the 
clock, and we are thankful.
  Of course, none of this would have been possible without the Capitol 
Police, headed by Chief of Police Matthew Verderosa. These men and 
women worked overtime to ensure the safety of the Senate Chamber and 
the entire Capitol as Members and their staffs worked through the 
night. We thank them for their service and for keeping us safe every 
day.
  I would also like to thank the Secretary of the Senate, Julie Adams, 
Assistant Secretary Mary Suit Jones, and their entire team.
  Specifically, I would like to thank the following offices and 
staffers, many of whom who worked for more than 50 straight hours: the 
Official Reporters of Debates, which include Patrick Renzi, Susie 
Nguyen, Julia Jones, Mary Carpenter, Patrice Boyd, Octavio Colominas, 
Alice Haddow, Andrea Huston, Carol Darche, Desirae Jura, Megan 
McKenzie, Wendy Caswell, Diane Dorhamer, Mark Stuart, and Julie Bryan; 
the Captioning Services team, which includes Sandra Schumm, Brenda 
Jamerson, Doreen Chendorain, Jennifer Smolka, and Laurie Harris.
  In addition to the offices I just named, I would also like to 
recognize the following legislative offices: The Bill Clerk, the 
Enrolling Clerk, the Executive Clerk, the Journal Clerk, the 
Legislative Clerk, the Daily Digest, and, of course, the 
Parliamentarians.
  Lastly, I would like to thank our subway drivers and the Government 
Publishing Office, which worked tirelessly to get the Record printed.
  We are also grateful for the long hours and sacrifice that each of 
these offices and staffers made last week. Of course, it was completely 
unnecessary but, nevertheless, they were here through the night.


                       Nomination of Neil Gorsuch

  Mr. President, now, one final matter. When President Clinton took 
office in 1993, he named his first nominee to the Supreme Court, Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg's nomination was not without controversy. She 
had argued for positions that are still quite controversial today. For 
example, she had questioned the constitutionality of laws against 
bigamy because they implicated private relationships. For the same 
reason, she had opined that there might be a constitutional right to 
prostitution. She always advocated for coeducational prisons and 
juvenile facilities. She even proposed abolishing Mother's Day.
  So you can understand why Senators wanted to get her views on issues 
that might come before her as a Justice, but when pressed at her 
confirmation hearing, here is what she had to say:

       You are well aware that I came to this proceeding to be 
     judged as a judge, not as an advocate. Because I am and hope 
     to continue to be a judge, it would be wrong for me to say or 
     preview in this legislative chamber how I would cast my vote 
     on questions the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide. 
     Were I to rehearse here what I would say and how I would 
     reason on such questions, I would act injudiciously. Judges 
     in our system are bound to decide concrete cases, not 
     abstract issues.

  She went on:

       A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, 
     no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the 
     specifics of a particular case, it would display disdain for 
     the entire judicial process.

  So summing it up, she said: No hints, no forecasts, no previews, and 
that is what has become known as the Ginsburg standard. Supreme Court 
nominees of Presidents of both parties have adhered to it.
  For example, President Clinton's second nominee, Stephen Breyer, 
noted that ``there is nothing more important to a judge than to have an 
open mind and to listen carefully to arguments,'' and so he told the 
Judiciary Committee he did ``not want to predict or commit myself on an 
open issue that I feel is going to come up in the Court.'' That meant, 
he said, not discussing ``how'' a ``right applies, where it applies, 
under what circumstances'' it applies.
  When his nomination to be Chief Justice was pending, John Roberts 
said that adhering to the principle embodied in the Ginsburg standard 
is ``of great importance not only to potential Justices but to judges, 
which most nominees to the Supreme Court already are.''
  ``We're sensitive,'' he said, ``to the need to maintain the 
independence and integrity of the Court.''
  Let me repeat that. The Chief Justice said this principle was 
necessary ``to maintain the independence and integrity of the Court.''
  He then explained how the Ginsburg standard helps maintain that 
independence. Nominees, he said, ``go on the Court not as a delegate 
from [the Judiciary] Committee with certain commitments laid out and 
how they're going to approach cases.''
  Rather, ``[T]hey go on the Court as Justices who will approach cases 
with an open mind and decide those cases in light of the arguments 
presented, the record presented, and the rule of law. And the litigants 
before them,'' he concluded, ``have a right to expect that and to have 
the appearance of that as well. That has been the approach that all of 
the Justices have taken.''

[[Page 2413]]

  At the time, my colleague from New York and other Senate Democrats 
were upset that the Chief Justice followed Justice Ginsburg's 
approach--even though many of them didn't complain when she refused to 
preview or prejudge legal issues during her confirmation hearing.
  But guess who came to the Chief Justice's defense. Justice Ginsburg. 
She felt compelled to depart from protocol and weigh in on the matter. 
She said: ``Judge Roberts was unquestionably right'' in refusing to 
preview or prejudge legal issues at his confirmation hearing.
  Both of President Obama's nominees adhered to the Ginsburg standard 
as well. His first nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, explained that what her 
``experience on the trial court and the appellate court have reinforced 
for me is that the process of judging is a process of keeping an open 
mind. It's the process,'' she continued, ``of not coming to a decision 
with a prejudgment ever of an outcome. . . . `' That process, she said, 
applied not only to the cases that would come before her on the Supreme 
Court if she were confirmed but that could come before her in her then-
current capacity as a circuit court judge.
  Most Senators of both parties have respected the Ginsburg standard.
  For example, during her hearing, Senator Leahy told Justice Ginsburg 
that he ``certainly'' didn't want her ``to have to lay out a test here 
in the abstract which might determine what [her] vote or [her] test 
would be in a case [she had] yet to see that may well come before the 
Supreme Court.'' Even my friend from New York has recognized the 
Ginsburg Standard is a ``grand tradition.''
  The far left has been pushing my counterpart and other Senate 
Democrats to oppose anyone--anyone--whom the President nominates to the 
Supreme Court. So the Ginsburg standard is given way to the double 
standard.
  My friend from New York now says this Supreme Court nominee has to 
pass some ``special test''--some ``special test''--to show his judicial 
independence. He says Judge Gorsuch, a highly respected, experienced 
jurist, must preview his approach or even prejudge legal issues that 
could come before him, like whether the President's Executive order on 
refugee vetting is ``constitutional.'' This is clearly an effort to get 
Judge Gorsuch to prejudge not a matter that could be in the Federal 
courts but to prejudge on a matter that is in the Federal courts right 
now.
  Senator Schumer is not alone in wanting to replace the Ginsburg 
standard with a new double standard. His colleague who serves on the 
Judiciary Committee, the senior Senator from Connecticut, also says 
that Judge Gorsuch, for the first time with Supreme Court nominees, has 
some ``special obligation''--some ``special obligation''--to give his 
views on ``specific issues,'' without the benefit of the judicial 
process that Justice Sotomayor noted was so important.
  Under our colleagues' approach, there is no need to review the record 
in the case, no need to do any legal research, no need to hear the best 
arguments from each side, no need to deliberate with your colleagues on 
the bench to arrive at a correct result. Nope. Just give a driveby 
legal conclusion on a complicated and consequential matter of 
constitutional law.
  Let's be clear about what is going on here. This new ``special test'' 
and ``special obligation'' aren't about ensuring Judge Gorsuch's 
judicial independence; they are about compromising it. Our friends on 
the other side of the aisle want to constrain his ability to rule in a 
later case according to the facts and the law by holding him to what he 
said in their meetings or what he said under oath at his hearing.
  In the upside down world of my Democratic friends, Judge Gorsuch must 
lose his judicial independence--both as a sitting circuit court judge 
and as a future Supreme Court Justice--in order to prove his judicial 
independence.
  As Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer and Justice Sotomayor all 
noted, the process of judging is about having an open mind, seeing what 
the facts are in a particular case, hearing the arguments on both 
sides, and making what the judge believes is the correct ruling 
according to the law. It is not about a judge hemming himself in before 
a legislative body by previewing how he would view a legal issue, or, 
as Senator Leahy noted, announcing the legal test he might apply in a 
particular case, and it is definitely not about that judge saying 
whether something in the abstract is constitutional.
  So under this double standard, Senators must respect the need for 
judicial independence of the Supreme Court nominees of Democratic 
Presidents, even when those nominees espouse views that are far, far 
outside the mainstream, like suggesting there is a constitutional right 
to prostitution or urging the abolition of Mother's Day.
  Under this double standard, Senators can compromise the judicial 
independence of clearly mainstream Supreme Court nominees of Republican 
Presidents, even when those nominees are, like Judge Gorsuch, well-
known proponents of maintaining judicial independence, who have a long 
record on the issue.
  That is not just my view of Judge Gorsuch's commitment to judicial 
independence, by the way; that is according to prominent Democratic 
lawyers like President Obama's top litigator in the Supreme Court.
  This Democratic double standard, though, is not surprising. Recall 
that the Democratic leader said he was prepared to keep Justice 
Scalia's seat open for 4 years--4 years. That was made difficult by the 
nomination of an outstanding candidate like Judge Gorsuch.
  So our colleague came up with a new supermajority standard for his 
confirmation--a standard that didn't exist for seven of the eight 
Justices currently on the Court--a fact my friend later had to admit.
  The Democratic double standard on requiring nominees to prejudge 
issues is just the latest attempt to come up with something, with 
anything--anything--to justify opposing an exceptional nominee like 
Judge Gorsuch. Judge Gorsuch is one of the most impressive, most highly 
qualified nominees to ever come before us. He has won kudos from across 
the political spectrum. Even the top Democrat on the Judiciary 
Committee couldn't help but praise him.
  Instead of appreciating that our new President has nominated an 
accomplished, independent, and thoughtful jurist, Democrats are viewing 
this outstanding nominee as a political problem. Their base is 
demanding total resistance to everything, but they can't find a good 
reason to oppose Judge Gorsuch on the merits. They are in a pickle.
  So we have this attempt to replace the bipartisan Ginsburg standard 
with the double standard. I understand the difficulty of their 
situation, but the standard we are going to follow with this nominee is 
the same one--the same one--we followed for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and 
every other Justice on the Court since then: no hints, no forecasts, no 
previews, fair consideration, and an up-or-down vote.
  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. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, we are currently in the midst of the 
longest transitional leadership gap at the Department of Treasury in 
our Nation's history. The Senate has never let this much time go 
without a Treasury Secretary. In fact, the Senate has never left 
Treasury without a confirmed Secretary in between administrations for 
this long. Yet, despite the obvious need to fill this position, we have 
had to deal with continual and pointless delays, courtesy of some of 
our colleagues.
  I will not begrudge any Senator for taking advantage of the 
privileges offered to them under the rules of the Senate; however, I 
think we have ample reason to question some of our

[[Page 2414]]

colleagues' judgment and priorities with regard to how we have dealt 
with the nomination of Steven Mnuchin to the Office of Treasury 
Secretary.
  Let's get the obvious points out of the way. Mr. Mnuchin has 30 
years' experience working in a variety of capacities in the financial 
sector. He has experience managing large and complicated private-sector 
enterprises and in negotiating difficult compromises and making tough 
decisions--and being accountable for those decisions. He has the 
support of a number of key organizations and associations within the 
finance industry, and experts across the ideological spectrum have 
endorsed his nomination.
  Long story short: Under any objective standard, Mr. Mnuchin has ample 
experience, credentials, and qualifications for this important 
position. Yet my colleagues have done all they can under the rules--
even to the point of casting aside some longstanding customs and 
traditions of the Senate--in order to delay his confirmation.
  I will not relive the entire chain of events that got this nomination 
through the Finance Committee, bringing us to this point. For now, I 
would urge my colleagues to look fairly at the record. In every case, 
as the committee processed his nomination, Mr. Mnuchin responded to 
questions and allegations with full and complete answers and 
demonstrated no signs of acting or responding in bad faith toward the 
committee or its members.
  People are free, I suppose, to walk into the confirmation process 
with an assumption of bad faith. But throughout my time in the Senate--
and keep in mind, I have been here a long time--that isn't usually how 
we operate around here.
  My colleagues on the other side have put forward a number of claims 
and allegations about Mr. Mnuchin. They have essentially thrown 
everything, including the kitchen sink, at this nominee in a desperate 
attempt to block his confirmation. Well, so far, nothing has worked. 
That is because none of the allegations my colleagues have raised can 
withstand even a modest amount of scrutiny. But that hasn't stopped 
some of them from trying.
  I have found it particularly interesting to see my friends raise 
concerns about matters that did not bother them in the least when it 
came to voting for Democratic nominees for Treasury Secretary. Indeed, 
with regard to Mr. Mnuchin, my Democratic colleagues have created a 
wholly new set of standards from those that were applied to the most 
recent previous Treasury Secretary. Many issues that seemed to be of 
little or no concern to my colleagues and my friends on the other side 
during the confirmation process for Secretary Jack Lew have been 
considered disqualifying for Mr. Mnuchin. By the way, many of these 
problems existed in the prior Treasury Secretary too. But we, in good 
faith, brought him through and allowed him to go through without a lot 
of fuss and bother.
  Let me review just a few of the discrepancies that are claimed.
  Mr. Mnuchin placed some investments offshore, in full conformity with 
the law and not for the purpose of avoiding U.S. taxes. But my friends 
have simply asserted that no one uses offshore financial vehicles 
unless they are trying to avoid U.S. taxes, and, therefore, Mr. 
Mnuchin's investments disqualify him to serve as Treasury Secretary. 
Yet Secretary Lew, prior to his confirmation, actually made investments 
in the famous Ugland House in the Cayman Islands, which President Obama 
described as ``outrageous'' and ``the biggest tax scheme in the 
world.'' My Democratic colleagues knew this, but did not care, and 
happily confirmed Secretary Lew with hardly a mention of this matter. 
We allowed him to go through, in the interest of civility and getting 
along with our colleagues.
  Democrats have argued that Mr. Mnuchin unduly profited from the 
housing market collapse. Yet Secretary Lew, prior to his nomination, 
ran ``proprietary trading'' groups at Citigroup, where they invested in 
a hedge fund that bet heavily on the collapse of the housing market. My 
Democratic colleagues knew this, but did not care, and happily 
confirmed Secretary Lew without really ever acknowledging this part of 
his record.
  Democrats claim that Mr. Mnuchin unfairly foreclosed on homeowners, 
despite evidence to the contrary. Yet Secretary Lew, prior to being 
nominated, ran a Citigroup division that was, according to arbitration 
panels at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and later the 
SEC, ``defrauding investors.'' When asked about the toxic securities 
sold by his Citigroup unit, Secretary Lew's answers varied between not 
remembering any specific securities to claiming he somehow wasn't 
involved in the investment decisions made at the Citigroup unit he 
oversaw. My Democratic colleagues knew this, but they did not care, and 
happily confirmed Secretary Lew without anything resembling full and 
complete answers to these questions.
  Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Democrats claim that Mr. 
Mnuchin ran a ``robo-signing'' foreclosure machine. Yet Citigroup, 
while Jack Lew was in senior management, sliced and diced mortgages and 
was alleged to have ``robo-signed'' mortgage documents. Democrats knew 
this, but they did not care, and happily confirmed Secretary Lew 
without ever really asking him about these issues.
  I can go on and on. There are many other issues that my colleagues 
were willing to overlook, if not outright ignore, with regard to 
Secretary Lew that have resulted in hyperbolic attacks on Mr. Mnuchin.
  I wish to remind my colleagues that despite the numerous concerns 
that I and others have had about Secretary Lew and the many significant 
disagreements that I had with President Obama's agenda, I voted in 
favor of Secretary Lew's confirmation. On this very floor, I stated the 
following:

       I have always believed that . . . [the] President--any 
     President, regardless of party--is owed a certain degree of 
     deference when choosing people to work in his administration. 
     Therefore, though I personally would have chosen a different 
     person for this position, I intend to vote in favor of Mr. 
     Lew's confirmation.

  I wasn't alone. Many other Republicans also voted to confirm 
Secretary Lew, despite serious reservations, in recognition that the 
President had a right to appoint who he wanted to--as long as they were 
not crooks and people of unsavory reputation. Well, Mr. Lew was not 
either of those.
  My, how times have changed. As is typically the case, when a group of 
Senators is unable to make a believable case against a nominee, they 
tend to just raise every possible issue and hope something gains 
traction. When in the end nothing works, they cling to whatever 
allegation came last and hope it is enough to change the outcome. That 
is why, over the past couple of weeks or so, we have heard an awful lot 
about ``robo-signing.''
  Here is the basic rundown of what has happened on this issue: My 
friends on the other side got an answer to a poorly and vaguely worded 
question that was not the answer they wanted to receive. The answer 
from Mr. Mnuchin, that OneWest Bank did not engage in ``robo-signing'' 
under his leadership, was truthful and defensible, but it did not 
conform to the Democratic talking points drafted for this nominee.
  Since that time, Senate Democrats have repeatedly referenced new 
stories that purportedly prove that not only did Mr. Mnuchin run a bank 
that engaged in the nefarious, yet not well-defined practice of ``robo-
signing'' mortgage documents, he lied about it in his answers to the 
committee. However, I would urge my colleagues on both sides to 
actually look at the supposed evidence from those news articles.
  Put simply, to say that my Democratic friends are trying to make a 
mountain out of a molehill would be an insult to moles everywhere. 
There is no molehill to be found here.
  To make the case that Mr. Mnuchin was untruthful in his answers, the 
articles rely on quotes mined from a single deposition of a OneWest 
employee. Quoted out of context, the employee seems to have said that 
she rapidly signed several hundred foreclosure-related documents a week 
without fully verifying their accuracy. That is the

[[Page 2415]]

supposed smoking gun on the Mnuchin ``robo-signing'' question.
  However, if you read the full deposition, the employee makes it 
absolutely clear that she was not the employee responsible for 
verifying the accuracy or validity of everything in the documents. She 
was part of a process that included several steps and multiple 
employees to verify the accuracy of different parts of the documents. 
We don't even have to dig for this explanation. It is not a matter of 
any interpretation. That explanation, in plain English, is right there 
in the deposition my colleagues and the news articles have been using 
as ``evidence'' that Mr. Mnuchin lied to the Finance Committee.
  Nothing--not a single thing--in the deposition quoted in those news 
articles could be considered evidence of ``robo-signing'' on the part 
of OneWest Bank.
  While I can understand that my colleagues don't like seeing or 
hearing anything that contradicts their preconceived notions, 
particularly when it comes in the form of an answer to one of their 
questions, that is no basis or justification to make wild and brazen 
accusations that a nominee has been lying. And make no mistake, that is 
precisely what they are doing with Mr. Mnuchin.
  On a related note, it is really amazing to me that my friends on the 
other side are now feigning outrage over alleged lack of responsiveness 
to their questions after having gone through the last 8 years with 
Treasury Secretaries who routinely ignored questions and requests for 
briefings posed by myself and a number of my other Senate colleagues. 
But I digress.
  I certainly sympathize with the many people who suffered through the 
foreclosure crisis and with Democrats in Congress who were, and 
continue to be, frustrated that Treasury officials in the Obama 
administration failed to construct effective homeowner relief programs, 
despite having made numerous promises to do so.
  However, given that frustration, it is odd to me that my colleagues 
remain so opposed to Mr. Mnuchin's nomination when he was very much 
engaged in the practice of making mortgage modifications work during 
his time as the head of OneWest Bank. Moreover, Mr. Mnuchin worked 
diligently with regulators and others to clean up the system under 
which foreclosure documents were being processed. You don't have to 
take my word for it; you can examine the numerous letters of support we 
have received from a range of people and organizations, from community 
groups to community bankers, which attest to Mr. Mnuchin's success in 
turning a bank that was plagued by toxic loans and numerous processing 
errors into a viable financial services firm that provides jobs and 
support to communities.
  Along the way, Mr. Mnuchin's companies significantly outperformed 
rivals in the industry in terms of offering loan modifications to help 
keep Americans facing foreclosure in their homes. Mr. Mnuchin has 
acknowledged that his efforts were not without errors and that he 
genuinely regrets any mistakes that were made. He has also made clear 
that OneWest was committed to providing remediation in order to 
compensate those who were affected.
  It should also be noted that in the vast majority of independent 
evaluations of OneWest's practices, the banks's error rates were 
routinely below the average for the industry and often zero.
  I think people should quit using false arguments against this man. 
All of this was discussed out in the open during the Finance 
Committee's hearing on the Mnuchin nomination. Nothing was hidden. No 
one was misled.
  Unfortunately, rather than focusing on the actual facts surrounding 
OneWest's performance under the nominee's leadership, my friends on the 
other side opted to try to smear Mr. Mnuchin. In essence, they have 
tried to relitigate the foreclosure crisis, with Mr. Mnuchin's company 
confusingly placed in the crosshairs. This is a company that, according 
to a letter from Faith Schwartz, former executive director of the Hope 
Now Alliance, ``was committed to avoiding foreclosures where 
possible.''
  As I said, with Mr. Mnuchin, my colleagues are applying a clear 
double standard for confirming a Treasury Secretary. For Republican 
Treasury Secretary nominees, any allegation, no matter how careless or 
untrustworthy the source, is enough to inspire the Democrats' outrage 
and trigger a seemingly endless bout of name-calling. For Democratic 
nominees, on the other hand, even proven instances of questionable 
actions and poor judgment on the part of the nominee fail to even make 
a blip on their radar screens.
  I have spent quite a bit of time in recent weeks decrying the antics 
of my Democratic colleagues with regard to President Trump's Cabinet 
nominations. Frankly, I am tired of talking about it. My colleagues 
are, of course, free to do whatever they think will help them hobble 
the new administration and score points with their political base, even 
if it breaks from the longstanding customs and traditions of the Senate 
and even if it puts our financial stability and the stability of our 
relations with Finance Ministers of other countries at greater risk. 
However, they should know that these tactics do absolutely nothing to 
help American families seeking greater opportunities and economic 
growth. They don't help us fix our broken Tax Code, reform our failing 
health care system, and empower businesses and job creators to grow and 
expand.
  The bottom line is this: Mr. Mnuchin is clearly qualified to serve as 
Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
  Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle made clear they 
intend to vote no on the nomination, and that is their right. However, 
while each Senator has a right to vote according to his or her own 
judgment, Senators do a disservice to the country and the Senate as an 
institution when they concoct stories and antics designed merely to 
delay a vote for the sake of delay. Going forward, I hope my colleagues 
will recognize the problematic precedence they are setting with regard 
to these nominees and opt to change course.
  I intend to vote in favor of confirming Mr. Mnuchin, and so should 
everybody else in the U.S. Senate. I urge all of my colleagues to do 
so.
  When I first met Mr. Mnuchin, I hadn't met him before. I didn't even 
know his name. I have to say I was really impressed.
  I said to him: Why are you doing this? You are going to lose a lot of 
money because you are going to have to sell your holdings and get rid 
of them. Why are you doing this?
  He looked at me, looked me square in the eyes, and he said: I am 
doing it because I love my country, and I want to help. I want to help 
turn it around.
  I was pretty impressed with that. I have been pretty impressed with 
Mr. Mnuchin ever since. I think we need a terribly smart guy who is 
honest, who is decent, who has made a great success of his life, who 
understands where money comes from and where it goes, who literally is 
willing to sacrifice and lose some of his savings and money in order to 
save this country and because he wants to work with our good President, 
who every day is going through calumny and slanders like I have never 
seen anybody go through before.
  The slowdown in the Senate that is occurring here is unbelievably 
stupid. Yes, I know they want his first 100 days to not be successful, 
but gee-whiz, to do this kind of maneuvering and this kind of playing 
around with the facts is beneath the dignity of my colleagues on the 
other side.
  If my side was doing this, I would be chewing them up. The fact is, 
we didn't do this. The past two Treasury Secretaries--I personally said 
``We are going to support them'' even though we could have pulled this 
kind of stuff on them, and the facts were true. Both of them were good 
people. Both of them had made a couple of mistakes. Both of them made 
mistakes in their filings. But they were good men, good people, and so 
is Mr. Mnuchin.
  Wouldn't it be wonderful if both sides would treat people with 
respect and dignity? I have to admit, sometimes our side could do 
better, but what we have been going through for the last almost 2 
months now is pathetic. I think

[[Page 2416]]

it is all done in the hope that they can ruin the first 100 days of 
this President. Well, there are 200 days, and we are going to keep 
going.
  They are not making any headway with the President where they could 
make headway. He is someone who actually came from their side of the 
floor--at least at one time when I knew him long ago. He is a person 
with an open mind. He is a person who has supreme intelligence. He is a 
person who is bringing with him some of the best people in this 
country, not the least of whom is Mr. Mnuchin.
  I think they ought to wake up and quit this slandering and even 
libeling this really fine man who is willing to sacrifice much of his 
personal fortune to serve in this government as the Treasury Secretary. 
We are lucky that people like this are willing to do it, to take all 
the guff and calumny and slander and libel they have to go through. 
Thank goodness we have people like Mr. Mnuchin who are willing to do 
this. I don't intend to see him fail, so I hope we can all vote for him 
tonight and send a message. I hope some of my colleagues on the other 
side will vote for him. They should. They should, in good faith. Yes, 
they can play this game of having a lot of votes against him, but some 
of them should vote for him. The truly honest, the truly fair, and the 
truly good people--I think all of them are good people on the other 
side and on this side, but it is not showing up as well as I would like 
it to show up in these confirmation fights.
  In this particular one, there is a fellow who is willing to sacrifice 
immensely to be able to help our country, who is known on Wall Street, 
who is known as one of the bright lights up there, who has been 
immensely successful, and he has had a wide variety of experiences in 
the area of finance. We ought to be getting on our knees and thanking 
him for being willing to go through this and being willing to serve his 
country.
  Mr. President, 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. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I take this time to explain to my 
colleagues why I will be opposing Steve Mnuchin's nomination for 
Secretary of the Treasury.
  Mr. Mnuchin has an impressive record of accomplishment, and I admire 
his willingness to serve the public. But because of his advocacy for 
fiscally irresponsible and unfair fiscal policies, which I believe will 
add to the deficit of this country, I cannot support his nomination.
  Let me go back a while, if I may. I was in the Congress when we 
passed a budget that balanced the Federal budget, where we were 
actually reducing the Federal debt. It was controversial at the time 
because we did it by cutting spending first--and we did--but making 
sure we had adequate revenues in the Treasury to pay our bills because 
we recognized that we had a moral obligation to pay our bills, that we 
are wealthy enough of a nation that we don't have to ask our children 
and grandchildren to pay for our spending today. We took the steps to 
balance the Federal budget, and we did it by making some tough votes. I 
was proud to be in the Congress that took those tough votes that 
balanced the Federal budget.
  After we balanced the Federal budget, we saw unprecedented economic 
growth because we took the responsible actions. We should take a lesson 
from the past and recognize that there is no easy way to get our budget 
in better balance. It requires a fiscal policy that is fair--that is 
fair to middle-income families, that is fair to our children and 
grandchildren, that is fair to those who depend upon the services that 
are financed through the government sector, including our seniors with 
Medicare and Social Security. We can do that if we work together.
  But Mr. Mnuchin's economic plan, the one that he has submitted to 
Congress, I think, would put us at great risk. The main part of what he 
is advocating is tax cuts primarily for the wealthy. The top 0.1 
percent under the Mnuchin plan will receive in excess of $1 million in 
tax breaks; the upper 1 percent in excess of $200,000 in tax cuts.
  Here is the problem: How do we pay for this? How do we offset the 
cost of these tax cuts? Because I don't think any of us wants to add to 
the deficit.
  So we asked Mr. Mnuchin that question during the confirmation 
process. Let me just read for the Record the questions that I asked him 
as to how he would offset the cost of the tax cuts. The Trump plan, 
including those cuts, is estimated by the Tax Policy Center to add $6.2 
trillion to the deficit and by the Tax Foundation to add $3.9 trillion 
to the deficit.
  I asked Mr. Mnuchin:

       In your hearing, you discussed the importance of economic 
     growth in offsetting the revenues lost under the President's 
     tax reform plan. . . . For instance, you've said, ``[s]o we 
     think that by cutting corporate taxes, we'll create huge 
     economic growth and we'll have huge personal income, so the 
     revenues will be offset on the other side.''
       Is it your view that the tax cuts in the President's plan 
     will be fully offset by economic growth?

  That is the question I asked.
  Mr. Mnuchin's answer: ``Our objective is to have any tax cuts offset 
by economic growth.''
  I asked: ``If so, could you please share your team's analysis 
supporting that position?''
  Mr. Mnuchin's answer: ``Our objective is to have any tax cuts offset 
by economic growth.''
  I then asked: ``Will you commit, as we discussed in our meeting, not 
to put forward a plan that will increase the deficit and put our 
country in a worse financial position?''
  Mr. Mnuchin's answer: ``Our objective is to have any tax cuts offset 
by economic growth.''
  In other words, there is no effort here to offset the cost of this 
tax cut, other than borrowing money, putting our children and 
grandchildren at greater risk.
  I want to repeat again the estimate that we have heard on the 
President's tax proposal--that it will add anywhere from $6 trillion to 
almost $4 trillion in deficit. Those estimates are from progressive and 
conservative groups, and they do consider that there will be some 
dynamic score keeping here, that there will be some economic growth. 
That is in those estimates. So even with economic growth, these 
proposals will greatly enhance the deficit of this country, something 
that we should not be doing.
  What does that mean? You increase the debt of this country. America 
has to borrow more. Interest rates go up. Middle-income families have 
to pay more on mortgage payments or car loans.
  Middle income families are the ones who get hurt by this. If we are 
going to see real economic growth, we have to help the middle class--
the growing middle class--the consumers, those who buy the goods, those 
who are struggling every day to make ends meet. This plan doesn't help 
them. What they are going to be saddled with is more debt and higher 
interest costs, which will be a drag on our economic growth.
  So for all those reasons, I think what is important to have is an 
advocate for the President as Secretary of the Treasury, someone who 
recognizes the balance here.
  Let me tell you what else deficits do. They are used as justification 
to continue to cut our discretionary spending accounts, as well as to 
take a look at entitlement spending.
  I acknowledge that, as part of the strategy to balance the Federal 
budget, we must look at our spending, but we have to have the revenues 
in order to make it balance. If you don't have the revenues, and you 
are taking another $4 to $6 trillion out of the equation, there is 
going to be a lot more pressure to make irresponsible cuts on the 
spending side.
  I heard Candidate Trump talk about that we are not going to cut 
Social Security. But can you really have $6 trillion of tax cuts 
without looking at Social Security? And how about Medicare? These are 
programs that are vitally important for our seniors. It provides them 
money to live on so they

[[Page 2417]]

don't have to live in poverty, so they can pay their medical bills. For 
a majority of seniors, Social Security is their largest source of 
income. Are we really thinking about equating that with tax cuts for 
the wealthiest in this country of over $1 million? I don't think that 
is fairness. I don't think that is what we should be doing.
  When you look at the programs that are financed through government, 
are we going to take away from our students? They already are suffering 
too high, as far as the cost of attending colleges. Interest rates are 
already too high in regards to what they do.
  Are we going to put more pressure to make more cuts in regards to how 
we help our students? Are we going to cut maintaining our highways? We 
want to spend more on highways, bridges, transit systems, and water 
infrastructure, which I think we need to do. How do you do that if you 
cut $4 to $6 trillion of revenue on the revenue side without adding 
greatly to the deficit, which is something none of us wants to do?
  How about something like our national parks? We take pride and want 
to maintain that, but with the pressure on the budgets that is a result 
of taking the revenues out of government, we know what is going to 
happen. We have seen this movie before. We have seen what has happened 
before. The driving force behind all of this is that the most important 
thing, the most important part of the economic program, is to have 
these tax cuts primarily for the wealthy.
  No, I think the center of our economic policy needs to be fairness--
fairness for middle-income families, fairness so that Americans can 
afford to raise their families and send their kids to college and can 
afford to have decent opportunities in this country. That is how we all 
grow together, and that requires a balanced approach to our Nation's 
budget--one that, yes, looks at restraining spending but also looks at 
having a Tax Code that is fair and raises the revenues to pay our bills 
and not pushing that off to future generations.
  I think for all those reasons, we need a person who is going to 
advocate on behalf of middle-income families and on behalf of a growing 
economy. I think the plan that Mr. Mnuchin is advocating will not 
accomplish that. For these reasons and others, I cannot support his 
nomination for Secretary of the Treasury.
  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.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury is one of 
the most powerful positions in our government, as we know. The Treasury 
Secretary has broad responsibilities--for the economy, for our tax 
system, trade, our pensions, housing, and so much more. It is critical 
that anyone who holds that position use their power to help working 
people. It is clear to me that Mr. Mnuchin's policies will, in fact, 
hurt middle-class families and working people.
  There are also serious ethical concerns that neither he nor my 
Republican colleagues have been able to address. As a result, I will be 
voting no on his nomination.
  I would like to talk about something that has not received the focus 
that I think it deserves and certainly that the people of Michigan feel 
it deserves, and that is the question of pensions and what is happening 
to pensions in our country.
  Mr. Mnuchin has a history of fighting against working people and 
profiting off their misfortune. As we know, pension funding can have a 
significant impact on a company's bottom line. But losing a pension can 
destroy a family's bottom line, and it seems that Mr. Mnuchin doesn't 
know this. When serving on the board for Sears, Mr. Mnuchin played a 
critical and direct role in how to fund the company's pensions. So what 
happened? Sears routinely underfunded the company's plan throughout his 
tenure. Analysts predicted that Sears ``massively underfunded'' their 
pension plan. They said their ``massively underfunded'' pension plan 
was ``a ticking time bomb'' that could even hasten or bring down the 
financial collapse of the company.
  The company used investment return projections that were too 
optimistic, along with accounting gimmicks so they could avoid paying 
into the pension fund. They inflated their earnings on paper while 
contributing less to the pension.
  Sears did such a bad job managing their pension fund while Mr. 
Mnuchin was on their board, that the fund only made a return of 1.5 
percent, putting their fund in the bottom 5 percent of all the pension 
funds over $1 billion. Is this the kind of result the American 
taxpayers want when he manages their money?
  Already, Sears has been cutting its employees' pensions. In 2014, the 
company eliminated the monthly health care subsidy that helped its 
retirees afford their health care premiums. That saved Sears and Kmart 
about $6.2 million a year.
  I have received a lot of letters from Michigan families a lot from 
families who are very concerned about their pensions. One of my 
constituents who worked in the trucking industry said:

       We took small raises on our paycheck each contract so the 
     company could put more in the pension fund--

  That is what people do. They take less every month in their paycheck 
so they can have more in the pension fund. I know in the Presiding 
Officer's State and my State, that is what they do. He continued--

     and [we] were told we would receive a certain amount for the 
     rest of our lives. That is what we based our retirement on. 
     Through no fault of ours, over the years, government 
     deregulation of the trucking industry, passing trade 
     agreements and other laws that have devastated the economy, 
     have made our pensions become doubtful.

  Can you imagine paying all your lifetime? My brother drives a truck 
and counts on the fact that he is working hard every day and putting 
money into a pension fund for his family when he retires, and it is 
supposed to be there, right? The pension is a promise that is supposed 
to be there.
  Another woman from West Michigan wrote in worried about her Central 
States Pension Plan. That is the pension plan my brother is in as well. 
She said:

       My husband retired from Grocers Baking Co. of Grand Rapids 
     and has a pension in Central States Pension Fund. As you 
     know, that pension fund is in critical status and the 
     Treasury Department turned down a plan to save all the 
     pensions. My husband is 74 and I am 78 and we rely on that 
     pension and Social Security to live on. We try to save, but 
     it is difficult. We are hoping that the pension will last 
     more than 10 years, but who knows.

  I also hear from people in Michigan all the time about how little 
accountability there is when it comes to the management of people's 
pensions.
  One man wrote in from Macomb County about his own pension plan:

       Why are none of the trustees being held accountable for the 
     bad investments or failure of the plan? I'm sure they all 
     have their golden parachutes in place for when they retire. 
     Why do we, the hard workers, have to suffer because of their 
     incompetence? I am just an average guy hoping that you can 
     help protect the benefits that are due to me, so I can enjoy 
     retirement when my time comes.

  The Treasury Secretary nominee sat on the Sears board when they were 
making changes that created the investments that were not as good as 
they should have been, when they underfunded their pension system, cut 
back on help for health care, and he is asking for a promotion. I 
wonder what my constituents in Macomb County will be saying about that.
  The Treasury Secretary plays a very important role in the security of 
our pension system--one of the basic tenets in our country, the way we 
support each other, the way people have trust in the system, you know 
that when you pay into the pension and then when you retire you get the 
pension.
  The Treasury Secretary oversees implementation of the Multiemployer 
Pension Reform Act and serves on the board of directors of the pension 
overseers. I asked Mr. Mnuchin in committee: What is your position on 
the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act, which Treasury is responsible for 
administering?

[[Page 2418]]

  How do you propose to shore up our multiemployer pension system and 
protect people who are counting on their pensions? His answer was: 
``You have my commitment to work with you to find solutions to the 
multiemployer pension crisis.''
  That is it. I resubmitted the question, hoping for a more detailed 
response.
  His response was: ``If confirmed, I will consult with you and other 
interested parties on the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014.''
  That is not much of an answer for the people whom I represent, who 
want to know how he feels and what he is going to do to protect their 
pensions. The American people deserve a better answer than that.
  People are struggling, retirees are struggling after trusting the 
system and paying into their pensions their whole life--the whole time 
they have been working, paying in, counting on having that dignity in 
retirement. We need a Treasury Secretary who understands that a pension 
is a promise. Mr. Mnuchin's actions have not demonstrated that he 
understands that.
  Even when it comes to something as basic as Social Security, during 
our Finance Committee hearing, Mr. Mnuchin couldn't tell me the average 
monthly benefit when I asked him, which, by the way, one-third of our 
seniors virtually rely on that alone, and the rest are putting together 
a small pension, and most seniors are counting on Social Security and 
their pension to have dignity and a quality of life in their 
retirement. The Treasury Secretary is a key overseer of the laws and 
management process and accountability for both of those systems. So for 
me this is a very big deal who is in this spot, in terms of how this 
affects working people, middle-class families, and retirees.
  I didn't mention earlier that when I asked him what the average 
Social Security payment was--which he could not answer--he also 
couldn't tell me what he meant about a ``cut'' in Social Security; if 
he wasn't going to cut, what that meant. Did that mean putting in place 
a lower cost of living? What did that mean? He did not answer that.
  Let me talk about another pretty basic area. Pensions are critically 
important so is the ability to have a home. Up until the financial 
crash, the disaster in 2008 and 2009, most families' savings for 
retirement, savings to put their kids in college, were through the 
equity in their home. In 2008 and 2009, for millions of Americans, that 
disappeared.
  Mr. Mnuchin has made his career profiting from the misfortunes of 
working people, and let me talk about the financial crisis and how he 
benefitted from that as well. During the financial crisis, he put 
together a group of investors to purchase IndyMac Bank, which was 
renamed OneWest. During that time, OneWest was notorious for taking an 
especially aggressive role in foreclosing on struggling homeowners. 
OneWest Bank pushed people into foreclosure and made their last-ditch 
efforts to save their homes through a mortgage modification or other 
means all but impossible.
  When their voices were not allowed at the hearing on this 
confirmation, I was pleased to join with colleagues in putting together 
a forum where homeowners who had been impacted could share their 
experience. We held this forum for homeowners who were repeatedly given 
hope by OneWest that they might be able to avoid foreclosure, only to 
have it snatched away every time. One small business owner at the forum 
told us her story of how OneWest defrauded her and ultimately 
foreclosed on her. She told us that ``despite how difficult OneWest 
made the process, I did everything I was told, because I wanted to keep 
my home.''
  Twice she applied for a loan modification. She submitted two checks 
with her new modification offer. OneWest cashed the checks--they cashed 
the checks--but told her that both offers were never received.
  Wait a minute. What is that? They cashed the checks, then told her 
the offers were not received, and therefore the offer was void.
  Eventually, she said: ``I received a knock on my door and a man 
introduced himself as the owner of my house.'' Unbelievable. Shortly 
thereafter she had to leave her home. OneWest was Mr. Mnuchin's 
company. This is one of the many stories about OneWest's abusive 
conduct. When OneWest Bank sold, Mr. Mnuchin and other investors made 
about $3 billion off the backs of folks who lost their home and many 
were like the women we heard from who tried desperately to work it out 
to keep their home. I wonder if the checks they cashed from her after 
they said they didn't get them were a part of that $3 billion.
  Finally, I want to express my concern over statements that Mr. 
Mnuchin made at the Finance Committee hearing that just don't line up 
with the facts; particularly, Mr. Mnuchin was asked whether his bank, 
OneWest, robo-signed foreclosure documents. To be clear on what this 
is, the banks, during the foreclosure crisis, had sworn documents robo-
signed, automatically signed so they could foreclose on homeowners 
quickly without anyone even reading the documents. They just signed the 
papers--signed the papers--nobody reviewed whether they added up or 
whether they were right, whether they could help them. They just had 
the machine signing, signing, signing, foreclose, foreclose, foreclose.
  Mr. Mnuchin said in the hearing his bank didn't do that. He said his 
bank didn't do that. The Columbus Dispatch did an investigation that 
found that OneWest did do that in Ohio. A source in Texas reported that 
OneWest did do it in Texas. New Jersey temporarily banned OneWest from 
foreclosing on homeowners at all in New Jersey because of its history 
of robo-signing documents. Sign, sign, sign--don't look at it, just 
sign away. We heard the story of one woman who lost her house because 
of a 27-cent difference. I wonder if she was in one of those piles they 
just signed away. Mr. Mnuchin said they didn't do that. There is 
evidence to the contrary.
  Mr. Mnuchin also forgot to disclose to the committee that he owned a 
company organized in the Cayman Islands. When I asked him about that, 
his best defense was that ``I did not use a Cayman Islands entity in 
any way to avoid paying taxes myself.'' At the time, I said: Oh, so you 
just helped other people avoid paying their taxes.
  We find out now he did use it to help foreign investors avoid paying 
U.S. taxes. I have a funny feeling that he made money by helping those 
investors avoid paying their U.S. taxes.
  He also forgot to disclose that he owned $95 million in real estate 
in various locations. I forget that all of the time. I have so many 
houses all over the place, it is easy to forget. So $95 million in 
property that he ``forgot'' to disclose. He said he didn't know his 
real estate was an asset. He didn't know his real estate was an asset. 
That is alarming.
  I don't mean to be flip, but this is so shocking when I listen to 
some of this. The idea that we would believe someone who says this, 
that it somehow is making sense--that is why we as Democrats on the 
Finance Committee, before this final confirmation vote, asked that he 
be required to come back in and answer questions, because these are 
serious questions.
  This nominee has not been properly vetted. He supports policies that 
do not have the interests of the working men and women in Michigan at 
heart or people across the country. He adheres to policies that don't 
protect the pensions of hard-working men and women in Michigan and 
across the country or people's retirement systems. I don't know where 
he really is on Social Security, which is the other big piece of the 
promise we made as Americans, where people pay into Social Security and 
are counting on that being there. He has personally profited off the 
misfortune of those who need help the most.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I, too, will be voting no on the 
candidacy of Mr. Mnuchin to become Secretary of the Treasury.

[[Page 2419]]

  Rhode Island got hit so hard by the mortgage meltdown that Wall 
Street created. Frankly, I can never forget the Rhode Islanders who 
lost their homes in the course of that debacle. We were able to help 
some of them in my office.
  As the Presiding Officer knows, when you come to the Senate, you put 
together a constituent office, and your constituent people work on 
usual constituent business. In the ordinary course, constituent 
business is dealing with Federal agencies. It is making sure Social 
Security is fine, getting people replacement passports that they put 
into the laundry by accident, dealing with veterans issues and getting 
veterans their benefits, helping people with Medicare and Medicaid 
confusion. It is all generally involving people who have gotten somehow 
fouled up in the Federal programs of which they are beneficiaries.
  In our case, we had to open a constituent wing for dealing with the 
big banks because they were foreclosing so recklessly and in such a 
mercenary fashion on Rhode Islanders. It was such torture for Rhode 
Islanders, once the foreclosure process began, because they could never 
get the same person twice on the phone; there was always a mismatch 
between what they were being told on the phone and being told on paper. 
It was a nightmare of bad information and bad practice by these big 
banks.
  What we would often be able to do is to say: Look, at least give this 
person one person they can deal with, that they can call every time so 
it is not ``Hi, I am John'' on one phone call and ``Hi, I am Mary'' on 
the next phone call and ``Hi, I am Joseph'' on the third phone call and 
nobody ever remembers the other phone calls, nobody ever knew where 
they were in the process. You can't move the process forward if the 
person on the other end of the line can't keep track of the 
conversation. So we were able to get that done, and that actually was 
able to help Rhode Islanders come to a deal with these big banks and 
save their homes. But for all the ones we were able to help, there were 
many, many we were not.
  I simply cannot forgive somebody who took a look at that banking 
crisis, who took a look at the pain Wall Street sent in a wave across 
all of America, and thought: Oh, here is a great new way to make 
money--foreclosing on people.
  Done. I am out. Sorry, I can't vote for somebody like that.
  What I hope, though, is that he will at least show some common sense 
and some decency when it comes to other issues, and one of them is 
climate change.
  If you go to the financial sector, they are taking climate change 
pretty seriously. Frankly, the financial sector is probably about as 
big as the fossil fuel industry, so when the fossil fuel industry comes 
around bullying and shoving and lying and going through all of its 
usual climate denial nonsense, the financial guys really don't care. 
They just do their thing. You are not going to intimidate Goldman. You 
are not going to intimidate BlackRock. You are not going to intimidate 
Bank of America. It just doesn't make any sense. So when you look at 
what these guys are saying, they are being pretty straight up about it.
  As long ago as 2013, Goldman Sachs issued a report that said: ``The 
window for thermal coal investment is closing.'' That is the caption of 
the report. ``Thermal coal's current position atop the fuel mix for 
global power generation will be gradually eroded,'' it said. And sure 
enough, it has been. There was no grief for coal in there; they were 
just trying to predict the market. In 2015, Goldman Sachs did another 
report about the low-carbon economy. It was ``Goldman Sachs equity 
investor's guide to a low carbon world, 2015-25.'' So unless somebody 
is going to say that Goldman Sachs is in on the hoax, they are taking 
this pretty seriously. From 2015 to 2025, they expect a low-carbon 
world.
  And it is coming on fast and furious now. Just recently, a global 
task force was set up by the G20 companies--the 20 biggest economies in 
the world. They have a group called the Task Force on Climate-related 
Financial Disclosures. They have asked that companies begin to come 
clean on the climate risk they face.
  The news report about this says:

       Concerns among the financial community are growing that 
     assets are being mispriced because the full extent of climate 
     risk is not being factored in, threatening market stability.

  The story continues:

       According to Barclays--

  Barclays is a significant international banking institution--

     the fossil fuel industry could lose $34 trillion in revenues 
     by 2040 as a global deal to limit temperature rise to well 
     below 2 degrees Celsius reduces demand for oil, coal, and 
     gas, returning reserves into stranded assets.

  If, in fact, this is an industry that could lose $34 trillion in 
revenues by 2040, that explains a lot of their misbehavior around 
Congress. Obviously, for that kind of money, there is very little 
mischief these folks wouldn't get up to, and sure enough, they are 
getting up to all of that mischief, and more, around here. But the 
financial industry itself is pretty big, and it doesn't care. It is not 
going to be pushed around and bullied.
  This Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure is described 
as having 32 members from large banks, insurance companies, asset 
management companies, pension funds, credit rating agencies, and 
accounting and consulting firms--32 members representing the 20 biggest 
economies in the world, and they are saying: Here it comes. Let's get 
ready.
  So I hope colleagues will begin to listen to these folks in the 
financial services industry and these major market economies about what 
is going on and stop listening to the self-serving nonsense that the 
fossil fuel industry insists on trying to jam into our ears around 
here. It just is bogus. Bottom line: It is bogus.
  Most recently, at the end of last year, September 2016, BlackRock, 
which is one of the most significant investment firms in the world--I 
think it has more than $1 trillion in assets under management--issued 
this new report: ``Adapting Portfolios to Climate Change.'' OK. So 
BlackRock, one of the smartest and biggest companies in the world, is 
now talking about how we have to adapt to climate change and helping 
investors plan for it. In this building, can we have a sensible 
conversation about climate change? No, of course not, because the 
fossil fuel industry won't even let some of us mention the words, but 
in the real world, where real money and real decisions are being made 
by very smart people, they are all over this. Here is BlackRock: 
``Adapting Portfolios to Climate Change.''
  Sentence No. 1 in the report: ``Investors can no longer ignore 
climate change.''
  Investors can no longer ignore climate change. No, it takes Congress 
to do that. Investors can no longer ignore climate change, but don't 
worry, we will, as long as we are following the lead of our fossil fuel 
industry friends, right over the climate cliff.
  The report continues that we can expect more frequent and severe 
weather events over the long term--something that actually we are 
seeing already, not only in the United States but around the world. 
They say that there is a market failure in this area--a market 
failure--as current fossil fuel prices arguably do not reflect the true 
costs of their extraction and use.
  That is what we are fighting about here. The fossil fuel industry has 
the best racket going in the world. They are able to pollute like 
crazy, do immense damage in the world--damage that coastal homeowners 
in Rhode Island, fishermen in Rhode Island, people who have breathing 
difficulties and are trying to breathe on a hot summer day in Rhode 
Island--they all have to pay the price.
  Under real market theory, the harm of the product has to be in the 
price of the product for the market to work. That is market 101. Well, 
they don't want to play by those rules. They want to have everybody 
else cover the harm in their product, and they just get to shove it out 
into the marketplace with the biggest subsidy in creation.
  The International Monetary Fund is not a bunch of stupid people, and 
the

[[Page 2420]]

International Monetary Fund, as far as I can tell, has no conflict of 
interest with respect to fossil fuel, unlike the fossil fuel companies, 
which are one massive example of a conflict of interest. The 
International Monetary Fund says that the subsidy to the fossil fuel 
industry every year--just in the United States of America--is $700 
billion--billion with a ``b.'' Like I said, how much mischief would 
they get up to for $700 billion? Oh, about $700 billion worth.
  Is there a fix to this? Yes, continues the BlackRock report. ``The 
most cost-effective way for governments to meet emissions reduction 
targets: Policy frameworks that result in realistic carbon pricing.'' 
Market 101. Of course, they don't want market 101, they want fossil 
fuels subsidies 101, and we go along with it because of the mischievous 
way they behave in politics. But we should not go along with it. It is 
not proper economics. It is not conservative. It is nothing except 
traditional, old-fashioned, special interests, special pleading. It is 
no different from any other polluter who wants to be able to dump their 
waste into the river or onto their neighbor's yard or wherever it is 
rather than having to pay for cleaning up the mess they made.
  We go on through the report: ``The world is rapidly using up its 
carbon budget,'' says BlackRock. ``The damage from climate change could 
shave 5 to 20 percent off global GDP annually by 2100.'' Up to a fifth 
of global GDP gone. That is a massive economic correction. That is 
massive economic pain.
  ``The economic impacts,'' it goes on to say, ``are not just in the 
distant future. More frequent and more intense extreme weather events, 
such as hurricanes, flooding, and droughts, are already affecting 
assets and economies.''
  For anybody just tuning in, this is not me making this stuff up, this 
is BlackRock investments.
  They talk about global fossil fuel subsidies--four times as large, 
they say, as renewable energy support.
  Here is an interesting thing: ``Scrapping energy subsidies could save 
governments some $3 trillion a year, more than they collect from 
corporate taxes,'' according to BlackRock.
  So here we have the fossil fuel industry over there, and they are 
getting the biggest subsidy in the world--by IMF calculations, $700 
billion a year--and the party that says it wants a more efficient 
government and that ordinarily would like to reduce corporate taxes is 
defending that subsidy, even though that is taking money out of 
government more than corporate taxes. It is quite astonishing. The 
BlackRock report gives such a window into Congress by comparison, 
frankly. They conclude here by giving some pretty dire warnings about 
where this goes if people aren't preparing for climate change. They 
say:

       Risk for the long-term investor . . . could lead to a 
     permanent loss of capital. The effects of climate change need 
     to be part of that equation, we believe.
       Yet even short-term investors would do well to integrate 
     climate factors into their portfolio.

  So from Goldman Sachs on to BlackRock, some of the most powerful and 
intelligent financial firms in the world are telling their investors: 
Get ready for climate change.
  The last page of the BlackRock report says:

       [C]urrent market prices arguably do not yet reflect the 
     social costs of burning fossil fuels. . . . This externality 
     is at the core of the climate challenge.

  The externality, of course, being that you take the harm that you 
cause and instead of putting it in the price of your product, you make 
everybody else around you pay for it by being a polluter.
  Then they asked the question:

       What is the correct price of carbon? It is hard to say. A 
     2015 U.S. government study estimated $36 of economic damages 
     for each metric ton of carbon emitted. Yet estimates are 
     rising: A 2015 Stanford University study points to $220 per 
     metric ton.

  I believe that our U.S. social cost of carbon is running at about $45 
per metric ton right now. And, by the way, it has been upheld twice--at 
least twice--by Federal courts. In fact, one court rather insisted that 
the social cost of carbon had to be baked into the underlying rule; 
otherwise, the underlying rule couldn't pass the test of being logical 
and fair and not arbitrary and capricious.
  So there is the case from some of our leading financial institutions 
about climate change. They have real money at stake. They have real 
clients. They can't engage in the kind of nonsense that we engage in 
around here about climate change not being real or not being important 
or being something that there is still debate about or being something 
that if we try to fix it, it is going to cost too much money. All of 
that is total bunkum processed through all sorts of advertising-type 
public relations firms by the fossil fuel industry and sold to a 
gullible public as if it were true.
  A few folks who aren't so gullible--all Republicans--have just come 
out with a very interesting report. Three of them were Treasury 
Secretaries. Republican Presidents trusted these folks with the conduct 
of the U.S. economy: Jim Baker, Secretary of the Treasury under 
President Reagan; Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury under 
President Bush; and George Shultz, Secretary of the Treasury under 
President Nixon. These men have some pretty impressive credentials. Not 
only was he Secretary of the Treasury, but James Baker was also the 
Secretary of State. And not only was George Shultz Secretary of the 
Treasury and Secretary of State, he was also Secretary of Labor.
  These three former Treasury Secretaries have led a group of other 
investors, including the former chairman of the board of Walmart, the 
world's largest retailer and employer; Tom Stephenson, a Republican who 
is a partner at Sequoia Capital, a very successful venture capital firm 
out in Silicon Valley; and Greg Mankiw, who was Chairman of George W. 
Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, so this is a very Republican 
group. They have a lot of experience. None of them holds elective 
office now, so they don't have to worry about the fossil fuel industry 
threatening to crush them in a primary or spend millions of dollars 
through phony-baloney front groups against them or any of the usual 
stuff that politicians have to put up with from the fossil fuel 
industry as it fights to protect that massive subsidy that we have 
talked about already.
  Let's go through this report by these very senior Republican 
officials. The first sentence:

       Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong 
     to ignore. . . . For too long, many Republicans have looked 
     the other way.

  Indeed. They go on to propose a conservative climate solution--what 
they call a carbon dividends plan--which aligns actually fairly well 
with my American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, which I have put forward 
in the past and am going to put forward in this Congress as well. I 
hope, given its alignment with this Republican leadership on climate, 
that we might actually begin to get some conversations going here. We 
may have to go hide out of State someplace so the fossil fuel folks 
don't find who is participating in the conversation and start punishing 
them for doing so, but we will see how that goes.
  The recommendation basically is for a carbon tax that collects 
revenue to offset the cost of pollution that is not in the price of the 
product and then return it all to the American people through a big 
dividend.
  The report says: ``A carbon tax would send a powerful market signal 
that encourages technological innovation and largescale substitution of 
existing energy and transportation infrastructures, thereby stimulating 
new investment.''
  Furthermore, a well-designed carbon dividends plan, the second half, 
the tax, would stimulate new investment and ``a well-designed carbon 
dividends plan would further contribute to economic growth through its 
dynamic effects on consumption and investment.''
  They definitely want to protect that one-to-one relationship so that 
all the money that comes in goes back out. That is the principle of my 
bill, as well, and I am more than willing to live with it. But the 
problems of failing to act also need attention.
  Since two of these gentlemen were Secretaries of State, we should 
take

[[Page 2421]]

some interest when they say: ``Our reliance on fossil fuels contributes 
to a less stable world, empowers rogue petro-states and makes us 
vulnerable to a volatile world oil market.''
  We have to address this issue for a lot of reasons, and I couldn't be 
more satisfied that these two Republican Secretaries of State have 
actually made the connection that Thomas Friedman has made and that the 
Department of Defense has repeatedly made in its ``Quadrennial Defense 
Review'' between our overreliance on carbon and between the harms of 
climate change and a less stable world--a world in which climate change 
is what the Defense Department has so often called a catalyst for 
conflict.
  They then reflect a little bit on what is going on with their party: 
``The opposition of many Republicans to meaningfully address climate 
change reflects poor science and poor economics, and is at odds with 
the party's own noble tradition of stewardship.''
  You would never know it nowadays, but the Republican Party was once 
the party of Teddy Roosevelt. They point out that ``64% of Americans 
worry a great deal or a fair amount about climate change, while a clear 
majority of Republicans acknowledge that climate change is occurring.''
  They go on to point out ``that 67 percent of Americans''--two thirds 
of Americans--``support a carbon tax with proceeds returned directly to 
them.''
  Two thirds ``of Americans support a carbon tax with proceeds returned 
directly to them, including 54% of conservative Republicans.''
  So let's not pretend that this is a partisan issue. It is not a 
partisan issue. It is an issue in which a big special interest has 
thrown incredible weight around to try to crush one side of the debate. 
But clearly, if 67 percent of Americans supported anything and 54 
percent of conservative Republicans supported that, we would probably 
be having a sensible conversation in the Senate about whatever that 
thing was. We just can't do it when that thing happens to be climate 
change because we have the fossil fuel industry out there--powered up 
by Citizens United, spending all that money--trying to protect that 
huge, huge subsidy that they enjoy.
  Finally, the report points out--and I see the pages lined up here 
along the side of the podium: ``Increasingly, climate change is 
becoming a defining issue for this next generation of Americans, which 
the GOP ignores at its own peril.''
  If this party wants to write off the young generation as they follow 
the fossil fuel industry off the climate cliff, there will be a very 
grave price to be paid.
  The report concludes: ``With the privilege of controlling all 
branches of the government comes a responsibility to exercise wise 
leadership on the defining challenges of our era, including global 
climate change.''
  I don't know where Mr. Mnuchin will lead on climate change at the 
Treasury Department. There are a number of ways in which the Treasury 
Department can be influential in this area. To my knowledge, he has 
never said anything about it yet.
  It was not too long ago--2009--that a full-page advertisement ran in 
the New York Times, a full page advertisement that pointed out that the 
science of climate change was already, by then, to use the word in the 
advertisement, ``irrefutable.'' The science of climate change was 
``irrefutable,'' the advertisement said.
  Then the advertisement went on to say that the consequences of 
climate change would be ``catastrophic and irreversible.'' That is 
another quote from the advertisement: The consequences of climate 
change were to be ``catastrophic and irreversible.''
  On the one hand, you have science that is irrefutable; on the other 
hand, you have consequences of ignoring it that are catastrophic and 
irreversible. Who signed that advertisement? None other than Donald J. 
Trump--not only he, but his children, Donald Trump, Eric Trump, and 
Ivanka Trump, also all signed it.
  The year 2009 was not that long ago. It is possible that the Trump 
family could refer to what they knew in 2009 and perhaps take advice 
from a Treasury Secretary. I hope they take advice from three Treasury 
Secretaries, but we will see how that goes.
  Perhaps Mr. Mnuchin can be a voice to try to get the GOP out of the 
fossil fuel hole it is in, aligned with the 67 percent of American 
voters who want to see a revenue-neutral carbon tax, aligned with the 
majority of Republican conservative voters who would support that, and 
aligned with the irrefutable nature of the science, and addressing the 
catastrophic and irreversible consequences in this strange new 
administration in which the new normal is abnormal. It is perhaps hard 
to expect much good to come, but let's hope and let's hope Mr. Mnuchin 
makes himself a part of the solution rather than just a part of the 
climate-denial problem that so infects us, particularly here in 
Congress.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today the Senate will confirm the 
nomination of Steven Mnuchin to be the Secretary of the Treasury. It is 
a nomination I simply cannot support.
  The Treasury Department plays an essential role in the development of 
the economic policies that financially secure the United States in 
world markets, that expand the opportunities available to all 
Americans, and that help set the stage for a sound and growing economy. 
Our country's economic engine must be one that is accessible to all 
Americans, not just the wealthy few. Regrettably, while Mr. Mnuchin may 
have a knowledge of the inner workings of Wall Street, he seems to know 
shockingly little of the hardships faced on Main Street. One need look 
no further than his role during the height of the housing crisis in 
foreclosing on tens of thousands of American families. Reducing these 
actions to mere administrative matters belies the true struggles of 
those who don't boast the personal coffers Mr. Mnuchin enjoys. I simply 
cannot accept his explanation of his role in these actions.
  We cannot forget the devastation and hardship that the recent 
financial crisis brought upon our country, its people, its 
neighborhoods, its small businesses, and its communities. People lost 
their homes and their jobs, and our markets crashed. Many have still 
have not recovered from those losses. As Congress worked to find the 
answers, it became clear that many large investment banks and insurance 
companies hid the insecurity of their finances from stockholders and 
from the American people. While many people lost their life savings, 
corporate executives received outrageous severance packages. As the 
country lurched into a financial downward spiral, Mr. Mnuchin's 
company, One West, administered aggressive foreclosure tactics that 
added to the devastation of these families, including veterans. It was 
wrong. Mr. Mnuchin, in his testimony before the Senate Finance 
Committee, may have tried to convince the American people that his was 
an innocent role in the crisis. But given that he could not provide a 
valid reason for failing to disclose that he was the director of an 
offshore account worth more than $100 million, domiciled offshore in 
the Cayman Islands, I just cannot buy what he is selling--and neither 
can Vermonters.
  In 2010, Congress worked hard to pass the Dodd-Frank Wall Street 
Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This legislation included a number 
of financial reforms to change the way financial institutions and banks 
take on risk, while adding protections for customers of these 
institutions, and creating a new regulatory council in order to provide 
more effective oversight of the industry. President Trump has indicated 
that he will seek to roll back Dodd-Frank regulations, and Mr. Mnuchin 
reinforced this pledge in front of the Finance Committee. Since its 
inception in 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPBP, has 
received and sent to companies for review upward of 700,000 complaints 
from consumers across the country, ranging from abuses in debt 
collection and credit reporting, to student loans. I worry about the 
future of the CFPB

[[Page 2422]]

under President Trump's administration. Its value and importance in 
protecting Americans from predatory practices, like those of OneWest, 
cannot be overstated. I cannot support a Secretary who would unravel 
the reforms we worked hard to enact and that protect the American 
people from the devastation of runaway corporate greed.
  For the last 8 years, we have focused with considerable success on 
rebuilding our economy. The unemployment rate is lower than it was 
before the financial crisis. Small businesses are growing. It is 
imperative that we continue to make economic progress and that we find 
additional ways to help those who have been left behind, without 
returning to the destructive policies that brought about the crisis in 
the first place. I am not convinced that Mr. Mnuchin is the right 
nominee to lead the Treasury Department and to continue this forward 
progress.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today we consider the nomination of 
Steve Mnuchin, a multimillionaire former Goldman Sachs executive, hedge 
fund manager, and investor, to be Secretary of the Treasury. In our 
Nation's history, the Treasury Secretary was the first Cabinet official 
to be confirmed by the Senate, when Alexander Hamilton took his post in 
1789.
  The first Congress valued the Treasury Department highly, giving it 
more resources than all other government agencies combined. Today the 
mission of the Treasury Department is to:

       ``Maintain a strong economy and create economic and job 
     opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable 
     economic growth and stability at home and abroad, strengthen 
     national security by combating threats and protecting the 
     integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. 
     Government's finances and resources effectively.''

  While the Department always serves a critical function, it has been 
particularly vital in times of financial crisis. In 2008, in the wake 
of lax regulation and excessive speculation, a financial crash shook 
our Nation's economy. The Treasury Department was a key player to pull 
us back from the brink and keep the toxic contagion on Wall Street from 
spilling over to Main Street. We had to fight to ensure that the 
colossal failures of irresponsible corporate executives would not wipe 
out small businesses and citizens' savings.
  At that time, my congressional office helped hundreds of homeowners 
facing foreclosure, working them through the loan modification process, 
helping track down missing documents, and following up again and again 
with banks to make sure that paperwork was processed. We held a 
foreclosure prevention forum to connect people to housing counselors. 
For too many, this process was extremely difficult, tremendously 
confusing, and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. While my office 
was always ready to help, there was no reason why congressional 
intervention should have been necessary to help families modify their 
payments to stay in their homes.
  Where was Steve Mnuchin at this time, when families across the Nation 
were struggling? He was profiting from it. In 2009, he joined a group 
of billionaire-investors to buy IndyMac, a failed bank that the Federal 
Deposit Insurance Corporation had taken over. The investors turned it 
into OneWest Bank, and they turned it into what the California 
Reinvestment Coalition called ``a foreclosure machine.''
  Though the majority did not permit the California Reinvestment 
Coalition to testify at an official hearing on Mr. Mnuchin's 
nomination, the coalition's Paulina Gonzalez spoke with a number of 
Senators at a forum on Mr. Mnuchin's bank. Ms. Gonzalez told us that 
OneWest was among the worst. OneWest denied more applications than most 
for the Home Affordable Modification Program, the government program to 
help homeowners avoid foreclosure by adjusting their payment schedule. 
Ms. Gonzalez told us, ``We have labeled OneWest a `foreclosure machine' 
not only because it foreclosed on more than 60,000 American families 
and because of its aggressive foreclosure practices, but because it 
seemed to do little else.''
  Consider some of the heartbreaking foreclosure stories that OneWest 
left in its wake.
  A 90-year-old Florida woman lost her home after making a 27-cent 
payment error.
  Christina Clifford attempted to modify her loan twice. Each time that 
she sent in her check with the paperwork, OneWest told her that her 
paperwork was not received--even though the bank cashed the check that 
was in the same envelope.
  A Minneapolis woman was in the process of negotiating a loan 
modification when she came home in a blizzard and found that her locks 
had been changed.
  OneWest and its subsidiary Financial Freedom were also notorious for 
what came to be called ``widow foreclosures.'' They lured seniors into 
reverse mortgages signed by one spouse of a married couple. When the 
spouse who signed the paperwork died, OneWest and Financial Freedom 
would immediately begin the foreclosure process, sending out notices in 
as little as 10 days to widows and widowers.
  Another egregious bank practice during the foreclosure crisis was 
``robo-signing.'' Mortgage officials would speed through foreclosure 
documents and sign off without reviewing their accuracy. This practice 
all too frequently led to the bank powering through as many 
foreclosures as possible.
  Mr. Mnuchin told the Finance Committee that ``OneWest Bank did not 
`robo-sign' documents.'' But in a deposition, a OneWest executive 
admitted to personally robo-signing hundreds of documents, even 
shortening her signature to her initials to speed the process even 
further.
  Thanks to these draconian practices, Mr. Mnuchin made a tidy $1.5 
billion in profit when he and his fellow investors sold OneWest after 6 
years.
  In the aftermath of the devastating 2008 financial crisis, Congress 
worked to reform the system with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and 
Consumer Protection Act. Congress intended the law to reduce the kind 
of risk and recklessness that led to the crisis and strengthen Federal 
oversight of Wall Street and Big Banks. Congress created the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau to be a watchdog for everyday Americans and 
prevent predatory lending and unscrupulous behavior by financial 
institutions. It began regulation of exotic financial derivatives that 
contributed to the crisis by masking risk and established the Volcker 
rule to place limits on ways that banks can invest to minimize 
conflicts of interest and high-risk transactions.
  While Congress can certainly do more to improve consumer and investor 
protections and ensure that no bank is ever ``too big to fail,'' Dodd-
Frank is a critical reform. And since the day it passed, Republicans in 
Congress have attacked it, seeking to roll back its protections, weaken 
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and reduce the oversight of 
the speculative transactions that increase risk in our financial 
markets.
  President Trump has called Dodd-Frank a ``disaster'' and vowed to 
``do a big number on it.'' And last week, President Trump signed an 
Executive order directing a review of Dodd-Frank regulations.
  By his side at that moment was Gary Cohn, who was co-president of 
Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis. As detailed in a report by 
the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Goldman survived 
the crash in part by betting against its own customers and sticking 
them with bad mortgages. In 2006, they saw trouble coming in the 
subprime mortgage market and realized that they were overinvested. So 
they packaged the bad deals into new mortgage-backed products and 
dumped them. In 2009, one analyst called Goldman ``a single underwriter 
solely interested in pushing its dirty inventory onto unsuspecting and 
gullible investors.''
  President Trump's adviser Gary Cohn was a leader of Goldman Sachs at 
that time. Now, after walking away from Goldman Sachs with a $285 
million payout, he has become chair of the National Economic Council. 
Mr. Cohn is at President Trump's side to work to unravel the reforms 
that Congress put

[[Page 2423]]

in place to stop bad behavior of banks like Goldman Sachs.
  Mr. Mnuchin also worked at Goldman Sachs and continued to work in the 
hedge fund industry. Will he serve as a check on the impulse to reopen 
banking to greater risk? In an interview with CNN's Squawk Box after 
his nomination, he said, ``We want to strip back parts of Dodd-Frank 
and that will be the number one priority on the regulatory side,''--the 
number one priority.
  It is unclear how Mr. Mnuchin, Mr. Cohn, and President Trump plan to 
reshape financial regulation, how much risk they plan to reintroduce to 
the markets, and whether they would ensure adequate safeguards for 
consumers and investors. We do know, however, that Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. 
Cohn are cozy with Wall Street and Big Banks, and it appears now that 
Mr. Trump's talk about reining in Wall Street was just talk.
  In addition to the need to continue sensible oversight of the 
financial system, the next Treasury Secretary will have to confront one 
of the greatest challenges of our time--growing income inequality, 
wealth inequality, and wage stagnation.
  According to an Economic Policy Institute Analysis of data from the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 1948 
until 1973, worker productivity and compensation rose at roughly 
similar rates--productivity increased by 96.7 percent and hourly 
compensation increased by 91.3 percent. Starting in 1973, however, 
growth in worker productivity and wages began to diverge dramatically. 
Between 1973 and 2013, productivity increased by 74.4 percent, but 
hourly compensation increased by just 9.2 percent.
  Not everyone, however, saw stagnation. The wages of the top 1 percent 
of earners grew 138 percent between 1979 and 2013, once again, 
according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. In that same 
time period, the wages of workers in the bottom 10 percent actually 
dropped by 5 percent.
  In 1965, an average company CEO made 20 times the salary of an 
average, nonmanagement worker. In 2014, the average CEO made 303 times 
the salary of an average worker.
  Many Americans feel that they are working harder than ever, but they 
aren't getting ahead. Too often, they are right. They are taking on 
more and not getting compensated for the extra effort. We need policies 
to help average workers, like increasing the minimum wage, fair pay, 
and improvements to the Tax Code to encourage hard work rather than 
simply rewarding those who make money off of money.
  Is Mr. Mnuchin the right person to address this problem? His 
experience is certainly different from that of the average worker. The 
son of a Goldman Sachs banker, he has accumulated enough wealth that he 
forgot to disclose a hundred million dollars in assets to the Finance 
Committee. He has said little about his ideas for tax reform, except 
creating what my colleague Senator Wyden has dubbed the ``Mnuchin 
Rule.'' In an interview, Mr. Mnuchin said of tax reform: ``Any 
reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less 
deductions, so there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' 
I would certainly welcome that outcome. Unfortunately, it is totally 
inconsistent with the Trump tax plan.
  According to Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on 
Taxation and Economic Policy, President Trump's tax plan is heavily 
weighted to benefit the wealthy, leading to ``a new era of dynastic 
wealth.'' A report from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center concluded 
that President Trump's plan would ``significantly raise taxes'' for 
about 8.5 million families, particularly working single parents. In 
contrast, the wealthiest one percent would receive 47 percent--almost 
half--of the tax cuts, saving on average $214,000. The 117,000 
households in the top 0.1 percent would receive, on average, a whopping 
$1.3 million each.
  In addition to exacerbating the problem of income inequality, the 
Trump tax plan would add $7 trillion to the national debt over the next 
decade. It would blow a hole in our Federal budget to give big checks 
to the superwealthy, provide limited benefit to the middle class, and 
hurt low-income families.
  This is entirely backwards. We have learned over and over again that 
massive tax cuts for the wealthy do not lead to economic growth for 
everyone. Trickle down has never worked. We need to build an economy 
that works for everyone, not just the very wealthy. And we certainly 
should not be rewarding the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
  Given what little we know of Mr. Mnuchin's policy priorities, we have 
to look to his career to determine his experience to carry out the 
mission of the Treasury to create economic and job opportunities and 
sustain economic growth. Unfortunately, Mr. Mnuchin appears to have had 
a canny ability to take advantage of the dire circumstances of others 
to benefit himself, particularly in pushing aggressively for 
foreclosures at OneWest. It is far from clear that he is willing to now 
work on behalf of all Americans and especially those who have been 
working harder and receiving no return. I hope to be proven wrong, but 
I cannot support his nomination.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, on January 20, at his inauguration, 
President Trump stood before the American people and said: ``For too 
long, a small group of our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of 
government while the people have borne the cost.''
  President Trump is right. The people have borne unimaginable costs: 
the cost of foreclosure, the cost of inequality, the cost of poverty, 
and the cost of injustice. Sadly, it doesn't look like that is going to 
change soon with this administration. Three weeks into this 
administration, President Trump has already begun to restore power back 
to Wall Street and the very same people who he said have caused 
tremendous problems for us. The nomination of Steve Mnuchin, someone 
who spent his entire career working on behalf of Wall Street at the 
expense of hard-working Americans, is a clear example.
  Let me say at the outset, I have not met him, but I tried to, but we 
couldn't get an agreement as to when we might be able to get together. 
I wanted to talk to him about some important issues that many of us 
remember.
  We know what happened with the recession that greeted President Obama 
when he was sworn into office 8 years ago. We know about the 
foreclosures. We know of families being literally wiped out, all their 
savings gone because of misleading tactics by financiers.
  I still look at this, and as much as I respect President Obama and 
his administration, I shake my head and think: Nobody went to jail for 
all that occurred. People at the highest levels of the financial 
community on Wall Street and others were engaged in practices that we 
know now were unfair and just plain wrong and, in many cases, illegal.
  I have taken a look at Mr. Mnuchin's record. I have read a lot of 
stories about him. I have heard from homeowners' personally impacted by 
his conduct, and let me tell you, what I have seen and heard leads me 
to believe he is not the right person to be Secretary of the Treasury.
  Like most of President Trump's nominees, Mr. Mnuchin was not chosen 
for his knowledge and experience on critical issues he will face if 
confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury. He was not chosen for his 
commitment to work for average working families. He was chosen for his 
loyalty to the President, the new litmus test in the Republican Party.
  Before serving as President Trump's chief fundraiser on the campaign, 
Mr. Mnuchin worked to help wealthy individuals and powerful special 
interest groups reap the benefits of what the

[[Page 2424]]

President has called ``a rigged system.'' He served as an executive at 
Goldman Sachs and as a hedge fund manager.
  Perhaps what troubles me the most about Mr. Mnuchin's experience is 
his tenure at the helm of a group known as OneWest, which came to be 
known as a foreclosure machine in America because of the aggressive and 
questionable practices it used to foreclose on the homes of thousands 
of American families.
  Mr. Mnuchin was the head of the company that was doing the 
foreclosure. After our country experienced the worst economic downturn 
since the Great Depression, Congress worked around the clock to prevent 
the economy from going into free-fall and end some of the worst 
practices that helped bring the American economy to its knees.
  As we were working to save American homes, Mr. Mnuchin--like 
President Trump--saw opportunity to make a profit, personally earning 
millions from OneWest's success as a foreclosure machine.
  As the head of OneWest, Mr. Mnuchin had the power to destroy lives 
through foreclosure or find ways to help homeowners stay in their 
homes. He chose to aggressively foreclose on families.
  During his nomination hearing, Mr. Mnuchin defended OneWest's 
foreclosure practices and said he was proud of the work of the bank 
during the foreclosure crisis.
  Let me tell you about some of the stories, and you can decide whether 
Mr. Mnuchin should be proud of the record of the company he was 
managing.
  Rex Schaffer and his wife Rose lost their home of nearly 50 years, 
despite having qualified for a loan modification.
  Ossie Lofton, a 90-year-old woman, was foreclosed on because she was 
short 27 cents in her mortgage payment--27 cents.
  The locks were changed on Leslie Park's Minneapolis home in the 
middle of a blizzard.
  We have seen how organizations headed by Mr. Mnuchin treat people. If 
confirmed, Mr. Mnuchin would have the ability to use the power of the 
U.S. Treasury Department to stand on the side of Wall Street and on the 
opposite side of millions of working Americans. I don't have 
confidence, based on his professional record, that Mr. Mnuchin will put 
the needs of hard-working families first over Wall Street.
  While the foreclosure crisis and its aftermath seem like something in 
the past for so many people, that is not the case in my home State of 
Illinois. Foreclosures are devastating for the families forced out of 
their homes, but they are also devastating to surrounding communities 
and neighborhoods.
  If you want to know what a community looks like 50 years after the 
foreclosure crisis, visit my birthplace, my hometown of East St. Louis, 
IL, or even some of the neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, or 
the west side, for that matter--vacant lot after vacant lot, neglected 
buildings and homes, an economy devastated. And what is left? Some of 
the poorest families on earth.
  While we have made significant progress since the recession of 2008, 
many families in my State and across the country are still suffering. 
There is work to do. If confirmed, Mr. Mnuchin will be responsible for 
protecting these families and ensuring that we don't have another 
financial crisis. All we have seen from him is his ability to profit 
from the foreclosure crisis and the devastation left in its wake. In 
the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Congress got together 
with the President and passed Dodd-Frank. This was Wall Street reform 
determined not to let another economic crisis follow. The consumer 
protection act was also passed to prevent these crises and to reform 
the problems that caused them.
  Mr. Mnuchin has made no secret of the fact that his No. 1 regulatory 
priority is to roll back Wall Street reform, to return the barbarians 
to the gates. Despite the promises President Trump made during his 
campaign, including ``not letting Wall Street get away with murder,'' 
Mr. Mnuchin has an ally in President Trump in undoing Dodd-Frank. 
President Trump signed an Executive order that would begin rolling back 
the important consumer and financial system reforms we passed as part 
of Dodd-Frank. The President signed this order sitting among the 
biggest beneficiaries of his actions, some of Wall Street's high 
rollers. Make no mistake, if President Trump gets his way and Steven 
Mnuchin is confirmed, the banks are going to have the best friend they 
can think of in the Treasury Department, just like they did before the 
economic crash of 2008.
  It is clear the American people can't count on Mr. Mnuchin, based on 
his business experience, to decide with them over Wall Street. But, 
certainly, he should be committed to basic fairness of the Tax Code. He 
said he was until he wasn't. Shortly after his nomination, Mr. Mnuchin 
said there would be ``no absolute tax cut for the upper class.'' Yet he 
has not spoken out against the significant tax cuts the wealthy would 
receive from the repeal of the Affordable Care Act or under the 
President's and the House Republican's tax reform plan. We shouldn't be 
surprised by this because we are asking Mr. Mnuchin to close the 
loopholes and raise the taxes on the very people he helped to avoid 
paying taxes by using offshore tax havens as a hedge fund manager.
  We are still recovering from the devastation of that financial crisis 
8 years ago. We can't afford to have our Nation's top economic official 
be a man who has only been looking out for Wall Street. For a President 
who ran on bringing back jobs and being a champion of the working 
people, the choices of President Trump for his Cabinet are the opposite 
and have taken advantage of the very system he has derided as rigged 
against the people.
  The American people deserve better. When Mr. Mnuchin's nomination is 
brought to the Senate floor for a vote, I will vote no, and I urge my 
colleagues to do the same.


                      Nomination of David Shulkin

  Madam President, I want to take a moment to address the nomination of 
Dr. David Shulkin to be confirmed soon as the next Secretary of the 
Department of Veterans Affairs. We all know the Veterans Affairs 
Department faced a number of challenges in recent years: long waiting 
times, disability claims backlogs, issues related to accountability, 
whistleblowers, and the quality of care. The list is too long. As the 
second largest Federal agency, employing more than 350,000 people 
across America and serving as our largest integrated health care 
system, some challenges are unavoidable.
  As the VA provides for the brave men and women who fought and 
sacrificed for this country, as well as their families, it is critical 
that it be held to a high standard. We in Congress must work to ensure 
that, in addition to holding the Department to a high standard, we also 
ensure that it is well funded and that it has the tools and flexibility 
to do the job.
  It is critical that we strengthen the VA system and not weaken it 
through privatization, which would only lower the quality of health 
care for our veterans. That is why I am pleased with the nomination of 
Dr. Shulkin by President Trump to be the next Secretary of Veterans 
Affairs.
  Despite years of people playing politics with the VA--efforts which 
have only been counterproductive and have made it difficult for the VA 
to fill critical vacancies--and despite months of President Trump's 
talking about privatization without offering real solutions, today we 
have a nominee who appears to understand that, while there is a role 
for expanded care options, weakening or dismantling the VA is not the 
answer. I was heartened by Dr. Shulkin's commitment during his hearing 
in the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee on February 1, where he said: 
``The Department of Veterans Affairs will not be privatized under my 
watch.''
  Dr. Shulkin may not be a veteran himself, but I am encouraged by the 
fact that he comes from a military family and has decades of medical 
experience, including serving for 2 years under former VA Secretary 
Robert McDonald as head of the Veterans Health Administration after 
being

[[Page 2425]]

nominated by President Obama. May I add that he left a lucrative 
private sector job and took a huge pay cut to join the VA.
  It is no surprise that a number of veterans service organizations 
actively support his nomination. Although progress has been made in 
recent years, there are still challenges at the VA that we need to 
continue to address. I worry about the veterans' health care, 
education, homelessness, accountability, and a host of other issues. I 
look forward to working with Dr. Shulkin on these matters.
  But we must not forget that, overall, in terms of health care, the VA 
is consistently found to provide care in key areas that is better than 
or on par with care in the private sector. It is significantly more 
cost effective, as well. And most veterans across the country prefer 
their veteran-centric health care that they receive in the VA. Despite 
what some may claim, most of them do not support privatization. I want 
to be clear that this includes a myriad of efforts under the guise of 
expanding access or choice.
  So I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting Dr. Shulkin to be 
the next VA Secretary. I shared then-President Obama's sentiment that 
he was the right person to head up the Veterans Health Administration 
back in 2015, and I believe he is the right person to head the VA 
today.
  Just 3 days ago, I was in Marion, IL, and visited our veterans 
hospital there. I met with the administrator. Ms. Ginsberg told me she 
knew of Dr. Shulkin and had high regard for him. That came as high 
praise from someone who is on the front line of serving thousands of 
deserving veterans in southern Illinois every single day. So her 
endorsement helped me to come forward today and to commit that I will 
be voting to make sure that Dr. Shulkin gets this opportunity to head 
the Veterans Affairs agency.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, even now, more than 2 months after then 
President-Elect Trump nominated Steven Mnuchin to be Treasury 
Secretary, I still find it hard to believe. Month after month out on 
the campaign trail, President Trump attacked Wall Street. He said, time 
after time, that he was going to take on Wall Street. He attacked his 
opponents in the primaries and in the general election by saying that 
they were too close to Wall Street and, specifically, too close to 
Goldman Sachs.
  He said, regarding Secretary Clinton: She will never reform Wall 
Street. I know the guys at Goldman Sachs; they have total control. But 
he countered this by saying that he would do it differently. He 
promised to take on Wall Street. He promised to fight for middle-class 
Americans. He promised to drain the swamp and reduce and eliminate the 
powerful entrenched special interests here in Washington, DC.
  But what a change can happen within a few weeks. Less than a month 
after winning the Presidency--I should point out, winning the electoral 
college but losing by a massive margin the popular vote, the citizen 
vote--who does Mr. Trump pick to be Treasury Secretary? A 17-year 
Goldman Sachs veteran, a foreclosure king--Steve Mnuchin.
  So here tonight, not even a decade after the second worst financial 
crisis in U.S. history, we will be holding a vote on whether Steve 
Mnuchin is a fit character to be Secretary of the Treasury.
  What is particularly puzzling is not only the Goldman Sachs 
background, in contrast with the President's campaign promises, but 
also that this individual was a contributor to many of the predatory 
practices that nearly destroyed our economy in 2008, and he is someone 
who made a fortune throwing struggling American families out of their 
homes and onto the streets.
  I am somewhat shocked we are here tonight and that some of my 
colleagues are considering voting to put a man in charge of our 
Nation's financial system who played such a role in bringing it to its 
knees just a couple of years ago.
  Let's remember the massive impact on American families. They lost 
jobs by the millions. The unemployment rate soared. They lost their 
retirement savings and often they lost their homes--not just because 
they lost their jobs and couldn't pay their mortgage but because of the 
predatory design of the mortgages.
  So I am shocked that I am here tonight and we are holding this vote 
and that we are particularly considering an individual who worked to 
tear down the protections and throw American families to the Wall 
Street wolves.
  Maybe we should have a Treasury Secretary who succeeded in the past 
to build up the economy, not one who participated in tearing it down. 
Maybe we should have a Treasury Secretary who worked hard to put tens 
of thousands of people into homes, rather than someone who personally 
profited by throwing tens of thousands of American families out of 
their homes. I would be feeling much better about the vote we are 
holding tonight if that was the case because the American people have 
endured too much pain and suffering at the machinations of Wall Street.
  I thought we had perhaps learned our lesson. We worked hard to pass 
the Dodd-Frank reforms that would end those predatory mortgages, that 
would end those liar loans, that would end those teaser rate-exploding 
interest rate loans that brought families to their knees, that would 
end the securities designed in such a fashion that you couldn't 
evaluate whether they were AAA or AA, that would end this process and 
this formulation that turned the dream of American homeownership into 
the nightmare of American homeownership--this nightmare in which, 
instead of building wealth for American families, homeownership became 
a predatory instrument for draining wealth from American families.
  What was Steve Mnuchin doing when the Banking Committee was working 
to save the economy he had helped to tear down? Well, he was 
foreclosing on more than 36,000 struggling homeowners, conducting more 
than one-third of all the reverse mortgage foreclosures, running a bank 
with a record of discriminating against minority home buyers, running a 
bank with a record of discriminating against minority neighborhoods.
  So for all these reasons, this is the wrong man; the wrong man 
because he does not fit the promise the President made to take on Wall 
Street; the wrong man because he participated in destroying our 
economy, which harmed millions of American families; and the wrong man 
because he wants to dismantle Dodd-Frank, which had been put together 
specifically to end the predatory practices, including the illegal 
robo-signing he participated in.
  This individual has no business overseeing the financial future of 
the American people so I will be voting no on his confirmation, and I 
passionately urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about the 
nomination of Steve Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury and the 
concerns I have about his nomination.
  I want to start with a Pennsylvania story. It is a story we wish we 
didn't have to highlight, but it is relevant to the discussion and 
debate on this nomination.
  I am looking at a document that is a written summary of a television 
investigative news report from January of

[[Page 2426]]

this year. It is from the Pittsburgh television station WTAE, and it is 
dated January 16, 2017. The headline on the document is ``Trump Pick 
for Treasury Secretary Foreclosed on Hundreds of Homeowners in Western 
Pennsylvania.'' The article says in pertinent part about this one 
Pennsylvanian:

       Nellie Mlinek lost her husband to cancer. She lost her son 
     to an overdose. And then she lost her home to OneWest Bank.

  It goes on to describe the interaction between this individual and 
the bank, and of course this is the bank of which Steve Mnuchin was a 
part owner.
  I also want to read what she said about the circumstance she was in. 
She was hoping that because of the circumstances with regard to her 
home, that she would be able to work with the bank instead of having 
foreclosure. That was not to be.
  The article goes on to talk about others in the region who had 
foreclosures as well. A house in White Oak, PA, was foreclosed in 2014; 
a house in North Versailles was foreclosed in 2013; a house in Penn 
Hills in 2012; a Pittsburgh house was foreclosed in 2011. These are all 
communities in Allegheny County, Southwestern Pennsylvania, and Nellie 
was from Westmoreland County, which is just to the east of Allegheny 
County. So that is what the article summarizes--foreclosures throughout 
a corner of Southwestern Pennsylvania, as the headline says, hundreds 
of foreclosures.
  The article starts with this line: ``Critics say President-elect 
Donald Trump's pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, ran a 
foreclosure machine at a major bank,'' and it goes on from there. That 
is one in Pennsylvania, and then references to foreclosures that I read 
from are summaries of what happened to some others.
  Then we go to the other end of the State. This is in Southeastern 
Pennsylvania, the region within which Philadelphia sits. In this case, 
the individual is Ruth Guerriero. Ruth is from South Philadelphia, and 
she remembers the day she got the letter that ``scared me to death.'' 
The letter threatened a foreclosure because of a reverse mortgage that 
she didn't know existed. The headline of this article is ``Reverse-
mortgage nightmare can start after borrower dies.''
  In this case, Ruth lost her husband. The article says that this 
particular piece of mail in October 2013 was from OneWest Bank, 
informing Ruth that it was foreclosing on the house in the 2800 block 
of South Hutchinson Street that she and her late husband had bought in 
2006 for $200,000. Without her knowledge, Ruth Guerriero said, her 
husband, 23 years her senior, had taken out a reverse mortgage in 
September 2007. It goes on from there.
  So anyone who has had that experience of losing a home or becoming 
the victim of a reverse mortgage when you didn't have prior knowledge 
can relate to what has happened to these individuals. This is part of 
the debate. These are not the only considerations we weigh, but when 
you have, in this case, a nominee for Treasury Secretary who comes into 
the nomination process not having held public office or not having held 
appointed government office, this is part of the record you are to 
review. It is really the only record--the record in this case as a 
banker or a businessperson, and in his case, his work on Wall Street.
  I had the opportunity, of course, as a member of the Finance 
Committee, to meet Mr. Mnuchin in my office and to question him more 
than once in the question period for the Finance Committee. In our 
meeting, I asked him, for example--and these are other relevant 
questions in terms of presenting accurate information, presenting 
information that will fully answer questions--I asked him how many 
times his financial institution chose to modify mortgages as opposed to 
foreclosing, and he told me that there were about 100,000 mortgage 
modifications. Yet we know the documented evidence tells a different 
story; it is about one-third that number, closer to 35,000 
modifications.
  I realize that someone could not remember the exact number, but I was 
surprised at how far off he was in something so substantial in 
someone's life, whether it was a person like Nellie or other 
individuals. A mortgage foreclosure, as opposed to a modification, 
which is a better result for an individual or family--that is a 
substantial difference in their lives. And I would hope that when you 
are in any way involved in a foreclosure, as a banker or as a part of 
an entity that is foreclosing, that you would carefully weigh the 
consequences before you choose to pursue foreclosure or pursue a 
different path, the path of modification, which, of course, everyone 
would prefer in that circumstance.
  I asked Steve Mnuchin how many Americans his bank had foreclosed on 
during the financial crisis, and he has yet to provide an answer to 
that question. I know others may have asked a similar question, and I 
wonder if they got an answer. We will see what the public record shows.
  Mr. Mnuchin was also asked to provide a copy of a letter he said he 
sent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development raising 
concerns about the impact of the company's reverse mortgage guidance. 
It was almost a month ago that we asked for that information to be 
produced, that letter, and we still haven't seen it. So I wonder about 
the statement he made with regard to information from HUD.
  I also asked Mr. Mnuchin whether his financial institution engaged in 
the predatory practice of so-called robo-signing, and this is a 
question which was asked by a couple of Senators. I asked him for that 
information, and he said that wasn't the case. But now we know from the 
documented evidence in an answer that he later changed that there was 
robo-signing taking place at the time we alleged that it did.
  So when you ask a question in a hearing and you get an answer that 
was wrong or incomplete or misleading or otherwise, that is one thing. 
You could sometimes have a circumstance where someone didn't 
intentionally want to mislead or tell a lie, or they may have answered 
a question imprecisely or without a lot of information. But I think it 
is a little different when you ask a question in writing, where the 
individual had the time to analyze a question and provide an answer in 
writing with some time to reflect, some time to consult some other 
sources of information before they draft their answer and then submit 
it to you as part of the nomination process. In this case, Mr. Mnuchin 
had a different answer than the facts showed, and I will go through 
that a little bit later.
  At some level, there is a question of accuracy, maybe even rising to 
the level of trust, and that is something we have to consider when we 
are making a determination about a nominee, because almost any Cabinet 
agency has to transmit information, very specific, detailed 
information. People have to be able to rely upon the information, the 
accuracy of it and the completeness of it. And if he has had problems 
in his nomination process, that causes us to raise some real questions.
  I wanted to start with OneWest Bank--another entity called Financial 
Freedom. I don't know how far we will get into this in the limited time 
we have. In 2009, Mr. Mnuchin and his business partners bought OneWest 
Bank at the height of the financial crisis for $1.6 billion, paying 
about 5 cents on the dollar for the bank's assets. Mr. Mnuchin was able 
to buy the bank at such a significant discount in part because he was 
entrusted to modify as many home mortgages as possible so homeowners 
could stay in their homes. He foreclosed on more than--I should say 
OneWest Bank foreclosed on more than 40,000 Americans, so we are told.
  We don't know how many foreclosures they engaged in in Pennsylvania, 
but, as I read a couple moments ago from an investigative report from 
WTAE, it is at least hundreds in one region of the State. We have 67 
counties. Depending on where you draw the line, Southwestern 
Pennsylvania is 10 counties, 12 counties, somewhere in that range, 
maybe as high as 15 if you went as far north as Erie. Let's say it is 
15 counties. Hundreds of foreclosures in that region is substantial.
  Later, after all of those thousands of foreclosures across the 
country, Mr.

[[Page 2427]]

Mnuchin sold OneWest Bank for $3.4 billion in 2015. The sale itself 
yielded the group of individuals, including Mr. Mnuchin, billions of 
dollars--that would be Mr. Mnuchin and also investors.
  I mentioned the foreclosures before and the individuals involved. I 
wanted to go a little deeper into the particular circumstances.
  I mentioned and highlighted Nellie's story. Here is what took place 
in that circumstance--or what she had hoped would take place. Nellie 
was hoping that she would be able to work something out with the bank, 
so she asked OneWest to help her keep the house by adjusting her 
payment. That often happens when a bank initiates a foreclosure. It 
begins a process but works something out with a homeowner, and that 
would be called a modification. In this case, Nellie asked OneWest to 
help her keep her house by adjusting her payment, but she said the bank 
refused and then foreclosed on her. She said: ``They should have worked 
with me to meet a payment that I could make.'' She filed for 
bankruptcy, but even that did not save her house. She said it cost her 
``a lot of depression.'' That is what Nellie said about her own 
circumstances, and I mentioned the other communities in Western 
Pennsylvania.
  That is the reality foreclosure brings to bear on the life of one 
individual who is struggling, who, in Nellie's case, has had a series 
of setbacks, deeply personal, tragic circumstances compounded by the 
foreclosure. The same is true of Ruth in South Philadelphia, in terms 
of the impact of that decision. We have a lot of ways to summarize 
information like this, and I will just highlight maybe one or two.
  For example, according to the National Consumer Law Center, in March 
of 2012, a Philadelphia senior citizen with a reverse mortgage from a 
wing of Mr. Mnuchin's bank--in this case, the name of the entity was 
Financial Freedom--sought assistance because he had been served with a 
preforeclosure notice. The reverse mortgage company owned by Mr. 
Mnuchin gave this individual 30 days to pay almost $5,000.
  What was the bill for? Well, without his knowing it, Financial 
Freedom charged him over $2,000 for forced-placed insurance coverage 
from 2010 to 2012. Financial Freedom threatened to go forward with the 
foreclosure unless this senior citizen made immediate monthly payments 
equal to almost 35 percent of his monthly income. With legal 
assistance, those payments were reduced.
  I would hope you would not need to hire a lawyer to get those 
payments reduced, but sometimes when you are up against a powerful 
financial institution, that is the only way to proceed.
  Instead of immediately informing this senior citizen of his lapsed 
coverage, Financial Freedom charged excessive amounts for forced-placed 
coverage. Financial Freedom then waited 2 years to begin collection, 
but it expected this senior, who was living on a fixed income, to pay 
within 30 days. Financial Freedom also did not tell this senior citizen 
he could apply for a longer repayment plan due to his low income.
  According to the National Consumer Law Center, in 2015, Financial 
Freedom notified a Pennsylvania reverse mortgage holder's heirs that 
the only way to avoid foreclosure on the family home was by repaying 
the loan balance or selling the property for at least 95 percent of its 
appraised value. They said the appraised value for the Pennsylvania 
home was $170,000, even though their own appraisal of the property just 
one month earlier was $67,000. There is a big difference between 
$170,000 and $67,000. It seems that $170,000 was the appraised value at 
loan origination, way back in 2007. Now, of course, it is years later, 
and that was, of course, before the market collapsed. So for the 
purposes of preforeclosure notice, Financial Freedom used an appraisal 
over $100,000 more than the actual value of the home. They were trying 
to force the heirs to pay more than $100,000 above the home's value to 
prevent foreclosure of the family home.
  So these are a couple of Pennsylvania stories--Ruth and Nellie and 
then some others, whose names aren't in the text of my remarks, but 
give similar stories about some of the foreclosure practices that Mr. 
Mnuchin was part of when he had these individual banks.
  Here is the question on robo-signing that I mentioned earlier. I 
submitted a question for the record in writing and gave it to him, and 
here is what his response was to the question. The question was this:

       One of the most significant scandals during the financial 
     crisis was the practice of ``robo-signing'' whereby bank 
     employees rapidly approved foreclosure documents without 
     thorough review. Many were wrongfully foreclosed upon on 
     account of these practices. Did OneWest Bank ``robo sign'' 
     documents relating to foreclosures and evictions?

  His response was pretty shocking:

       OneWest Bank did not robo-sign documents, and as the only 
     bank to successfully complete the independent foreclosure 
     review required by Federal banking regulators to investigate 
     allegations of robo-signing, I am proud of our institution's 
     extremely low error rate.

  The reason I say that it was a shocking answer is because he had 
signed his name to a 2011 document that found that OneWest Bank did, in 
fact, robo-sign. The findings from the Office of Thrift Supervision 
does not explicitly state robo-signing--that is not a legal term of 
art--but it does set forth a fact pattern for robo-signing, which 
involves an employee signing foreclosure documents without reviewing 
them. Instead of reviewing the details of each, robo-signers assume the 
paperwork is correct and sign it automatically. Almost anyone who lived 
through the financial crisis of 2008 knows what robo-signing is, and 
many were victims of this practice.
  So that is a problem, obviously, when you answer a question in a 
manner that is totally inconsistent with the facts.
  I know I am low on time, and I want to wrap up. What I will do for 
the record--or if we have time to come back later--is to get into some 
other issues. But one of the real concerns I have about his nomination 
is not just his record as a banker, as a person working on Wall Street 
and working in that world. It is one thing to say you did something in 
your prior life, but once you put on the mantle of public service and 
the heavy responsibilities of Treasury Secretary, you set aside that 
other work you did or that other position you had, maybe, on some 
issues. But, apparently, some of his work--or at least some of his 
points of view--will continue in the Treasury Department, because I 
think it is pretty clear, based upon some reporting back at the end of 
November, that Mr. Mnuchin believes that one of his prime 
responsibilities is to begin to dismantle, or substantially alter, what 
we know as the Dodd-Frank legislation.
  We know what happened prior to that. We know what happened to the 
economy. We know that the United States lost about $19 trillion in 
household wealth. That is $19 trillion, with a ``t.'' More than 8 
million jobs--by one estimate, 8.7 million jobs--were lost. So I would 
hope that as Treasury Secretary, were he to be confirmed, he would make 
sure that we never go down that path again--that before you dismantle 
Dodd-Frank, you better think about the consequences to real people's 
lives.
  So I will wrap up because I know we have to go, but I will put more 
information in the Record.
  Let me conclude with one thought before we move on. One of the 
concerns I have about his nomination, also, is not something you can 
point to in a document. It is just a gut instinct or a judgment that I 
have made, and it is a judgment that can be summarized this way: I have 
a real concern about his commitment to public service. Why do I say 
that? It seemed that, in this whole process of disclosing financial 
information--turning over documents, answering questions, answering 
follow-up questions--Mr. Mnuchin was kind of resistant to scrutiny or 
seemed to be burdened by this, and that somehow he was disclosing too 
much. His demeanor, when you would ask him some questions, appeared to 
me to be a demeanor that was not consistent with what public service 
must be about. When you are in public service, whether you are elected 
or appointed, you are, in fact, a servant. You don't work

[[Page 2428]]

for a bank, you don't work for a financial institution, and you don't 
work for a company. You don't even work for a President. You work for 
the people.
  I was taught a long time ago that the closer you can get to this 
ideal--which is inscribed on a building in our State capitol in 
Harrisburg: ``All public service is a trust, given in faith and 
accepted in honor''--the way you accept your public duties is not only 
to disclose what you should disclose, to answer questions which you 
must answer, but to do it in a manner where you are doing it with a 
belief that you are a public servant and with the spirit of public 
service. If you are labored and if you are chafing under that or 
resisting, you should probably do something else with your life.
  I hope I am wrong about that. I hope once he is in office--and it 
appears that he may be confirmed--and if he is confirmed, we see a 
different approach to the duties of public service and the burdens of 
public service. I hope I am wrong about him, but my instincts tell me 
otherwise.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to 
President Trump's nominee to serve as Secretary of the Treasury, Steve 
Mnuchin.
  From his days at Goldman Sachs, on the frontlines of developing the 
very products that brought our economy to its knees, to his reign as 
chairman of OneWest Bank, quantified by tens of thousands of 
foreclosures and qualified by years of despair, to his plan to get rich 
off cash-strapped seniors, to his investments in Sears that stripped 
pension benefits from low-wage-earners, Mr. Mnuchin made a career out 
of exploiting the financial turmoil of hard-working American families, 
never once stopping to consider the impacts of his profiteering on the 
people of this country.
  At every step of the way, Mr. Mnuchin's mantra has been to privatize 
profits and socialize losses.
  While our President spent much of his campaign railing against 
Goldman Sachs and Wall Street's stranglehold on Washington, it should 
be lost on no one that Wall Street has the majority vote in this 
administration. With friends like Mr. Mnuchin and Gary Cohn in high 
places, the country's largest and most complex financial institutions 
can rest easy, knowing this administration is firmly committed to their 
bottom lines. As Treasury Secretary, Mr. Mnuchin will be a chief 
architect of the GOP's ``Wall Street First'' policy.
  Despite his self-described humble beginnings at Goldman Sachs in the 
1980s, Mr. Mnuchin was on the frontlines of developing the now-infamous 
collateralized debt obligations known as CDOs and credit default swaps.
  I urge my colleagues not to be fooled by Mr. Mnuchin. He was part of 
the cadre of corporate raiders that brought our economy to its knees.
  In its 2011 report on the great recession that wiped out nearly $13 
trillion in household wealth and cost nearly 9 million Americans their 
jobs, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations described 
Goldman Sachs' role in the crisis as follows:

       Goldman engaged in securitization practices that magnified 
     risk in the market by selling high risk, poor quality 
     mortgage products.

  It said:

       Conflicts of interest related to proprietary investments 
     led Goldman to conceal its adverse financial interests from 
     potential investors, sell investors poor quality investments, 
     and place its final interests before those of its clients. . 
     . .''

  Despite the damage they caused, Mr. Mnuchin never learned his lesson, 
and, as recently as 2012, he praised these instruments, calling them 
``an extremely positive development in terms of being able to finance 
different parts of the economy and different businesses efficiently.''
  Now, after he left Goldman Sachs, Mr. Mnuchin started a hedge fund, 
Dune Capital, which started investing in an exotic financial instrument 
called life settlements, which are made up of life insurance policies 
purchased from cash-strapped seniors. The investor, Mr. Mnuchin's hedge 
fund, had a plan to pay the premiums on the policies until the seniors 
died, at which point they would cash in on the insurance claims.
  So let's be clear. Under Mr. Mnuchin's plan, the sooner seniors died, 
the more money his hedge fund would make. While the markets for this 
product collapsed before Mr. Mnuchin could cash in, we have to ask 
ourselves if this is the type of leader whom we want at the helm of our 
economy? Do we really want a Treasury Secretary who had a plan to get 
rich off of dying seniors?
  That brings us to the end of 2008 and early 2009. Wall Street had 
brought our economy to the brink of collapse, and 13.2 million 
Americans were facing unemployment. Home values were plummeting, having 
fallen 12.5 percent in just one quarter. And where was Mr. Mnuchin? He 
was negotiating the deal of a lifetime. In the darkest days of the 
financial crisis, when Rome was burning, Mr. Mnuchin and his friends 
were looking for stores to raid.
  Boy, did they find a gem in IndyMac. He purchased IndyMac's $23.5 
billion of assets for a mere $1.55 billion in March of 2009. With the 
FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance entity backing, its too many loans went 
south. So he had a governmental guarantee for $23.5 billion of assets 
for about $1.5 billion, and he had the government's guarantee. All that 
Mr. Mnuchin had to do was to agree to help homeowners struggling with 
their mortgages, but Mr. Mnuchin didn't hold up his end of the bargain. 
He wanted more. Apparently, the profit margins of foreclosure were just 
too sweet to ignore.
  After buying IndyMac and renaming it OneWest Bank, Mr. Mnuchin was 
installed as chairman. But instead of working to achieve sustainable 
loan modifications and workouts for struggling borrowers, as Mr. 
Mnuchin had committed to doing, OneWest's business model centered on 
kicking borrowers out of their homes at the first sign of default.
  In April of 2011, the former Office of Thrift Supervision hit OneWest 
Bank with a consent order because the bank was actually putting 
homeowners on a fast track to foreclosure, robo-signing foreclosure 
documents.
  In a sworn deposition in 2009, a OneWest vice president admitted to 
robo-signing 750 foreclosure documents a week without ever reading or 
reviewing them. In 2014, an independent government review of OneWest's 
foreclosure activities in 2009 and 2010 alone identified more than 
10,000 homeowners, including dozens of active-duty servicemembers, who 
were owed $8.5 million in damages due to the bank's foreclosure 
practices.
  OneWest's practices were especially egregious when it came to seniors 
with reverse mortgage loans. During Mr. Mnuchin's tenure at the bank, 
OneWest's reverse mortgage subsidiary, Financial Freedom, had 
approximately 17 percent of the reverse mortgage shares but was 
responsible for nearly 40 percent of reverse mortgage foreclosures. In 
other words, Mr. Mnuchin cornered the market on focusing and 
foreclosing on seniors in America. Whether it was foreclosing on a 90-
year-old woman over a 27-cent--27-cent--missed payment or threatening 
to kick an 84-year-old widow out of her home of 54 years, Mr. Mnuchin 
was ruthless.
  What did Mr. Mnuchin have to say about all of this when we asked him 
during his confirmation hearing in the Senate Finance Committee? He 
dodged responsibility at every step. First he blamed IndyMac for the 
quality of mortgage loans; then he blamed government regulations, which 
he falsely claimed forced his bank to kick people out of their homes. 
If that wasn't enough, Mr. Mnuchin had the audacity to tell us that his 
bank did not robo-sign documents despite clear evidence to the 
contrary.
  To make matters worse, Mr. Mnuchin had the gall to call OneWest a 
loan modification machine. He repeatedly misled the committee that 
OneWest provided more than 100,000 loan modifications when, in fact, 
they modified less than one-quarter of that amount.

[[Page 2429]]

  On top of misleading the committee, Mr. Mnuchin has been unwilling to 
provide information on the number of borrowers who lost their homes 
during the time that he ran the bank. We believe that number is at 
least 60,000 families and seniors, but those numbers could even be 
higher.
  At the end of the day, this is about much more than numbers. It is 
about the seniors who are barely hanging on to their homes--their only 
source of wealth. It is about communities that were hit with a one-two 
punch of subprime loans in the years leading up to the crisis, only to 
face banks like OneWest with unrelenting foreclosure practices that 
stopped at nothing until they had kicked people out of their homes.
  It is about people like Sylvia Oliver of Scotch Plains, NJ. After her 
employer cut her hours in 2009, like so many other hardworking 
Americans at the time, she ran into difficulty paying her mortgage. 
Despite the fact that Ms. Oliver found a full-time job and applied 
eight--eight--times for loan modifications, Mr. Mnuchin's bank denied 
each and every one of her applications. Ms. Oliver has been fighting to 
save her home for 7 years. She is hanging on by a thread. Her own words 
speak volumes about Mr. Mnuchin. She said:

       It's been very painful and stressful not knowing if my kids 
     and my family are going to have a home to live in, or if it's 
     going to be foreclosed on. I would ask you to remember my 
     experience when you consider whether Mr. Mnuchin is qualified 
     to lead the Department of the Treasury. As the CEO and Chair 
     of OneWest Bank, Mr. Mnuchin had the opportunity to help 
     families like mine with responsible loan modifications, and 
     he didn't. I don't think this is a track record that anybody 
     should be proud of.

  Ms. Oliver is right. Mr. Mnuchin's record is not only undeserving of 
pride, it is shameful. While Mr. Mnuchin's business formula proved 
toxic for tens of thousands of hard-working American families and 
seniors, it was incredibly lucrative for Mr. Mnuchin and OneWest's 
investors. He sold OneWest for $3.4 billion, a profit of $1.85 billion 
over just 6 years, making around $200 million for himself. That is a 
pretty nice return on investment.
  While I am gravely concerned about Mr. Mnuchin's history of 
exploiting hard-working Americans to line his own pockets, I am equally 
concerned about his plan to unchain Wall Street. Mr. Mnuchin has made 
it his No. 1 priority to roll back Wall Street reform.
  As my friend Senator Brown has often said, our colleagues seem to 
have contracted a case of collective amnesia about the great recession. 
Just 8.5 years after the worst financial collapse in 80 years, which 
put taxpayers on the line for billions in bailouts, the President, 
Republicans in Congress, and Mr. Mnuchin are champing at the bit to 
take down the very protections that were put in place to prevent 
another catastrophe. I ask them, Have we learned nothing?
  We know what this administration wants. It wants what the industry 
wants. On the day the President signed his ``Wall Street First'' 
Executive order, Goldman Sachs' shares soared 4.6 percent, a $4 billion 
gain. At the end of the day, Mr. Mnuchin is nominated to serve in a 
position to ensure the financial stability of the American economy, but 
his only experience is betting on the financial instability of American 
families.
  Not only did he profit off the backs of struggling homeowners, he 
also stands to profit off of pensions he mismanaged while on the board 
of the Sears company. From the time Mr. Mnuchin joined the board of 
Sears, the company lost billions of dollars, including more than $8 
billion since 2011 alone. Rather than invest in growth and its workers, 
he decided to strip the company of its most valuable assets and keep 
them for themselves and their friends.
  While Sears seemed to lose in this transaction, there were some that 
certainly appeared to profit. Not surprisingly, Mr. Mnuchin and his 
hedge fund friends were those profiteers. As a shareholder lawsuit 
contended, they gobbled up the most valuable and profitable assets, and 
they saved golden parachutes for themselves to escape if the company 
crashed. This might sound complicated, but it is a move that would make 
Gordon Gecko from the movie ``Wall Street'' proud. Just replace 
Bluestar Airlines with Sears, and fiction becomes reality. In the world 
of both men, greed is good.
  But this isn't a movie. It is the real world with real-life 
consequences for 200,000 people who work at Sears. Stripping Sears of 
$12 billion worth of its most valuable assets contributed to the 
devaluation of the company, which further jeopardized the pensions of 
more than 200,000 Americans. According to the most recent filing, this 
pension fund is now underfunded by an alarming $2 billion after they 
stripped $12 billion of its most valuable assets. These retirees, who 
rely on pensions to live, who worked hard all of their lives and played 
by the rules, have already had their benefits cut by Mr. Mnuchin and 
the Sears finance board. In fact, the pension situation has become so 
dire that the government, through the Pension Benefit Guaranty 
Corporation, or the PBGC, felt compelled to step in to protect the 
pension benefits for these 200 people.
  As if his past mismanagement of pensions isn't bad enough, as 
Treasury Secretary, Mr. Mnuchin would oversee the decision whether to 
bail out the pension. Mr. Mnuchin would have to decide whether to 
protect his personal hedge fund investments in Sears, which he refuses 
to divest, or to protect the Federal Government and those 200,000 
retirees.
  To be fair, when I asked Mr. Mnuchin about his inherent conflict of 
interest during his confirmation hearing, he pledged to recuse himself 
from any decision by the PBGC regarding Sears. But we have heard that 
song before. Mr. Mnuchin can't avoid a conflict of interest by recusing 
himself any more than President Trump can avoid a conflict by 
supposedly letting his children run his businesses. The only true 
firewall against a potential conflict of interest is through a full 
divestiture, which Mr. Mnuchin refuses to do. As a private citizen and 
executive at Sears, Mr. Mnuchin showed a total disregard for the earned 
pension benefits of hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans. I 
have no reason to think he will have a change of heart as Treasury 
Secretary.
  Not only does Mr. Mnuchin want to let banks write their own rules and 
let executives profit when they cut pensions, but he also wants to cut 
taxes on the rich so he and his friends can keep more of their ill-
gotten gains. After helping raise millions of dollars from Wall Street 
and big corporations for President Trump's campaign, they are now 
expecting a big return on their investment--and, boy, do they win big 
league under the Mnuchin-Trump tax plan. This ill-conceived proposal 
would give large corporations, which are already earning record 
profits, an additional $2.5 trillion. That is $2.5 trillion taken away 
from transportation, from schools, from the middle class, and given 
directly to multinational corporations. It would eliminate the estate 
tax and gift taxes, giving a nearly $200 billion windfall to the 
wealthiest 5,000 family dynasties in the country--$200 billion to the 
wealthiest 5,000 family dynasties in the country--and 99.99 percent of 
all Americans will not see a penny from this giveaway. But we know who 
would benefit: Mr. Mnuchin and President Trump.
  It doesn't stop there. On top of all of this, the Mnuchin-Trump 
proposal would also give the top one-tenth of 1 percent--the wealthiest 
of the wealthy, the corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers who make 
around $4 million per year or more--$1 million back each and every 
year. This group of elite earners already take home a whopping 184 
times the average pay and has the same combined net worth as nearly 90 
percent of all American workers. These 160,000 of the richest families 
in the country have as much wealth as 144 million families in America.
  I have nothing against wealthy people. I have nothing against 
millionaires and billionaires. Many worked hard for their money, and 
they played by the rules. I applaud their success. But I don't think 
the wealthy, who are doing just fine right now, need an extra million 
dollars or more than the middle class. I don't think we should be 
borrowing trillions more from China just

[[Page 2430]]

to give the top one-tenth of 1 percent another million dollars. This is 
fundamentally backward.
  They say we can't afford to invest in infrastructure, we can't afford 
to help our graduates with mounting college debt, we can't afford to 
give a whole host of resources to things we think are critical to 
compel our Nation to be the continuing global economic leader, but we 
can afford to give $1 million away to all the millionaires and 
billionaires in the country. This warped order of priorities is a 
perfect metaphor for Mr. Mnuchin's school of economics: Give the rich 
more and more because they know best.
  Unfortunately, this theory of trickle-down economics hasn't worked in 
the past and will not work now. The American people are sick and tired 
of getting fleeced. They are tired of working hard every day and 
playing by the rules only to fall further behind. They are tired of 
losing in a rigged system.
  But a Treasury Department led by Mr. Mnuchin will only deliver more 
of the same: more tax breaks for the wealthiest in the country, more 
borrowing from China, more income inequality. These are not the 
principles Americans want or need.
  In conclusion, you can tell a lot about a person based on how they 
handle a crisis. When Wall Street crashed and the country plunged into 
recession, where was Mr. Mnuchin? Was he warning regulators that they 
were asleep at the wheel and hard-working Americans were being 
exploited? Was he working to reform the broken system? No. He was 
looking for stores to raid with one goal in mind: profits.
  Some would like to either ignore or whitewash this past, but if we 
don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. The American 
people cannot afford a repeat of that past. We cannot afford a return 
to the Wild West of Wall Street--when the middle class was held hostage 
to the earnings reports of the biggest banks, when the cure for income 
inequality was simply more tax cuts for the wealthy.
  We need a Treasury Secretary who will stand up to Wall Street, not 
take orders from them. We need a Treasury Secretary who understands 
that the strength of our country has come and will always come from the 
middle class, not from the CEOs and the hedge funds. Unfortunately, 
Mnuchin is not that person.
  I urge may colleagues to oppose his nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). The Senator from Nevada.
  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Mr. President, I rise today, along with many of my 
colleagues, to speak out against the White House nominating Steven 
Mnuchin to be the next Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. President Trump 
has nominated the former CEO of OneWest Bank--who before that for 17 
years was a Goldman Sachs executive--to run the Federal agency tasked 
with crafting and implementing U.S. economic policy. So much for 
draining the swamp.
  I want to start, however, by sharing the story of a good friend, Lola 
Orvik, whom I met when I was attorney general of Nevada.
  In 2013, Lola's mortgage on her townhouse in Henderson was 
underwater. Like thousands of other Nevadans, she needed to refinance, 
but five different loan modification applications had all been rejected 
by her bank. Lola was desperate for a solution and on the verge of 
losing her home. She received a telephone call offering help that was 
too good to be true, and it was. After calling my office, she 
thankfully discovered that it was a scam. I am so glad she called my 
office. Our staff referred her to a new program we had created, the 
Home Again Homeowner Relief Program. It is a one-stop shop to help 
struggling homeowners. It helped Lola finally get a loan modification, 
reduce her principal by $37,000, slash her interest rate from 5.7 
percent to 2 percent, and keep the house she had lived in for nearly 20 
years.
  The Home Again Program helped thousands of Nevada homeowners 
understand all the State and Federal housing resources available to 
them. It has helped folks like Lola restructure their loans to ensure 
more affordable monthly payments. That simple hotline number has gone a 
long way.
  Because we were there to help her, Lola got her life back. However, 
not everyone was as fortunate as Lola. In fact, some families are still 
trying to overcome the continuing destructive impact of the foreclosure 
crisis in Nevada and across this country.
  In the depths of the great recession, Lola's predicament was not 
unique. Nevada was ground zero for the housing crisis. Property values 
plummeted. ``For sale'' signs lined the streets. Foreclosure notices 
hung on doors throughout the State. Thousands of families lived in 
constant fear of losing their homes.
  In 2008, Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in the Nation, with 
more than 77,000 homes getting a notice at the door saying they were at 
risk for eviction. We led the Nation in the terms of foreclosure rate 
for 62 straight months during the recession.
  Things got so bad that by 2010, nearly 70 percent of Nevada 
homeowners were underwater on their homes, meaning that they owed more 
on their mortgages than the current value of their property.
  As Nevada's attorney general, I fought the big banks, Wall Street 
institutions, and default servicing companies to secure more than $1.9 
billion to help hard-working families get back on their feet. That 
money helped to fund the Home Again Program.
  More than just getting that money back, this was about changing the 
conduct and predatory practices of the big banks when working with 
homeowners. For instance, we made dual tracking an illegal practice so 
that banks could no longer foreclosure on a home while simultaneously 
considering their request for a loan modification and then charging 
them fees every step of the way. We demanded that a homeowner have a 
single point of contact within the financial institution so the 
homeowner would no longer get shuffled around from person to person and 
told to resubmit their loan modification application over and over 
again. We demanded that the banks demonstrate that they had personal 
knowledge of the foreclosure documents they filed to prevent robo-
signing and unlawful foreclosures of a home.
  Unfortunately, not every bank was willing to do everything possible 
to help the millions of Nevadans and Americans who were suffering. Mr. 
Mnuchin's OneWest Bank--formally known as IndyMac--was one such bank. 
Instead of trying to help homeowners, OneWest enforced predatory and 
unforgiving practices that only served to line the pockets of Mr. 
Mnuchin and his co-owners.
  Steven Mnuchin purchased IndyMac from the Federal Government after it 
collapsed and took control of the thousands of mortgages the bank 
managed. Mnuchin rebranded the bank as OneWest and went to work using 
questionable foreclosure practices, like dual tracking, so he could 
make more money. That is not right.
  Instead of working to help these homeowners stay in their homes, 
OneWest Bank, under Mnuchin's leadership, became a foreclosure machine. 
The bank had one of the highest denial rates for applications to the 
Home Affordable Modification Program. A judge in Wisconsin cited 
OneWest's ``harsh, repugnant, shocking, and repulsive'' practices when 
deciding a suit against them. Recent documents show that the company 
used robo-signing to deny modification claims, proving that it did not 
fairly consider loan modification applications for tens of thousands of 
homeowners.
  When confronted with these facts at his Senate confirmation hearing, 
Mr. Mnuchin lied. He denied that OneWest used robo-signing, offered 
empty excuses, and shifted blame for his company's heinous practices. 
And during his confirmation hearing, Mr. Mnuchin repeatedly refused to 
say how many homes OneWest foreclosed on in Nevada.
  However, according to new data, during the foreclosure crisis and its 
immediate aftermath, OneWest made $3 billion in profit while evicting 
3,654 Nevada families from their homes. This includes 181 foreclosures 
on seniors who had taken out reverse mortgages.

[[Page 2431]]

When he eventually left the bank, Mr. Mnuchin received a $10.9 million 
payout. This is on top of the annual compensation of $4.5 million he 
has received since 2015, when OneWest was bought by other investors. 
Let me repeat that. Some 3,654 Nevada families lost their homes because 
Mr. Mnuchin's OneWest put profits over people. That is a snapshot and a 
statistic which does not do justice to how much pain that caused for 
those families.
  I want to spend some time on these accusations of robo-signing, both 
because Mr. Mnuchin clearly lied and also because this was an issue I 
took on when I was attorney general during and after the crash.
  First, let's be clear what this is. Robo-signing is a procedure used 
by mortgage companies to sign foreclosure documents without reviewing 
them. This is a reckless practice used by banks to cut corners and 
forge documents, to rush things along, and it caused thousands of 
families to be wrongfully evicted from their homes.
  Like OneWest, the banks were involved in a massive robo-signing 
scheme in my home State of Nevada, and I went after them aggressively 
as the State's attorney general. Nevada led the Nation in foreclosures 
every month for more than 4 years.
  Mr. Mnuchin's company did not care that middle-class families were 
losing their homes during the crisis. In fact, during his confirmation 
hearing before the Senate, he admitted:

       I never wanted to be in the mortgage servicing business. I 
     didn't want to be in the reverse mortgage business, I wanted 
     to build a regional bank.

  In other words, Mr. Mnuchin had to convince his investors that they 
would make money--a point that Mr. Mnuchin admitted at the hearing, 
saying: ``Yes, my investors made a lot of money on OneWest.''
  Not only did his investors make a lot of money, Mr. Mnuchin did so as 
well. Since leaving the bank, he has pocketed nearly $20 million. Mr. 
Mnuchin was making millions, while thousands of Nevadans were losing 
their homes and their dignity, Nevadans like Heather McCreary of 
Sparks, who came to Capitol Hill last month to share her heart-
wrenching story of how she applied to OneWest for a loan modification 
in 2010 after she and her husband lost their jobs as a result of the 
financial crisis. Despite three applications and following all 
instructions, the bank kept Heather's family dangling and then suddenly 
foreclosed on their home. I want to read some of Heather's testimony. 
It is moving and heartbreaking and deserves to be heard by every Member 
of this body.
  Here is what she told us at the hearing:

       In 2008, when the economy started to get worse, I was laid 
     off. The following year, in 2009, my husband Jack was laid 
     off too. Though Jack was able to find another job pretty 
     fast, he had to take a big pay cut--from about $25 an hour to 
     $8.50 an hour. Between the cut in Jack's pay and the loss in 
     income I experienced when going on unemployment insurance 
     benefits after I got laid off, we were pinched and we were 
     drowning financially.
       However, we were determined to keep our dream home, so Jack 
     and I were tenacious about doing whatever we could to get 
     help. We sought help from the Hope Now Alliance, which is an 
     alliance of HUD-approved counselors who provide free 
     foreclosure help, and from the Washoe County Senior Law 
     Project.
       We worked side-by-side with both organizations to do 
     everything required of us by our mortgage servicer IndyMac, 
     which later became OneWest. When we first asked for help, 
     OneWest gave us a short forbearance and allowed us to make a 
     smaller payment for several months with the goal of a 
     reduction in our monthly mortgage payments through the Home 
     Affordable Modification Program (or HAMP).
       By applying for the HAMP program, we thought we were back 
     on the road to keeping our home. We complied 100 percent with 
     OneWest requirements for HAMP--we were incredibly nervous 
     about being able to keep our house, so we were extremely 
     careful to make sure we did everything we could to keep the 
     process going forward. Our application for HAMP was processed 
     and we were approved for our modification. I sent in the 
     signed paperwork and the first payment under the modified 
     payment amount along with it.
       But then the process started to fall apart. After a whole 
     30 days, OneWest returned our personal check and told us that 
     only certified checks would be accepted, so they were now 
     voiding the modification offer. We had followed the 
     instructions to the letter on OneWest paperwork, crossing our 
     ``T''s and dotting our ``I''s. But in the end, this didn't 
     matter--and OneWest's rejection of our HAMP application put 
     us on the road to foreclosure.
       We applied two more times for loan modifications over the 
     next six months because we were given assurances by people at 
     OneWest that they would approve our application. We again 
     complied with every request OneWest made of us, taking care 
     to send in extra documents whenever OneWest requested them.
       But as far as I can tell, OneWest never attempted to 
     process the loan modification. The foreclosure went through 
     and we lost our home on September 10, 2010. The foreclosure 
     left us without a home; and finding a new rental was 
     extremely difficult because of our credit. Juggling the 
     demands of raising our twins was so hard--the foreclosure 
     even meant that our kids had to miss school. Eventually we 
     did find a new place, but we had to pay an outrageous rent, 
     even though it was not a good home for us at all.
       It's hard to explain the shame, embarrassment, and grief 
     that Jack and I felt. I've cried a river of tears over this. 
     I really didn't think we were asking too much: We wanted to 
     hang on to our home for the sake of our kids, and we did 
     everything we could to stay in our home. And while I will 
     probably never know exactly what OneWest did, the outcome of 
     my story proves that Steve Mnuchin's company had no interest 
     in helping us. They wanted to foreclose because they were 
     focused on their profits.

  Heather's story is just one of thousands that highlight just how 
wrong Mr. Mnuchin is to be our next Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. The 
Treasury Department has the vital mission of promoting the conditions 
that enable economic growth, stability, job opportunities, and the 
ability to buy a car or own a home. Their actions directly affect the 
lives of every American.
  Our next Treasury Secretary should have a proven record of fighting 
to expand economic opportunities for everyone. That is what Americans 
deserve. Yet, from where I stand, Mr. Mnuchin falls far short of that 
test.
  President Trump's choice of Mr. Mnuchin to lead the U.S. Treasury is 
a slap in the face for Nevada families like Heather's. Her story makes 
it crystal clear: This is not someone who will be looking out for 
working people when he implements our Nation's economic policy.
  In many ways, President Trump's unfortunate choice of someone like 
Mr. Mnuchin should not surprise us because in 2006 the President said 
he ``sort of hoped'' the real estate market would tank, and in 2007 he 
said he was ``excited'' for the housing market crash. The motive was 
the same: profits.
  We cannot afford to return to the misguided policies that brought us 
to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Families 
cannot afford to lose their homes again. But that is exactly what we 
can expect if Stephen Mnuchin is confirmed as President Trump's 
Treasury Secretary.
  When I ran for the Senate, I promised Nevadans that I would fight for 
them, that I would stand up for them and be their voice here in 
Washington. Today, I am that voice, and that is why I rise with my 
colleagues in opposition to the ``Foreclosure King,'' Mr. Mnuchin.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise today to join a chorus of my 
colleagues in speaking out against the nomination of Steven Mnuchin to 
serve as Secretary of the Department of the Treasury.
  What I believe is, if you look at Mr. Mnuchin's record, he has spent 
a lot of time benefiting from--in fact, even exploiting--families who 
are struggling homeowners in my State.
  I would like to read into the Record a report by NPR from November of 
last year which makes his pattern stunningly clear.

       During the depths of the financial crisis, Mnuchin was 
     looking to make profits from

[[Page 2432]]

     the ruins of the housing bust. In 2009, he put together a 
     group of billionaire investors and bought a failed 
     California-based bank called IndyMac. It had been taken over 
     by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after its 
     sketchy mortgage loans went seriously bad.
       Mnuchin and his partners bought IndyMac on the condition 
     that the FDIC agree to pay future losses above a certain 
     threshold. They renamed the bank OneWest Bank, and after 
     running it for 6 years, they sold it last year for a profit, 
     estimated at close to $1.5 billion.
       Kevin Stein of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a 
     housing advocacy group, says that profit was made on the 
     backs of suffering Californian homeowners.

  This is not in the text here, but homeowners who were suffering from 
a massive mortgage collapse that was created in many ways or stimulated 
by the greed and avarice of bad actors. I witnessed this myself in 
Newark, NJ, watching people feed upon a subprime mortgage environment 
where they were pushing bad loans on unsuspecting borrowers.
  Back to the text:

       In essence what they did is they bought a foreclosure 
     machine.
       According to the coalition, OneWest foreclosed on more than 
     36,000 homeowners under Mnuchin. During that time, the FDIC 
     made payments to OneWest totaling more than $1 billion. Those 
     payments went to the billionaire investors of OneWest Bank, 
     says Stein, to cover the cost of foreclosing on working-class 
     everyday American folks, many of whom lived in California.

  So this was what we saw at the height of the financial crisis. Mr. 
Mnuchin, already very wealthy, already very successful, did not see 
Americans struggling, did not join efforts to try to empower, support, 
or deal with this crisis. What he saw was an opportunity to take over a 
financial institution and continue, if not accelerate, the foreclosures 
that were going on.
  It has become painfully clear that in what Mr. Mnuchin oversaw in the 
operations of this bank that, as its business model, he set out to 
explicitly mislead and manipulate homeowners into foreclosure.
  This one article that I read has been repeated by organizations and 
by news outlets all over the spectrum, talking about how Mr. Mnuchin, 
in this environment, worked very hard to accelerate foreclosures and 
take advantage of this and make a profit. From elderly widows, the 
stories continue, to families, to small business owners, to Active-Duty 
servicemembers, there were many, many victims of Mr. Mnuchin's bank's 
predatory tactics, taking advantage of folks in a crisis, as opposed to 
trying to figure out a way to support folks through it.
  I would like to read one more from the Minneapolis StarTribune, an 
article that documented one instance of the disturbingly prevalent 
practices of Mr. Mnuchin's company.
  The headline reads: ``Negotiating on foreclosure, then locked out in 
a blizzard.''

       A Minneapolis woman who was negotiating with a lender to 
     find a way to stay in her foreclosed house--

  Stepping back from the text, this is someone who is working hard to 
do the right thing in negotiations.
  Back to the text:

       They arrived home from work during Tuesday night's blizzard 
     to find that the locks had been changed. After spending the 
     night at her mother's, Leslie Parks went Wednesday to 
     Hennepin County Housing Court, where a referee ordered that 
     she be allowed back into her mother's former duplex at 3749 
     Park Avenue while negotiations continued. Locksmiths on 
     Wednesday reconfigured the locks that had been changed 
     Tuesday by a contractor for OneWest Bank.

  These are the kind of tactics that were being used, the kind of 
hardball tactics that were being used by Mr. Mnuchin's company that 
really undermined a lot of hard-working Americans from a variety of 
backgrounds in many, many different States.
  His record is clear. Mr. Mnuchin not only advocated in support of 
this company and its tactics, but even now he talks about trying to 
roll back the kind of protections that have been put in place to try to 
protect average Americans. Many of them are in the Dodd-Frank 
legislation that helped to protect against the creation of an 
environment in which such predatory practices can take place.
  This position that Mr. Mnuchin has been nominated for, which is the 
Secretary of Treasury, has a critical role within our economy. But one 
of those roles has to be the idea that average Americans will be 
protected from the kind of financial victimization that was going on 
during the recession--actually, which lead into the recession.
  We see that we can prevent Wall Street from burdening Main Street 
with the costs while they reap the rewards. This is the broken system 
that we saw in the past that needs fixing and needs healing. We don't 
need one of the architects of the system that caused so much pain to be 
in one of the most important positions in our land.
  The head of this vital agency must be someone who understands their 
responsibility to look out for the struggling American trying to make 
it by playing by the rules and someone who is qualified and willing to 
direct the Department to fiercely protect the economic security of our 
Nation, the economic well-being of the American people, and the 
integrity of our financial system.
  I don't believe Mr. Mnuchin is that person. He has made it clear in 
his decades-long career that he is willing for a profit to work hard to 
exploit hard-working families and shortchange homeowners for that 
personal gain. This is unacceptable. Mr. Mnuchin has built a career and 
has reaped literally millions of dollars of success by pushing people, 
by exploiting people, and by hurting people.
  The American people cannot afford to suffer through another financial 
crisis. We can't afford to have a master Wall Street manipulator put in 
the position that we should be relying on to protect us from that kind 
of financial manipulation.
  This is a difficult economy where people in our country are still 
struggling under challenging financial times. I believe that we can 
make a nation where people can do good and do well at the same time, 
where we should not elevate or celebrate people who really fed off of 
the misery and the challenges of others, but, instead, that we can have 
a nation where we put people, regardless of their political background, 
in positions like the Department of Treasury to celebrate the best of 
who we are, the best of our values--people who are public servants, 
people who have shown a commitment to not only serve but even sacrifice 
for one another.
  What we saw amidst this crisis--amidst a crisis that, in many ways, 
was aggravated and caused by greed and avarice in the mortgage industry 
and the banking industry, among rating agencies--was that many people 
showed who they were in a time of American struggle and American 
crisis. We saw with clarity where people's priorities were. Was it 
exploiting people? Was it manipulating systems for their own avarice 
and their own benefit, or was it for being there for our country, 
trying to make things better, trying to give people bridges that could 
carry them from financial struggle and strain to stability, or people 
that were trying to crumble those bridges and have people free fall in 
financial distress.
  This is, unfortunately, what we see here today. We have President 
Trump trying to elevate someone who has not shown a record of someone 
who wanted to help but instead has shown a record of someone who wants 
to hurt. That to me is unacceptable, especially at this time where so 
many American families are still struggling to get back on their feet 
to find financial security and find the pathway to their American 
dream.
  It is for this reason and more that I cannot support this nomination.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, there are communities across this country 
that are still waiting for the recovery from the great recession to 
show up. In many of those towns and cities, the storefronts are boarded 
up, the factories are shuttered, and, in what could be the most lasting 
scar of the crisis, homes--many homes--have been foreclosed. A lot of 
people in those communities cast their votes in November

[[Page 2433]]

based on a Trump message that real change was coming.
  Heads are going to be spinning tonight with the news from the Senate. 
In just a few minutes, this body will vote to confirm as Treasury 
Secretary Steven Mnuchin, known by many as the ``foreclosure king.'' 
That is whom the President chose as his Treasury Secretary. Mr. Mnuchin 
turned the bank he bought into a cash cow, and they set a land speed 
record for foreclosures.
  I have supported nominees for this position from both parties. I 
voted for Paul O'Neill. I voted for John Snow, and Hank Paulson, who 
served under President George W. Bush. I don't expect to see eye to eye 
on each issue with every Treasury Secretary. I do expect to have 
confidence that the Treasury Secretary is going to work on behalf of 
all Americans--all Americans--and not just the well healed, not just 
the fortunate, not just the powerful.
  After considering Mr. Mnuchin's qualifications and background, I just 
don't believe he would be that kind of Treasury Secretary. In Mr. 
Mnuchin's response to questions from members of the Finance Committee, 
he denied that his bank, OneWest, engaged in a practice known as robo-
signing. The public record says that is just dead wrong. In fact, a 
OneWest vice president who worked under Mr. Mnuchin, Erica Johnson-
Seck, admitted under oath that she ran an office that churned out 
roughly 6,000 sets of foreclosure documents a week.
  She said she personally signed more than 750 disclosure documents a 
week without even reading them, and there was no notary present during 
the process. That is a violation of the law. When asked how much time 
she spent executing each foreclosure document, Ms. Johnson-Seck 
replied:

       I changed my signature considerably. It's just an E now. So 
     not more than 30 seconds.

  Now, on the eve of the Finance Committee mark-up for Mr. Mnuchin, the 
Columbus Dispatch in Ohio reported documented examples of robo-signing 
in Ohio. Now, on the eve of Mr. Mnuchin's confirmation vote in the 
Senate, another such story has broken. This time it is in the State of 
Washington, more evidence of robo-signing that directly contradicts 
what Mr. Mnuchin told the Finance Committee and the public.
  Mr. Mnuchin also withheld foreclosure data requested by two 
Democratic members of the Finance Committee, Senators Brown and Casey. 
He did, apparently, give similar information to Senator Heller, one of 
the committee's Republican members. That is on top of $100 million 
worth of property and more than a dozen positions with various business 
entities missing from his disclosures to the Finance Committee.
  My own view is, if not for the committee's minority investigations 
team, I don't believe any of that information, none of it--$100 
million, the other disclosures--would have ever come to light.
  I am going to turn from missing disclosures and misleading testimony 
to a broken promise. The day after news of Mr. Mnuchin's nomination was 
leaked, he appeared on television and, in effect, debuted a new tax 
policy. I have come to call it the Mnuchin rule, and I will quote Mr. 
Mnuchin directly with respect to what he said.
  Mr. Mnuchin said: ``Any reductions we have in upper income taxes 
would be offset by less deductions, so there would be no absolute tax 
cut for the upper class.''
  I will repeat the last part of the Mnuchin rule: ``no absolute tax 
cut for the upper class.''
  When I first called this the Mnuchin rule during the Finance 
Committee's hearing on his nomination, Mr. Mnuchin said he took it as a 
great compliment, comparing it to the Volcker rule and the Buffett 
rule. Well, you would think a fellow who proudly embraced having a rule 
named after himself would actually stick to it.
  The Mnuchin rule didn't last for very long before it was abandoned. 
The very first act of the 115th Congress in a unified Republican 
government, repealing the Affordable Care Act, would shatter the 
Mnuchin rule. Then it is set to take another hit later this year. That 
is with the majority working on plans to fast-track a second, even 
bigger tax break for those who are the most fortunate. The Trump plan, 
in fact, would hit millions of middle-income families with tax 
increases by wiping out key personal exemptions and eliminating head of 
household filing status.
  So I want to be really clear what this means to people in Oklahoma 
and Oregon and all across the country, working families: Working 
families would get hurt by the Trump plan. They would lose key personal 
exemptions. They would eliminate the head of household filing status 
while those who were more fortunate would be in a position to get tax 
breaks, additional tax breaks beyond what they already have in the Tax 
Code.
  The fact is, the Tax Code today is a tale of two systems. For the 
firefighter in Coos Bay, OR, or the retail worker in Roseburg, your 
taxes come straight out of each and every paycheck. That is the way it 
works in Oklahoma, the way it works all across the country. The Tax 
Code for working people is compulsory. Once or twice a month, your 
taxes come directly out of your paycheck--no special dodges, no special 
loopholes. Nobody is able to hide their pay in a Cayman Islands account 
if they are a firefighter or a retail worker.
  But there is a very different Tax Code in America for the well-
connected and the powerful. They have a whole array of lawyers and 
accountants who specialize in helping them shrink their tax bills. And 
with the right advice, the fact is, those people can, to a great 
extent, decide what they are going to pay, when they are going to pay 
it, and sometimes be in a position to not pay much, if anything at all.
  The fact is, the tax system today punishes working Americans because 
it treats them very differently than it treats the most fortunate. And 
the administration and the majority in Congress don't seem to be doing 
much in terms of fixing this disparity.
  The Mnuchin rule just hasn't held up. It is beyond being on the 
ropes. It is not going anywhere at all. In fact, the early proposals 
only make this extraordinary unfairness, the unfairness at the heart of 
America's Tax Code, even worse.
  So what we have is another Trump nominee who, in my view, doesn't 
meet the test of standing up for working families in those communities 
all across the country who are waiting for economic recovery to show up 
in their neighborhood. They are the ones who have seen the factory 
close and seen the foreclosures and seen their neighbors laid off. And 
they would like to see people in these positions advocate for them, 
advocate for them because they need somebody who is going to stand up 
for them, and they were told in the campaign that is what they were 
going to get.
  The fact is, Mr. Mnuchin is yet another Trump nominee who, instead of 
standing up for those working families, has a different set of 
priorities and, in addition to that, has the ethics alarm bells 
sounding.
  He appears to be withholding information requested by Members of this 
body. My view is, he misled the Finance Committee and the public about 
his bank's foreclosure tactics. The Mnuchin rule--the first promise he 
made, the very first promise he made on policy, which he was proud to 
have described as a rule named after him, already has been broken.
  So I am not going to be supporting Mr. Mnuchin to lead the Treasury 
Department. I urge my colleagues as well to reject this appointment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all postcloture time 
has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Mnuchin 
nomination?
  Mr. HATCH. 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 legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 47, as follows:

[[Page 2434]]



                       [Rollcall Vote No. 63 Ex.]

                                YEAS--53

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Shelby
     Strange
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--47

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden
  The nomination was confirmed.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote on the 
nomination, and I move to table the motion to reconsider.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The question is on agreeing to 
the motion to table.
  The motion was agreed to.

                          ____________________