[Pages H2168-H2175]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1415
 PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL 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

  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 426, I call up 
the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 13) 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, and ask for its immediate consideration in the 
House.
  The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 426, the joint 
resolution is considered read.
  The text of the joint resolution is 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

[[Page H2169]]

     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 SPEAKER pro tempore. The joint resolution shall be debatable for 
1 hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority 
member of the Committee on Financial Services or their respective 
designees.
  The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr) and the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Waters) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky.


                             General Leave

  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Kentucky?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this joint resolution of 
disapproval that would nullify the Office of the Comptroller of the 
Currency's final rule that makes it more difficult for banks to merge 
and merge in a healthy way. That is why I introduced the House 
companion, H.J. Res. 92.
  Today, we have the opportunity to prevent future administrations from 
issuing arbitrary rules on mergers and acquisitions that lack robust 
cost-benefit analysis and would make it significantly harder for 
financial institutions to grow and compete.
  Banks in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky and throughout the 
country are facing challenges in managing the high costs of complex 
regulations. Furthermore, customers now demand advanced technological 
features, such as mobile and online banking, which require substantial 
capital investments.
  Mergers often present the only viable path for these institutions to 
keep up with these regulatory and technological costs and continue 
serving their local communities.
  They also play a vital role in ensuring the safety and soundness of 
the financial system. By enabling stronger, well-managed institutions 
to acquire weaker ones, especially those struggling due to local 
economic conditions, we can prevent bank failures and the panic that 
they cause.
  Instead of making it harder for banks to merge, we should be 
eliminating outside obstacles to mergers, enhancing competition and 
innovation, and ensuring that Americans, especially those in rural and 
underserved communities, retain access to physical branches with 
employees who understand their local economies.
  That is why I introduced H.R. 1900, the Bank Failure Prevention Act, 
which includes a shot clock to ensure timely decisions on merger 
applications.
  Mr. Speaker, I come from Kentucky. It is a basketball-crazed 
Commonwealth, and we care about the shot clock. Congress should care 
about the shot clock on merger applications, as well.
  My bill would restore fairness and predictability, preventing delays 
and giving banks the stability they need to focus on serving their 
customers and growing their businesses.
  The Bank Failure Prevention Act will help community banks and 
regional banks thrive in today's competitive environment, providing for 
a shot clock on the review of those merger applications and providing 
better outcomes for consumers.
  I look forward to marking up this important legislation in the House 
Financial Services Committee this week.
  The OCC's merger rule under the Biden administration would have taken 
us in the exact opposite direction. It would have upended decades of 
precedent by shifting the burden onto banks to prove their merger 
should be approved rather than requiring the OCC to demonstrate how the 
merger conflicts with statutory factors.
  This would be fundamentally unfair, increasing confusion for banks 
seeking to merge and massively increasing the delay on the pendency and 
review of these applications without any kind of deadline on the 
review.
  Additionally, the rule would have abandoned expedited review for 
mergers for small, well-capitalized banks. Before the Biden-era 
regulation, there was an opportunity for expedited review of healthy 
mergers when there were small and well-capitalized institutions 
involved. Unfortunately, because of the Biden regulation, this resulted 
in a much more protracted process.
  Expedited reviews are essential to avoid prolonged, costly merger 
review processes that hinder banks from maintaining their employee base 
or investing in technology. Instead, long-drawn-out application 
processes create an environment of uncertainty due to regulatory 
delays, even when the proposed transaction is relatively simple.
  At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, consumers are the ones who are 
hurt most when their banks are caught in limbo and forced to devote 
resources to navigate the merger process instead of enhancing their own 
products and services.
  The Democratic-led OCC rule was driven more by a progressive ideology 
against mergers in all sectors of all kinds in the economy rather than 
sound, rational policymaking. In fact, the Biden-Harris OCC did not 
even coordinate with the other banking regulators, such as the Federal 
Reserve Board, before issuing this final rule.
  Creating different merger rules for banks with different charters 
would add significant ambiguity for both banks and their customers.
  Thankfully, the current OCC under President Trump has recently 
indicated they will abandon this flawed rule. However, without this 
Congressional Review Act resolution, there is nothing to prevent a 
future administration from reintroducing this damaging rule that would 
prevent healthy, beneficial mergers from occurring. Community and 
regional banks, as well as their customers, should not have to fear 
that the rules will change dramatically in a few years.
  Mr. Speaker, I can already anticipate the argument from my good 
friend from California. I know what she is going to say here in just a 
few minutes. She is going to say: Look at the Republicans. They are 
supporting mergers of big, bad banks, and that hurts Americans.

  To the contrary, Mr. Speaker. Allowing healthy mergers to prevent 
bank failures allows for healthy financial institutions to compete with 
the big Wall Street banks. If you want more competition for big Wall 
Street banks, you should support this resolution of disapproval because 
you are going to create stronger competitors to the big Wall Street 
banks.
  Opposing this resolution, like the gentlewoman and ranking member of 
our committee is about ready to do, is defending the regulatory moat 
that protects big banks from real competition.
  The Democrats' opposition here is defending big banks without 
competition, and that is why I urge all of my colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle to support healthy competition to prevent bank failures 
and to disapprove of this unwise regulation from the Biden 
administration.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution 
and prevent the regulatory whipsaw that has proven so detrimental for 
banking institutions and the American people who rely on them. I 
reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased that the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Barr) referred to me because the big banks hate me. They love him. They 
support him. They don't support me. Let's see whose side he is on.
  As a matter of fact, he is here talking about not being in support of 
big bank mergers because he is trying so hard to get more community 
banks. We need more community banks, but he is a long way from getting 
what he is talking about.
  The fact is, we really do need them because of the big bank mergers. 
One of the things he could do to increase having community banks that 
relate to the neighborhoods and relate to the people in the communities 
is to stop allowing these big mergers to take place.
  I rise to express my opposition to S.J. Res. 13, a Congressional 
Review Act resolution that would rescind a rule the Office of the 
Comptroller of the Currency has put forth to improve their bank merger 
application review procedures.

[[Page H2170]]

  Consumer groups, experts, and I have long rung the alarm bell as the 
Federal Government rubberstamped bank mergers for decades to the 
detriment of competition. The result has been a growing number of 
banking deserts where communities lack even one bank branch.
  Let's see what happens after a merger.
  Mr. Speaker, I want the gentleman to listen to me. I want him to know 
what happens after the big bank mergers. They close branches. They 
close down branches all throughout the communities. They lay off the 
workers. They need less workers, and so they start laying them off. 
They raise interest rates and fees on their customers.
  We lose relationship banking, community involvement, and a personal 
touch from your neighborhood bank. When these big bank mergers come in, 
you don't have tellers anymore. As a matter of fact, when they close 
down the branches, you try to get them on the telephone.
  Have you tried to talk with a bank manager on the telephone with 
these menus that they have? They run you around from so-called 
extension to extension to extension. You lose all of these 
relationships.
  In fact, while thousands of bank mergers were approved in the last 
few decades, the last bank merger application that regulators denied 
was denied in 2003, 22 years ago.
  Meanwhile, community banks have disappeared as the number of banks 
declined from more than 18,000 in 1990 to fewer than 5,000 today. 
Meanwhile, the biggest banks have grown much bigger through mergers 
and, not surprisingly, are charging customers more for banking products 
and services.
  For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that the 
largest banks charged between $400 and $500 every year in additional 
interest and other fees for their average credit cardholders, compared 
to smaller community banks and credit unions.
  In fact, that negative consumer impact is one of the many reasons I 
and more than 90 percent of public commenters urged regulators to 
oppose a recent Capital One and Discover merger--I think the gentleman 
supported that--which created the largest credit card issuer.
  The Trump administration approved it anyway, and I know the gentleman 
from Kentucky (Mr. Barr) did what Trump wanted him to do.
  We already have enough megabanks with too much corporate power. In 
the mid-1990s, the 20 largest banks held 15 percent of all bank assets. 
Today, they hold more than 65 percent of all bank assets. The four 
largest megabanks hold more assets than the next 75 largest banks 
combined.
  These megabanks are too big to manage. Take Wells Fargo, for example. 
They grew larger through mergers and then repeatedly violated the law 
and harmed millions of consumers. It got so bad that the Fed, under 
former Chair Janet Yellen's leadership, imposed an asset cap that 
remains in place to this day.
  That is not easily done. Mr. Speaker, you don't hear Treasury doing 
that, placing asset caps, but they did that because of the way that 
Wells Fargo bank had just mismanaged and disregarded its customers.
  To curb these rubberstamped mergers, former President Biden issued an 
executive order to encourage the Department of Justice and the banking 
agencies, including the OCC, to strengthen their merger reviews--get 
more information and find out what they intended to do and how they 
were going to provide more services.
  That is what President Biden tried to get done with the OCC, to get 
more information. Don't just rubberstamp them. Let them merge, and do 
all the things that I have just alluded to.

                              {time}  1430

  After going through a public notice and comment process, the OCC, 
which oversees most large banks, including the four largest commercial 
banks in the country, published a final rule last year that made 
several commonsense improvements to its merger review procedures.
  First, it eliminated a fast-track procedure where even the largest 
bank mergers could receive automatic approval of their mergers 15 days 
after their public notice comment period closed.
  Second, the OCC required merger applicants to file the standard 
merger application to ensure they had enough information to weed out 
harmful mergers.
  Third, the rule provided guidance, something industry often asks for. 
Specifically, the OCC provided guidance on how they would consider 
statutory factors when reviewing an application, making the process 
more transparent.
  Rolling back these reforms is dangerous, especially at a time when 
DOGE is firing staff at the OCC and the other bank agencies, making it 
harder for them to carefully review these mergers.
  I guess Elon Musk didn't stop with all of the other agencies that 
they were undermining and firing and laying off. They decided that they 
would fire staff at the OCC and the other bank agencies, making it 
harder for them to carefully review these mergers.
  What Elon Musk was doing is consistent with what he has been doing 
and I guess what Trump wants him to do. They want less services. They 
want to make sure that they are supporting the biggest banks with these 
mergers, the biggest banks that are going to close down the community 
relationships that we have with community banks.
  Moreover, I do not know why Republicans rushed this bad resolution to 
the floor, bypassing a committee markup. That would have been prudent. 
As I would point out, this resolution is actually a giant waste of 
time, as it would rescind a rule that was already rescinded by the OCC.
  You heard me right. President Trump's Acting Comptroller of the 
Currency rescinded this very rule last week when it issued an interim 
final rule that took effect on May 15.
  I am not surprised that my Republican colleagues weren't paying 
attention to this development, or maybe they were. Maybe they think 
that it was something that Trump had said to Elon Musk: Go get it done, 
an executive order. Maybe they felt that this was one of those 
executive orders that would get ruled out by the courts when we 
absolutely oppose him.
  This resolution is only moving because Republicans needed to waste 
time while they hammer out how best to give $5 trillion in tax breaks 
to billionaires. They needed more time to figure out if tens of 
millions of Americans would lose Medicaid, whether millions of children 
would lose access to food stamps, and just how many consumer watchdogs 
they would fire at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It doesn't 
matter that the United States bond ratings were downgraded, that 
foreign investors are dumping U.S. investments, or that small 
businesses are struggling to keep their lights on.
  No, Republicans are instead rescinding a rule that Trump already 
rescinded. I tried to give them credit for why he might be doing this, 
but what they have done is they have just disregarded that it has 
already been done. They came over to waste some time, just to make sure 
that that executive order perhaps won't work.
  Much later tonight, when the rest of America is sleeping, Republicans 
are going to figure out just how many Americans they can squeeze to pay 
off their billionaire overlords.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a bad resolution being considered under the 
worst circumstances. I don't know why we are wasting time on this 
floor. I urge Members to reject this wasteful, harmful, anticompetition 
resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Before I yield some time to my good friend from Florida, I will take 
the opportunity to respond to a few of the points that my friend from 
California made that maybe she is misunderstanding what the law 
actually says.
  When I refer to the law, I am referring to the Congressional Review 
Act, which is the statute that we are invoking here to invalidate this 
Biden-era regulation.
  The gentlewoman from California says that: This is a waste of time. 
The Trump OCC has rescinded the rule. We don't need to do this. I would 
remind the gentlewoman from California the reason why we need to do 
this. The reason why we are invoking the provisions

[[Page H2171]]

of the Congressional Review Act is that passing a resolution of 
disapproval under this law ensures that a substantially similar bad 
rule can never be reintroduced in the future without scrutiny.
  We obviously know that there are bad regulators from the prior 
administration that prevented healthy mergers that would have prevented 
bank failures. There is no guarantee that we are not going to have an 
equally bad regulator in the future. That is why we have to take out 
this insurance policy against bad regulators in the future.
  That is what the CRA is. It sends a clear message about balanced 
regulations that foster competition and innovation without excessive 
bureaucracy, and it safeguards against unchecked regulatory actions, 
ensuring that future rules undergo careful oversight.
  Now I will address this assertion that bank merger applications are 
just rubber-stamped by regulators. If there is any evidence that that 
is not true, it is proof from the prior administration. Not only was 
there not a rubberstamp, there was so much scrutiny that they never 
happened. They languished. There was no shot clock. There was no 
review. They just sat there and languished.
  Do you know what happened as a result? Banks withered on the vine 
waiting for a decision because of regulatory paralysis from the 
previous administration. There was hardly a rubberstamp. There was 
never a decision.

  Frankly, all we are asking for is a decision one way or another, Mr. 
Speaker, yes or no, green light, red light. Don't just sit there in 
purgatory forever and not make a doggone decision. That is the problem 
we are trying to fix.
  With respect to the gentlewoman's concern about closed branches, we 
are concerned about the lack of branches. We are concerned about 
banking deserts. That is exactly why Republicans introduced a 
resolution to allow for more de novo charters. We want more banks, not 
less. We want more competition, not less. We want those new banks to 
form in those underserved communities, urban, rural, suburban, wherever 
they are. We need more.
  Mr. Speaker, my question to the gentlewoman, the ranking member, is: 
Why did she vote against that? If she is so concerned about no 
branches, not enough branches, banking deserts, why is she voting 
against making it easier for new banks to form in those places where 
there are no financial services?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Haridopolos), who is a great leader on our committee and who will offer 
his wisdom on this subject.
  Mr. HARIDOPOLOS. Mr. Speaker, I stand in support of Congressman 
Barr's good legislation.
  Let me remind those listening about this idea that the tax issue is 
so important. Let's be clear here. The current rate on the highest 
earners in the United States is 37 percent. If our resolution passes, 
it will stay at 37 percent. There is no big tax break for the rich, as 
they claim over and over. It is 37/37. Let's be very clear on that 
message.
  Second, who is getting the big tax cuts in this resolution? It is 
seniors, Social Security, people who earn tips, and people who work 
overtime. Those are the hardworking Americans who have supported the 
President and want to push this resolution forward so that we all enjoy 
economic success.
  Getting to this issue today, I think it is so important, and 
Congressman Barr has put it perfectly. This is consumer protection. 
This is fair competition because the prior administration's OCC rule 
burdened businesses with excessive red tape, particularly targeting 
small banks and limited beneficial mergers.
  Reversing this rule allows for essential mergers that drive 
innovation, lower operational costs, and benefit consumers. Remember, 
this rule was issued without coordinating with any other Federal 
agency.
  This is why the smart decision Republicans are making today will 
codify and make a strong decision because we finally have true 
competition against the big boys that people say they are fighting 
against.
  This is a commonsense issue, and I am proud to support Congressman 
Barr on this as a Member of the Financial Services Committee.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, as to our Democratic colleagues' concern that this 
legislation and allowing for healthy mergers to happen in the banking 
sector would somehow diminish financial services or that customer 
service would somehow be lost, it is actually the opposite.
  When you have healthy mergers among, especially, community banks or a 
small regional bank acquiring a community bank, that allows them to add 
scale. That allows them to invest in the very technology that provides 
the customers with better services, with better, more innovative 
financial services and products.
  Far from losing customer service, this is a way for smaller 
institutions, regional banks, to come together into combinations, 
invest in more technology, to lower costs, to help those customers to 
increase access to financial services in ways that they can better 
compete with the megabanks.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  When I talk about rubber-stamping, oftentimes people don't really 
know what we are talking about. What I am saying is that we need to 
have better review. The OCC needs to be able to do everything possible 
to ensure that they know what these big banks are going to do and 
whether or not they are going to close down branches, whether or not 
they are going to lay off people, whether or not people are only going 
to be able to go to their telephone, to the internet, and somehow try 
to get someone to talk to.
  Let me tell you what the definition of rubber-stamping is. In 2023, 
the OCC approved--you won't believe this--22 of 23 mergers within 60 
days. That is 95 percent done in 2 months. Now, that is what you call 
rubber-stamping. That is what you call the big businesses, big banks 
being able to do whatever they want to do. All they have to do is get 
individuals like my friend on the opposite side of the aisle to stand 
up and support them with what they want to do.
  Again, I will remind you that when these big mergers take place, they 
lay off people, and they close down branch banking. That is why we have 
what we call deserts that exist in communities; deserts because there 
is no branch banking. The big boys don't really care about branch 
banking. They are big, and they are doing exactly what I have indicated 
by making more money by laying off more people, having less services, 
and charging larger interest rates. I am not on the side of big banks. 
I am on the side of the people.
  Let me continue. The Republicans may claim this resolution also 
prevents the OCC from updating its merger review procedures in the 
future. Why would they want to do that with just one banking agency? 
Perhaps they forgot that we have two other Federal banking agencies, 
the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Not 
only will this resolution freeze the OCC's review procedures in time 
and arguably prevent them from even providing guidance to applicants on 
how their review procedures work, but it allows other Federal bank 
regulators, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, to update their 
procedures.

                              {time}  1445

  This would likely lead to regulatory arbitrage, where banks seek to 
merge with banks within a charter where the primary regulator has the 
weakest review standards.
  In fact, we saw this kind of arbitrage in the lead-up to the 2008 
global financial crisis when the weakest banks would seek to get a 
charter from the weakest regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, 
OTS, until their banks failed and Congress shut down the agency in 
2008.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I will address a couple of the arguments that were just 
made.
  I think I heard the ranking member say that what we are trying to do 
is let them do whatever they want to do. That is actually not at all 
the case. The merger review process is a very involved process. There 
is quite a bit of

[[Page H2172]]

scrutiny that goes into approving these mergers. In fact, what we want 
to do here with the resolution disapproving of this is to actually 
force the agencies to make a decision one way or the other.
  The problem we have seen, especially in the previous administration, 
is not necessarily that they disapproved a merger. They just didn't 
make a decision. If it is in the interest of financial stability to 
reject a bank merger, then that very well could be a legitimate 
regulatory decision, but make the decision. That is what we are saying 
here: Make the decision.
  Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman is concerned about layoffs and 
employees of banks losing their jobs, the surest way that you will have 
massive layoffs and workers losing their jobs is for a bank merger 
application to be presented to the agencies and have literally no 
decision because guess where the acquisition target employees are going 
to go. They are going to go away. They are not going to stay with the 
bank.
  What we are saying is: Give the merger applicant a decision one way 
or the other. That is the best way you can have worker retention in the 
banking sector.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Moore).
  Mr. MOORE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of 
S.J. Res. 13 to overturn a Biden-era rule that threatens competition, 
undermines community banks, and diminishes consumer choice.
  Under the Biden-Harris administration, the Office of the Comptroller 
of the Currency introduced unnecessary impediments to prevent healthy 
bank mergers with limited justification. Community banks are the 
cornerstone of local communities, and often mergers present an 
opportunity to allow them to better keep up with costly compliance and 
technology costs.
  Unlike the Member from California, I represent a rural area in North 
Carolina. I have seen firsthand what happens to banks that are not 
allowed to grow; frankly, because of a lot of the overregulation that 
they have had to deal with, particularly these last 4 years in the 
Biden administration.
  Mr. Speaker, I have seen the opposite. I have seen the fact that 
North Carolina continues to grow, that thousands and thousands of 
people are leaving from States like California where they are 
overregulated and overtaxed. They are voting with their feet and coming 
to States that are much, much more business friendly and much more 
consumer friendly. That is the kind of policies that we need to be 
adopting in Washington.
  This resolution is going to ensure that future administrations cannot 
create complicated review processes that lock out competition, provide 
unnecessary delay, and keep things in limbo for unknown periods of 
time.
  In the true spirit of competition, this resolution cuts burdensome 
red tape and allows banks to get back to what they do best: serving 
customers and serving communities. This is a step in the right 
direction.
  Mr. Speaker, comments were made earlier on the other side about the 
big, beautiful bill that we are going to be passing hopefully this 
week. This is another step to move this economy forward, to finally 
unshackle American energy, to finally move forward and reduce taxes, 
and to let that American spirit continue to grow.
  These are the kinds of things that we need to be doing. These are the 
kinds of things that we are doing, and I appreciate the gentleman 
yielding me time.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his excellent comments. I 
think another important point that needs to be made in the context of 
this resolution of disapproval of the Biden-era OCC rule is what is 
actually happening in the marketplace.
  I think the arguments made on the other side of the aisle assume an 
antiquated market where the only competition that exists are banks, 
competing with banks. That is not the case anymore. We are living in 
2025. In 2025, the advent of all kinds of nonbank financial services 
has to be taken into account when you look at the merger landscape in 
banking.
  We have fintechs. We have nonbanks. There are credit unions. There is 
farm credit. There are all kinds of payment systems, movement to 
stablecoins and the blockchain. Financial services look a whole lot 
different than it did even 25 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, when you are doing an analysis of the propriety of a 
bank merger, you can't just look at whether or not this leads to some 
level of consolidation in the banking sector. You have to look at it in 
terms of competition across the financial services landscape.
  In order to achieve the scale, to provide the same level of services, 
to provide the same level of technological convenience, and to provide 
the same level of underwriting and access to capital that consumers are 
being accustomed to now in this very competitive landscape, healthy 
mergers are needed for banks to compete with all of the financial 
technology that is happening in the economic landscape.
  That is not being taken into consideration by my friends on the other 
side of the aisle.

  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, we tend to come to the floor when we are producing 
legislation, and we talk about a lot of ways that bills have to go 
through different kinds of discussions, different kinds of meetings, et 
cetera. Oftentimes, the people don't really understand what we are 
saying when we talk about things like mergers, and we talk about the 
OCC and we talk about review and all of that.
  Let me just try and talk about it in ways that people understand.
  First of all, I have said and I stand by the fact that with these big 
bank mergers, they close down branch banking. They close down the banks 
in the communities. Why do they do that? They do that because they want 
to save money. Yet, what happens when they close down the bank?
  Mr. Speaker, in many communities and in my own community, when banks 
were closed down, all you had was the ATM. You didn't have anybody you 
could talk to. When people go to the bank and they only have the ATM, 
what do you do when you want to talk about an automobile loan? What do 
you do when you want to talk about a mortgage? Who do you talk to? Who 
answers questions about the credit cards and about things that show up 
on the credit card that you don't know about? Who do you talk to?
  Mr. Speaker, I don't know who you talk to. You sure can't ask the ATM 
about that. The ATM cannot give you the kinds of services that branches 
give you. The reason branches were there in the first place are when 
you have these big bank mergers that close down the branch bankers.
  Mr. Speaker, I will elaborate on an earlier point that I made. We 
have seen how the largest banks have grown too big to manage through 
these bank mergers and then repeatedly broke the law and harmed their 
customers.
  For example, a few years ago, when I chaired the Committee on 
Financial Services, we investigated Wells Fargo after they were found 
to have engaged in a pattern and practice of violating the law.
  The bank illegally repossessed servicemembers' cars. They failed to 
submit a credible living will. They overcharged small business 
retailers for credit card services. They flunked their Community 
Reinvestment Act exam. They discriminated against people of color who 
were seeking mortgage loans.
  To top it off, they pressured their employees to cross-sell their 
products, which led to the creation of millions of fake accounts 
without customers' permission so that staff could reach unrealistic 
sales goals.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't think my colleague on the opposite side of the 
aisle would want to challenge me on that because that is why we fined 
them when we discovered what they had done.
  Can the Speaker imagine a huge bank like Wells Fargo, too big to 
manage, having all of this unlawful activity and leading to the 
creation of millions of fake accounts without customers' permission so 
that staff could reach these unrealistic sales goals? This is 
unbelievable, but this is what happened. My colleagues on the other

[[Page H2173]]

side of the aisle know that this happened, and they know what we had to 
do with Wells Fargo.
  As a matter of fact, it was after all of this revelation about these 
unlawful activities that we were able to at least help get rid of some 
board members and the CEO. They all had to go.
  Yet, this is what happens when you allow big, big banks to keep 
merging. They are too big to manage, and they give up on customer 
service that branch banking is all about. I bring that to the Speaker's 
attention so that I could make my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle remember what happened with Wells Fargo.

  Wells Fargo was originally founded in 1852, and it grew, in part, 
through several bank mergers, including a 1998 merger with Northwest 
and an acquisition of Wachovia during the 2008 financial crisis. Wells 
Fargo became one of the biggest banks and the tenth largest public 
company in the world based on sales, profits, assets, and market value.
  Yet, in our investigation, we learned that a senior official at 
Northwest had an aggressive cross-selling and product sales strategy, 
and he brought that approach to Wells Fargo. This strategy was adopted 
and spread throughout the business, including to former Wachovia 
branches and retail bank operations that Wells Fargo acquired.
  Wells Fargo's CEO, John Stumpf, was fully aware that Wells Fargo's 
focus on this cross-selling combined with aggressive sales goals and 
associated incentive compensation plans could encourage employees' 
gaming and create compliance problems.
  The bank was fined again and again until, in 2018, I pushed the bank 
regulators to use their full toolkit to hold a repeat offender like 
Wells Fargo accountable. The Federal Reserve, under former Chair Janet 
Yellen's leadership that I mentioned earlier about putting a cap on 
assets, used one of the tools regulators rarely use--and I repeat: 
Rarely is this used--to impose an asset cap on the bank until the bank 
cleaned up its act.
  What it said basically was: You can't keep doing this and making 
money. You can't keep doing this and profiting off of the backs of your 
customers. You can't keep doing this and getting richer and richer, and 
so she put an asset cap on the bank until the bank cleaned up its act. 
That cap remains in place 7 years later.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope Members will think of our constituents, including 
the servicemembers, the seniors, the students, the veterans, and our 
neighbors that Wells Fargo harmed when deciding if we could make bank 
mergers easier. If my colleagues do, they will vote ``no'' on this 
harmful resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, listening to my colleague from California just reminds 
me to make the point that economies of scale are not inherently bad. 
Economies of scale and big, large financial institutions serve our 
economy. Community banks serve our economy. Midsize banks serve our 
economy. Regional banks serve our economy. Super-regional banks serve 
our economy, and big banks serve our economy. They serve different 
parts of the economy.
  At the larger end, the globally and systemically important financial 
institutions make markets. They are part of why we have the deepest, 
most liquid, and most competitive capital markets on planet Earth. This 
is not a bad thing. This is a good thing.
  Those large institutions are capable of serving large, multinational 
corporations that make the United States a destination for capital 
flows in our country. They are a magnet for foreign direct investment. 
They help us with countering terrorism. They give us a global 
visibility that we wouldn't have if we didn't have large globally 
important financial institutions that were forward positioned in other 
continents that allowed us visibility into financial flows and helped 
our law enforcement and our intelligence agencies find bad actors.

                              {time}  1500

  That is a good thing. That is not a bad thing. It is important, 
though, that we preserve the dynamism and the diversity of our banking 
sector. That is why we also want large regional banks, regional banks, 
midsize banks, and, yes, community banks and microbanks. We want it 
all. It is the diversity and heterogeneity of the banking sector that 
makes our system the best in the world.
  That is why we want healthy mergers. We want de novo charters to 
backfill, but we want healthy mergers so that we have a constantly 
dynamic and healthy banking system.
  Now, the gentlewoman cites this one particular case of fraud in one 
large bank, and she is right. It was a bad case, and it was properly 
punished by the regulators. She cites to a case of cross-selling and 
overly aggressive marketing and a sales goals program and compliance 
problems. It is true. There were, but it is not because there are 
healthy mergers in this country that that happened. That is not why 
that happened. That could have happened in a regional bank. That could 
have happened even in a smaller bank. It happened to happen in a larger 
bank, but guess what?
  There are a lot of other large banks in this country where they 
didn't have those problems. When there are problems, that is why we 
have regulators and bank examiners. They fix those problems to make 
sure that they never happen again. You know what can help prevent those 
problems from happening even more than regulators, even more than 
central planning from Washington? Mr. Speaker, it is competition and 
choice.
  That particular institution that the gentlewoman is talking about, 
maybe they didn't have enough competition. Maybe they didn't have 
enough competition, Mr. Speaker, because we had regulators that 
prevented healthy mergers to enter into their market space and actually 
compete and take customers who are unsatisfied with that cross-selling.
  The whole point here is that we want a dynamic marketplace so that we 
can create competition. That is the best form of consumer protection, 
not a regulator, not an examiner, not regulatory inaction, or 
regulatory indecision. That is not consumer protection, but healthy 
mergers that allow for greater competition of the big banks. That is 
the way to protect consumers.
  I will make one other point before I reserve, as well. When we say 
that large banks are not inherently bad, what we mean by that is that 
when you allow for a merger, let's say, of two regional banks, and you 
allow that scale, that economies of scale to take place, and where 
there are investments in technology, not only do you give the customers 
of that larger institution, that successor merged institution with 
greater resources to provide lower cost services, more technological 
advancements, but, yes, you allow them to invest in what? They invest 
in consumer protection.
  You allow them to make sure that people in their organization are not 
making mistakes with cross-selling, making sure that they are using the 
latest technology to ensure that everybody is getting the right deal 
and the best deal and the most financial inclusion possible given that 
particular customer's circumstances.
  Far from promoting problems, this resolution will actually help solve 
the problems.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, as we consider whether we should make the approval of 
bank mergers easier, I have another example of how mergers have led to 
major problems.
  In 2020, the Federal Reserve and the OCC fined Citigroup $400 million 
over serious ongoing deficiencies relating to its risk management 
systems.
  Now, this is very, very important. Every bank must have risk 
management but when they get too huge not only do they not have the 
proper risk management, it doesn't work very well. It was a 
longstanding issue that Citi had after they went through a series of 
mergers in the 1990s.
  When the 2020 fine of $400 million was imposed, there was an article 
in The Wall Street Journal that explained how mergers harm the bank. 
They wrote: ``Regulators have long fretted that the hodgepodge of 
systems, a legacy of a string of deals in the 1990s that turned 
Citigroup into a financial powerhouse, could make the bank vulnerable 
to

[[Page H2174]]

costly and potentially damaging missteps.''
  They were too big to manage.
  ``A recent high-profile error--Citigroup's accidental $900 million 
payment to creditors of cosmetics company Revlon, Inc.--gave credence 
to their concerns.''
  That is right. The bank lacked sufficient controls because of its 
past mergers--too big to manage--and accidentally paid $900 million to 
Revlon, which quickly went into litigation.
  The bank did not correct their problems. Regulators fined them again 
last year, but earlier this year, we learned that Citibank made another 
big payment error. The bank--I love this one--intended to pay a 
customer $280 but someone accidentally added way too many zeros to the 
transaction. For 90 minutes before an employee caught the mistake, one 
lucky customer had $81 trillion credited to their account. 
Unfortunately, for that customer, the bank corrected their error and 
far too often these kinds of mismanagement mistakes actually lead to 
harm for consumers.
  In fact, since 2000, Citigroup has paid over--listen to this--$27 
billion in fines, settlements, and consumer remediation, including 42 
actions related to consumer protection violations. This includes 
discriminating against Armenian-American credit card applicants, 
overcharging other credit card holders, and mortgage servicing 
violations that could have helped homeowners avoid failure.
  Again, this is the logical conclusion if we have faster mergers. We 
will have fewer and fewer banks that are bigger and bigger and, indeed, 
too big to manage.
  Let me just say: When I said how much they had been fined just a 
moment ago, Citigroup, one could think how could they be fined that 
much money? How can they afford it? Where do you think they got that 
money from? Where do you think that money came from? Why do you think 
that doesn't matter to the big banks? It is just a matter of doing 
business.

  Do you know where that money comes from? It comes from the customers. 
That is why we have to make sure that the customers are serviced 
properly, that when a big merger wants to have support from the 
government, that they will have been vetted in such a way that OCC 
understands very well: How are you going to service these customers? 
Are you going to close down these branch bankers? How are you going to 
help somebody that is looking for a mortgage? What are you going to do 
to the person that can't talk to the ATM because they are trying to get 
a car loan?
  These are legitimate questions. These are legitimate answers that 
need to be given.
  I will say this: The money does not fall out of the sky that allows 
them to pay millions and millions of dollars in fines. It comes from 
charging the customers, increasing interest rates, laying off employees 
so you have less employees to pay, and the services get worse and worse 
and worse.
  The customers are the victims of these big mergers who do not want to 
be reviewed properly and who you support in not wanting to be reviewed 
properly.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, let me give you an example of where a merger that was 
recently approved certainly doesn't hurt consumers but helps consumers 
and creates more competition.
  The gentlewoman cites the approval of the Capital One-Discover 
merger. Do you know what that merger did? It created a third option, in 
addition to MasterCard and Visa, for consumers to access in terms of a 
payment network. That is not diminishing competition. That is creating 
more competition. It is more competition for Visa and more competition 
for MasterCard. Ask Visa and MasterCard. They will tell you.
  This is a very formidable competitor to MasterCard and Visa now that 
there is an approved merger between Capital One, a substantial credit 
card business, a substantial payment business, and Discover with their 
substantial network. You create a third option for consumers. That is 
procompetition, not anticompetition.
  I will make another point. This is not just about big banks. It is 
about small community banks. We are scrutinizing today the Biden OCC's 
regulation.
  What did that regulation do, Mr. Speaker? It eliminated expedited 
procedures for approval of what? It eliminated expedited procedures for 
approval of community bank mergers, small noncomplex mergers that would 
allow those community banks to serve those small communities better. 
That regulation eliminated that.
  Here is what the trade association of the smallest banks in America 
says about that Biden regulation. Here is what the small banks say 
about that regulation.
  ``ICBA strongly opposes the elimination of the expedited review and 
streamlined applications. . . . not every transaction is complex. For 
example, in instances where two community banks within the same market 
attempt to merge, and the merger does not pose significant financial 
stability, consumer protection, competition or safety, and soundness 
concerns, the OCC should treat the transaction as noncomplex and permit 
for review under streamlined procedures.''
  It makes sense to me that we would have streamlined, expedited 
procedures so that we can make sure community banks can continue to 
compete. This is not about big banks. It is about small banks and the 
survival of small banks under the avalanche of red tape that came at 
them after Dodd-Frank, after the avalanche of competition from nonbanks 
and credit unions and fintechs and blockchain companies. We want these 
small banks to survive, to continue to serve their communities. This is 
the way they do it.
  Finally, I will make a point that hasn't really been discussed here 
today in this debate; that is, we should remember the lessons of 
Silicon Valley Bank. There was a very, very significant panic because 
of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and there was a run on that bank.
  We don't want that to happen again. We don't want a panic. We don't 
want a run. We want to prevent bank failures, and the way to prevent 
bank failures is to allow strong banks to acquire weak banks. We want 
to make sure that a failing bank can be saved by a white knight. 
Delaying approvals of healthy mergers is very dangerous for financial 
stability.
  We need this legislation so that we never have a bad regulation that 
would prevent regulators from allowing expedited approval of mergers 
that help save the system.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I am just sitting here being absolutely shocked by some 
of my own words when I take a look at the fines that we have charged 
both Citi and Wells Fargo. I see that each of them have paid $27 
billion in fines, but they are still in business. Do you know why? It 
is because they make so much money. This is just the cost of doing 
business. We break the law. They are going to fine us, but we can 
afford it. We will go on doing what we do. This is what happened with 
the big, big banks that you allow to merge without understanding what 
they are all about and what is their commitment to the consumers.
  As a matter of fact, they can afford to pay $57 billion in fines, 
money that they have collected from their customers. They only see this 
as the cost of doing business, and they keep on doing business, keep on 
getting fined. What are we talking about?
  Listen, I am not opposed to credible mergers. Democrats just want 
mergers that result in a bank that will follow the law and serve the 
community. We want to make sure that they have the systems in place and 
the management to follow the law. Why? Because the consumer is on the 
hook and the taxpayer is on the hook; that is why.
  Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to know that I have not talked to 
anybody recently who was happy with their bank. They have problems 
getting services because the banks keep cutting back on employees and 
trying to push everybody to the ATM.
  We can do better than this. We can understand when the mergers want 
to take place, who these entities are that want to merge, how huge this 
is going to make this bank, and what they are going to do about branch 
banking.

[[Page H2175]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1515

  Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, former Federal Reserve Governor and now-Vice Chair for 
Supervision Michelle Bowman, who talked about the procompetition 
benefits of healthy mergers, said: ``Reducing the efficiency of bank 
M&A can be a deterrent to healthy bank transactions. It can reduce the 
effectiveness of M&A activity that preserves the presence of community 
banks in underserved areas, prevent institutions from pursuing prudent 
growth strategies, and actually undermine competition by preventing 
firms from growing to a larger scale, effectively creating a `protected 
class' of larger institutions.''
  Mr. Speaker, we had a hearing that was called when the ranking member 
was the chair. She called in all the CEOs of the biggest banks in the 
country. In this particular hearing, the gentlewoman from California 
also hauled in some of the CEOs of the regional banks, the big regional 
banks, in addition to the G-SIB Wall Street banks.
  I noticed that the CEO of a successor institution that was formed by 
the merger of two regional banks was sitting right next to the CEO of 
one of the largest banks on planet Earth, so I said to the CEO of one 
of the largest banks on planet Earth: This gentleman who is now the CEO 
of a big regional bank is sitting next to you. Can you tell me what a 
more formidable competitor to your big Wall Street bank is? Is it the 
original small regional bank, the other small regional bank, or is it 
the combination of those two regional banks that made a bigger regional 
bank?
  He said: Undoubtedly, it is the bigger regional bank that poses a 
bigger competitive threat to me, the big Wall Street bank.
  Not all mergers are bad. There are a lot of mergers that help create 
more competition. That is what we want.
  More importantly, Mr. Speaker, it provides better financial services 
and products and access to the American Dream for the American people.
  That is why we want to disapprove this bad regulation. That is why we 
want to make sure that mergers are allowed to allow for distressed 
banks to sell themselves instead of failing, thereby insulating the 
Deposit Insurance Fund from losses.
  This is to help financial stability, Mr. Speaker. I urge all of my 
colleagues, for the reasons that we have outlined today, to help us 
invalidate this bad regulation and to make sure that no regulator in 
the future can pass another bad regulation like this that would prevent 
healthy mergers.
  For goodness' sake, if you want dynamism and competition in a diverse 
banking system, support our agenda that not only allows for healthy 
mergers but also provides for regulatory tailoring so that we provide 
relief to small community banks so that they can compete, relief to the 
regional banks so that they can compete, and, for goodness sake, clear 
the way for de novo charters, new banks, to come into the system.
  I don't know, for the life of me, why my friends on the other side of 
the aisle who complain about big banks won't allow for healthy mergers 
to compete with them, won't allow for new banks to come into the system 
by overregulating the heck out of the sector, and won't allow there to 
be a dynamic, diverse banking system.
  Mr. Speaker, for these reasons and others, as I explained earlier, I 
urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fine). All time for debate has expired.
  Pursuant to the rule, the previous question is ordered on the joint 
resolution.
  The question is on the third reading of the joint resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be read a third time, and was 
read the third time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on passage of the joint 
resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

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