[Pages S2793-S2796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, 
    UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE OFFICE OF THE 
COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY RELATING 
        TO THE REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS UNDER THE BANK MERGER ACT

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                     Nomination of Michelle Bowman

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, this week, the Senate Banking Committee--
the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs--advanced 
the nomination of Michelle ``Miki'' Bowman to be the Vice Chair for 
Supervision at the Federal Reserve. Miki Bowman is my constituent. She 
is a Kansan, a native of Morris County. Miki has deep roots in rural 
America.
  After graduating from the University of Kansas, followed by Washburn 
University's Law School, she came to Washington, DC, working across 
Capitol Hill and the executive branch. Like many good Kansans, Miki 
eventually found her way back home, and she became the vice president 
at Farmers and Drovers Bank, a community bank in Council Grove, KS. 
That occurred in 2010. In 2017, Miki became the Kansas State bank 
commissioner, where she was responsible for overseeing hundreds of 
State-chartered banks, trust companies, money transmitters, and other 
nondepository entities.
  When President Trump chose Miki to serve as the community bank 
representative on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, it was clear 
she was a great choice, the right choice to give small lenders and 
rural communities a voice at the Fed. Not only did Miki exceed the 
qualifications for the position set by law, but her time living and 
working in rural Kansas helped guide her decision making.
  With immense experience working in and supervising community banks, I 
am confident Miki will continue to be a champion for those community 
banks but really, more importantly, for those those community banks 
serve, the people of States like mine and the Presiding Officer's. She 
will serve those people and those communities well.
  The Vice Chair for Supervision plays the critical role of overseeing 
the regulatory environment and the supervision of many of our Nation's 
financial institutions, large and small. This Vice Chair position will 
be responsible for both rightsizing regulations for smaller lenders and 
finalizing the Basel III Endgame.
  Not only do I trust Miki's professional experience, but I have come 
to know her as an independent, forthright, intelligent, quality 
individual with a demonstrated record of service to her State and 
Nation. Miki will make an excellent Federal Reserve Vice Chair for 
Supervision. I look forward to voting to confirm her nomination here in 
the full Senate, and I urge my colleagues to support her confirmation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Louisiana.


                              S.J. Res. 13

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I have said before--and I want to make 
this really clear--I don't hate anyone. I don't. I look for grace 
wherever I can find it, and when I say my prayers, one of the things I 
ask my Maker for is, ``Please, God, don't let me hate,'' because 
sometimes it is hard here in Washington.
  You know, there have been many a morning when I have gotten up in my 
overpriced Capitol Hill apartment, and I am walking over here to the 
Capitol, and I give myself a pep talk. I talk to myself. I say: 
Kennedy, today you are going to follow Jesus.
  And by 10 o'clock, I still want to follow Jesus, but I also want to 
slap the hell out of somebody.
  So it is important that we remind ourselves: Don't hate.
  And I don't hate anyone. And that includes President Biden. But 
President Biden and his people had the remarkable ability to take 
something that wasn't broken and try to fix it. They would take 
something that wasn't broken in government and take it apart, loosen a 
few screws, and then it would be broken.
  In a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to vote to try to 
repair some damage that President Biden's folks did in that regard. It 
has to do with banks.
  As you know, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency--I will 
call it the OCC, so you will know what I am talking about. The OCC 
regulates our banks, and that includes big banks but also small banks. 
We have got more small banks in America than we have big banks.
  In fact, our smaller banks throughout this wonderful country make 
most of the loans to ordinary people. At a lot of the big banks, now, 
if you are just an average small businesswoman or businessman and you 
need a loan, you go to the larger banks, and they won't even see you. 
You have to go to a small bank to get that loan.
  Small banks merge all the time. You have probably seen it in your 
local communities. Why do small banks merge a lot? Well, one of the 
reasons is they can provide better services to their customers.
  Another reason that small banks tend to merge a lot is because maybe 
they want to move into a new geographical area, and they can't do it

[[Page S2794]]

alone. So they will merge with another bank in that area.
  A third reason that small banks merge a lot is because they think, 
when they discuss their merger, that together they will be stronger and 
more profitable, and therefore, can make more loans.
  But another reason is to try to comply with Federal regulations. I 
mean, our Federal regulations with respect to a bank will take your 
breath away. There are a bunch of them, and it costs so much to comply 
with rules and regulations by the Federal Government.
  Our rules and regulations now cost the American businessperson about 
$2 trillion a year. And I am not saying all of those are banking 
regulations or not, but the cost of those regulations gets passed on to 
consumers, and that is why, in part, products and services have 
increased in price.
  But there are so many Federal rules and regulations that a small bank 
will often say: You know, I can't comply with all of this loan. I have 
got to get help. And we have got to spread the costs.
  So that bank will merge with another bank and have more people in it, 
and it will be cheaper through economies of scale, which I know, Mr. 
President, you understand because you are a very successful 
businessperson. But they can spread the cost through economies of 
scale.
  So small banks merge all the time. Now we recognize that. The Office 
of the Comptroller of the Currency, OCC, back in 1995, saw this coming. 
And the OCC, at that time, said: We want to devise a way for small 
banks to be able to merge fairly easily, but, at the same time, we at 
the OCC want to be able to make sure that what they are doing in this 
merger is not a risk to the consumer.

  So the OCC, in 1995, issued what is called the Bank Merger Guidelines 
of 1995. Their rule for the merger of small banks was pretty simple. 
The OCC devised this short questionnaire where, if you were two small 
banks and you wanted to merge, you had to answer yes or no to 14 
separate questions--very simple, very straightforward. To 14 questions, 
you answered yes or no.
  And then the OCC--the folks at OCC--could look at your answers and 
see if they thought there was any risk to consumers. And the OCC also 
adopted a rule that said: Look, if we don't give you an answer within 
15 days, because we are busy--the OCC said--your merger is 
automatically approved.
  Short, sweet, very effective. We haven't had problems with our small 
banks, and none of these mergers--hundreds have taken place since 1995, 
which have actually made the financial system in America stronger and 
created virtually no risk.
  Well, President Biden's people at the OCC decided that it wasn't 
broken; so they were going to fix it. Again, I don't hate anybody, but 
you have got to call it like you see it.
  I think the folks at President Biden's OCC got up one day and thought 
there was an award for being stupid. They took this very simple and 
effective rule and procedure, and they turned it on its head. What they 
did was tier-one-level moronic.
  Here is what they did. They threw out the old rule. They said: We are 
going to have a new rule, and the new rule is instead of these--this 
was in 2013--instead of these 14 simple yes-or-no questions, we are 
going to make all of these small banks submit so much paperwork to us 
that you could stack that paperwork right here and stand on it and 
practically paint the ceiling.
  They threw out the 14 simple yes-or-no questions. They said that now 
these small banks--these are small banks, now, community banks--have to 
submit reams and reams of evidence: We, at the OCC, will start making a 
decision based on 19 criteria. The banks will have to prove that they 
complied with 13 of what the OCC call positive indicators, and the 
banks will have to show that they do not align with six of what the OCC 
started calling negative indicators.
  The procedure, not only did it require reams of evidence, but just 
trying to read their rule that they put out, it was written in 
Sanskrit. You would have to hire a bucketload of lawyers to be able to 
just understand the rule.
  Then President Biden's people said: Not only that, we are going to 
throw out this 15-day rule that, if you don't hear from us within 15 
days, your merger is automatically approved.
  Well, it threw the merger process for small banks that was working 
beautifully into total disarray. It just made the whole process more 
expensive, less efficient, and more expensive for consumers because the 
costs are passed on.
  So in a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to reject President 
Biden's cumbersome rule. I am not going to suggest that we not regulate 
small bank mergers. I am going to suggest that we go back to the 
procedure that we were using since 1995, which worked, and that we go 
back and adopt that procedure. That doesn't mean that the OCC can't 
revisit it at some point.
  But let me just be blunt. What President Biden's OCC people did was 
put together a plan--a new rule--that looks like it was put together by 
a heroin addict with a socket wrench. I mean, it is the most convoluted 
thing you have ever seen.
  If we vote yes today--and I hope we do--then we will reject this rule 
and go back to doing it the old way.


                         Budget Reconciliation

  Mr. President, since I have a few minutes, I am going to move to 
another topic, reconciliation, which you are very familiar with. Thank 
you for all of your contributions to it, by the way, as we put together 
the bill.
  The American people may be a little confused about what 
``reconciliation'' means. As you know, a reconciliation bill is just a 
budget bill. That is all it is. It deals with spending of taxpayer 
money.
  And why is it important?
  Well, first it is going to be important to try to lower the prices 
that are gutting the American people like a fish. Inflation--President 
Biden's inflation--was simply pernicious. I don't know of another word 
for it.
  It got to the point--I don't know about in your State, but in my 
State, you know, people shouldn't have to sell blood plasma to be able 
to go to the grocery store. They shouldn't. And make no mistake--we all 
know this--those high prices were man-made. Again, no disrespect, but 
that man's name was Joe Biden, and that is true.
  The first goal of our reconciliation bill is to try to help get those 
prices down. How are we going to do that? No. 1, we are going to reduce 
government spending.
  Why does that matter? Well, how did we get the inflation? We got the 
inflation because President Biden's favorite form of spending was more. 
I said many times if the White House during President Biden's term had 
discovered life on Mars, they would have sent it money immediately. And 
it was all this money that they injected into the economy, trillions of 
dollars, Inflation Reduction Act and the America Rescue Plan. They 
spent all this money. We had all of this money that came into the 
economy chasing too few goods, created demand, supply constant, and we 
had inflation.
  So we are going to try to get those prices down--we, meaning this 
Congress--by reducing the government spending, which will reduce the 
stimulus to the economy, which, if we do it right, ought to lower 
interest rates. That is step 1 that we are going to try to achieve in 
reconciliation.
  The second part of reconciliation, we are going to continue to try to 
reduce the rules and regulations. All of these rules and regulations 
have a price.
  And when you are adding $2 trillion in costs that fall on the backs 
of businesswomen and businessmen, to stay in business they have got to 
pass the costs of all those rules and regulations on to the consumer.
  So if we can get rid of some of these rules and regulations, like we 
are going to continue to do in a few minutes when we vote on a rule to 
get rid of the Biden rule I was just talking about, if we can reduce 
those rules and regulations, goods and services will cost less.
  The third thing we are going to try to do in reconciliation or our 
``budget bill,'' if you prefer that term, is redesign the Tax Code so 
that it looks like somebody designed it on purpose.
  Since 1990, average GDP growth in America has been 2 percent a year. 
Now, that is just not acceptable. When we hit 2.5 percent now of GDP 
growth, we are so happy we want to go have a toga party. Two and a half 
percent is not acceptable.
  We have got to start growing again at a normal rate. What used to be 
normal for America was 3 percent. Now,

[[Page S2795]]

how are we going to do that? We are going to do that by encouraging 
businesswomen and businessmen to invest in their businesses and grow 
their businesses and hire more people.
  And the byproduct of that is that wages will go up, and that way 
people will be making more money so they will be able to afford this 
inflation that President Biden left us with.
  So the first goal of reconciliation is to try to reduce these prices, 
to try to kill inflation dead, but there is a second equally, some 
would say more, important reason, as the Presiding Officer well knows. 
In 2017, this Congress, during President Trump's first term, passed the 
2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We cut taxes by $4.3 trillion. And, boy, 
did it work.
  The economy took off like a SpaceX rocket ship. Within a year, median 
household income in America had gone up $4,400, and people at the lower 
end of the wage scale enjoyed more tax benefits and more money in their 
pocket than people at the other end.
  That is why I have to laugh when my Democratic colleagues say: Well, 
you know, this was a tax cut for the rich. No, all you have to do is 
look at the data. Unless you do your research on Twitter, you know that 
it helped people at the lower end of the wage scale more than those at 
the upper end. That is the good news.
  The bad news is that those tax cuts expire at the end of this year. 
So we are going to try to extend them and make them permanent in our 
reconciliation bill. And if we don't, if we don't, then we are going to 
have a $4.3 trillion tax increase on the American people--$4.3 
trillion.
  I want the Presiding Officer to think about that when some of our 
colleagues try to throw up roadblocks to the reconciliation bill. In 
effect, what they are saying is, they want to raise taxes on the 
American people by $4.3 trillion. That is the most important thing we 
want to do in our reconciliation bill. It is not the only important 
thing, as I mentioned, but it is clearly the most important fact.
  If we raise taxes right now, $4.3 trillion on the American people, 
this economy will begin a journey to the center of the Earth. We cannot 
let it happen.
  Now, I don't want to minimize the importance of the role that 
reconciliation will play in lowering prices and lowering inflation. 
That is important. But worse than inflation is depression, and if we 
don't extend these tax cuts and make them permanent, we are going to be 
in a depression. And that is really what the reconciliation bill is all 
about.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for his time, I will end like I began. 
I am not saying everything President Biden and his people did was 
wrong, but on this rule that they promulgated to hurt small banks, it 
was just disastrous, and we are going to try to fix it today. And my 
colleagues will vote with me on this.
  We will return some sanity to the merger rules for small banking.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote 
no on S.J. Res. 13. President Trump promised that he would lower costs 
for American families on day one. He promised to cap interest rates on 
credit cards at 10 percent, and so what is it that the Senate is 
prioritizing today? Making it easier for banks to merge, raising the 
cost of credit for small businesses and households, and eroding banking 
services in local communities.
  This resolution would undo commonsense provisions and improvements to 
the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency bank merger review 
framework after decades of that office rubberstamping deals that have 
reduced competition in the banking sector and put community banks all 
across this country out of business.
  Now, we have witnessed small banks just vanishing from our local 
communities over the past several decades. These are the banks that are 
deeply rooted in our neighborhoods, that do the painstaking local 
lending that many small businesses rely on.
  Regulators' long record of rubberstamping bank mergers has resulted 
in scores of branch closures, leaving consumers with fewer choices when 
it comes to whom to trust with their money.
  Between 2006 and 2021, the Federal Reserve approved more than 3,500 
consecutive mergers without denying a single one--not even one single 
no. With the regulators completely asleep at the switch since 1990, the 
number of banks in the United States has declined from more than 18,000 
to fewer than 5,000.
  The biggest banks have been the beneficiaries of this consolidation 
because they have grown even bigger. In the mid-1990s, the 20 biggest 
banks in this country held a total of 15 percent of all bank assets--
the 20 biggest had 15 percent of all the assets.
  Today, the top 20 hold more than 65 percent of all bank assets, and 
the concentration at the very top is even more extreme. The biggest 
four banks alone hold more assets than the next 75 banks combined.
  This problem can be life or death for small businesses that can't get 
ahold of anyone at a big bank who understands the local economy or the 
nuances of their business or their credit needs.
  At a big bank, you get a 1-800 number and a cookie-cutter product 
developed in some far-off headquarters. The problem is even more dire 
in low-income neighborhoods where research shows that predatory lenders 
and check cashers proliferate as bank consolidation increases.
  Concentrating power into a few financial giants and money centers 
reduces competition, and it results in Americans paying higher prices 
for their banking services. That means higher credit card interest 
rates, higher fees, higher auto loan payments, and unaffordable 
mortgages. And when these banks become too big to fail, the entire 
economy feels the pain when those banks' risk-taking blows up, and 
taxpayers are the ones who have to foot the bill when Wall Street comes 
in here demanding bailouts.
  In recent years, regulators started to wake up to the fact that a 
highly consolidated banking sector is bad for consumers and bad for our 
economy. Bank supervisors and antitrust enforcers have been taking a 
careful look at the rules that guide how mergers are scrutinized, and 
they finally--finally--began to apply the law, as written by Congress, 
and they retired the rubberstamp.
  In 2024, the OCC, which oversees most of the very largest banks, 
finalized improvements to the bank merger framework, creating a more 
comprehensive process and a more transparent process. First, the new 
rules will end the practice that allows certain mergers to be 
automatically approved just 15 days after the closing of the public 
comment period.
  This resolution would reinstitute automatic approval just as Elon 
Musk's, his DOGE, guts the very staff that are reviewing these bank 
merger applications. It is a dangerous combination to actually say: We 
are going to do these automatic approvals, give them a really short 
period of time, and then cut the number of people who are there in the 
regulatory Agencies to be able to review the mergers.
  Second, the updated rules also ensure that all applicants provide 
regulators with the information they need to weed out harmful 
transactions and to ensure that the OCC is more transparent about how 
it weighs certain factors when making a determination for whether to 
approve or deny a merger, and all that would go away.
  The OCC's final rule is a commonsense step to revitalize the bank 
merger framework after decades of lax review. Passing this resolution 
would turn back the clock, raise costs for Americans at a time when 
they can least afford it, and choke off credit even more for the small 
businesses that need it most.
  I urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. It is bad for 
consumers, bad for small businesses, and, ultimately, that means it is 
bad for our economy.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, all time is expired.

[[Page S2796]]

  The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third 
time.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading 
and was read the third time.


                          Vote on S.J. Res. 13

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the 
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
  Ms. BALDWIN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: The 
Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton).
  The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 237 Leg.]

                                YEAS--52

     Banks
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Boozman
     Britt
     Budd
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Curtis
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Husted
     Hyde-Smith
     Johnson
     Justice
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     McCormick
     Moody
     Moran
     Moreno
     Mullin
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Ricketts
     Risch
     Rounds
     Schmitt
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Sheehy
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--47

     Alsobrooks
     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt Rochester
     Booker
     Cantwell
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Fetterman
     Gallego
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     Kim
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lujan
     Markey
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schiff
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Slotkin
     Smith
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Welch
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Cotton
       
  The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 13) was passed, as follows:

                              S.J. Res. 13

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress 
     disapproves the rule submitted by the Office of the 
     Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury 
     relating to ``Business Combinations Under the Bank Merger 
     Act'' (89 Fed. Reg. 78207 (September 25, 2024)), and such 
     rule shall have no force or effect.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The Senator from Kansas.

                          ____________________