April 10, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 62 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S2373-S2375]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Living Wills

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, today on the other side of this building, 
the CEOs of the biggest Wall Street banks face tough questions about 
the way their banks have scammed and broken laws and gotten away with 
it, as every American knows. Our Banking Committee staff analyzed the 
data, and it is pretty clear that these banks are breaking the laws 
over and over and over.
  Watchdogs will take enforcement actions against a bank only to find 
out the same bank is breaking the rules in an entirely different way in 
a different part of the bank at the same time. We need to hold these 
banks and the corporate executives who run them accountable for their 
actions, which we have simply not done. Trump regulators haven't done 
it, and the Senate majority hasn't done it. We simply haven't done it. 
Hard-working Americans face real consequences when they break the law, 
and so should Wall Street banks.
  The chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters, 
is doing the right thing in the House calling in these CEOs. We need to 
be doing the same thing in the Senate. I have called on my counterpart 
on the Banking Committee, Chairman Crapo, to hold a hearing so we can 
question big bank executives about their law-breaking.
  There are plenty of actions the President and his administration 
could take on their own to punish these banks when they break the 
rules, but instead this administration and this majority leader do 
exactly the opposite. Last year, Congress passed and President Trump 
signed legislation rolling back laws protecting working families from 
Wall Street greed. The big banks, of course, ask for weaker rules. They 
have forgotten what happened. Well, they haven't forgotten, but they 
hope the public has. Certainly, the Senate Republicans have forgotten 
what happened 10 years ago to this country. So Congress passed and the 
President signed legislation rolling back laws protecting working 
families from Wall Street greed. As I said, the big banks wanted weaker 
rules and they got them, even though that puts millions of families at 
risk of losing their jobs and losing their homes again. President Trump 
said: OK, let's do what the big banks want.
  We know that the White House looks like a retreat half the time for 
Wall Street executives, and we know the President of the United States 
does the bidding of Wall Street over and over.
  The year before weakening these rules, Congress passed and President 
Trump signed a $1.5 trillion--that is 1,000 billion, $1.5 trillion--tax 
cut for corporations, big banks, and the richest Americans. Since the 
Republican tax bill passed, corporations have bought back $900 billion 
of their own stock.

[[Page S2374]]

  I was in the White House one day with a group of Senators, meeting 
with the President of the United States, and he said that this tax bill 
they were about to pass--that he hoped would pass--would mean that the 
corporations would invest all these dollars into higher wages for 
workers and new factories and growing the economy. Well, what happened 
with a lot of this money was they used this money for stock buybacks.
  Of the eight companies with the most stock buybacks--with billion 
dollars of stock buybacks--half of them were Wall Street banks. We know 
Wall Street can never get enough--never enough power, never enough 
money. They always want more. One bank lobbyist said: We don't want a 
seat at the table; we want the whole table.
  And this Congress and this President think that is just fine.
  The tax giveaways, letting banks haggle over their stress test 
results, and taking away customers' rights to have their day in court 
when the banks scam them, apparently, just wasn't enough for Wall 
Street. Two days ago, the Fed announced that they are going to roll 
back more rules on foreign megabanks. These are not just U.S. banks 
with U.S. employees. These are foreign megabanks. We are talking about 
banks that have broken U.S. law over and over and over. I am not going 
to document all of those. But there are many, many cases of these 
foreign megabanks breaking U.S. law--banks like Santander, which 
illegally repossess servicemen's cars. So when men and women are 
overseas protecting our country, Santander, a Spanish-owned bank doing 
business in the United States, actually repossessed these 
servicemembers' cars.
  Deutsche Bank has laundered money. We know Deutsche Bank is about the 
only big bank in the world that will finance the President because he 
has a history and a habit of cheating banks and not paying back loans. 
So because of the relationship that Deutsche Bank and President Trump 
have, Deutsche Bank is doing just fine. We also know that Deutsche Bank 
laundered money, breaking U.S. law. Not even counting the President's 
insidious activities with them, Deutsche Bank broke U.S. law by 
laundering money. But do you know what? The Fed gives them rollback 
rules because we don't want to be too tough on the foreign megabanks.
  Last year, when the President signed his big bank bill, I warned that 
it would mean looser rules on those big, foreign banks. They all said: 
No, that is not going to happen. Federal Reserve Chairman J. Powell 
himself said it wouldn't happen; they are not going to weaken the rules 
on the foreign banks. Well, either they were naive at the time--I think 
J. Powell is an honest man. I guess I didn't know he was this naive. 
But he and others would say: They are not going to weaken foreign bank 
rules.
  Well, now they have.
  When the Fed made the announcement of its plan to go easy on foreign 
banks, they said--I am not kidding; this is a quote: ``This proposal 
should look familiar because it shares the same basic framework as the 
domestic proposal.'' It is as if that is a good thing, as if they are 
bragging that we are treating the foreign banks the same way as 
domestic banks, but these foreign banks happen to break the law over 
and over--Deutsche Bank, Santander, and other banks.
  That is not even the only good news for megabanks this week. We got 
word that the Fed and President Trump's appointees are going to let the 
biggest Wall Street banks off the hook on another rule, but one that 
requires something called living wills. Now, living wills doesn't sound 
like much. It doesn't mean much to Members of this Senate and to the 
general public, unless they are in the Banking Committee and they spend 
a lot of time on this.
  Living wills are blueprints from banks that are supposed to prove 
they will not wreck the economy and cost taxpayers billions of dollars 
if they go bankrupt. Now, pretty much the way it works is like this. 
The Federal Reserve goes to these banks and they require these banks to 
show what would happen if there were a significant downturn in the 
economy like there was a decade-plus ago.
  When the economy went south in 2007, 2008, and 2009, for these 
banks--because they weren't strong enough, because they hadn't had 
these stress tests, and because they hadn't gone through these rules 
because it wasn't Federal law at the time--it wasn't clear that these 
banks would be able to withstand that kind of plummeting of the economy 
when demand shrinks and all the things that happen in a recession. They 
weren't. So that is why government bailed them out. That is why the 
lobbyists lined up in Leader McConnell's office--then, I guess, it was 
Leader Fritz's office or Leader Lott's office--and got so much of what 
they wanted from Senate Republicans in those days.
  The whole point of these living wills is that banks can show, through 
a series of complicated tests, that even if the economy goes bad, these 
banks aren't going to tank, these banks aren't going to go out of 
business, and these banks aren't going to need a Federal bailout. That 
is the whole purpose--a big part of the purpose--of Dodd-Frank, the 
Wall Street reform bill.
  Again, these living wills are blueprints from banks that would prove 
they will not wreck the economy and cost taxpayers billions if they go 
bankrupt. Under the bill that passed a decade ago to fix this, they had 
to go through a stress test every year. Well, this bill the President 
signed said that, well, they will not have to go through it quite every 
year. The debate was--I said I didn't think we should do it. My 
Republican colleagues said: Well, it will probably be every other year. 
Maybe that is not so bad.
  I said: Well, probably it is. It ought to be every year.
  Now the Federal Reserve has said it is just going to be once for 
every Presidential 4-year term--once every 4 years. Nobody saw that 
coming. I guess the banks saw it coming because the banks had a lot of 
influence with them.
  So the Wall Street reform law required them to file these plans every 
year, and now they require them only every 4 years. It is said that if 
those plans didn't look credible and if the banks failed their stress 
tests--in other words, they weren't strong enough to withstand a 
recession--then, the Federal Reserve and others would have the power to 
go in and make these problem banks simpler and smaller. In other words, 
if the banks couldn't withstand a bad economy and if these banks were 
too fragile and caused too much damage to the economy if they didn't 
pass the stress tests, these banks, then, could be broken up into 
smaller units, making them stronger. But now financial watchdogs only 
have to check into those plans just once a Presidential term, every 4 
years. A lot can change and a lot can go wrong in 4 years. Just ask any 
family or anyone how their income or rent or savings change. They may 
not be the same month-to-month let alone every 4 years.

  The people in this town, especially Republicans on the Senate Banking 
Committee, have this collective amnesia. They may have forgotten what 
the financial crisis and the housing crisis meant. The families who 
lost their homes, lost their jobs, lost their retirement savings and 
their college funds haven't forgotten. They haven't recovered from the 
financial crisis. They haven't recovered from decades of bad trade 
policy and bad tax policy that make it harder and harder for their work 
to pay off.
  I don't think Members of this body--there is a wonderful quote from 
President Lincoln when he said to his staff: I need to go out and get 
my public opinion back. I need to go out and listen to what people are 
saying and look at how they are living and talk about their lives.
  It is not something people around here do much of, especially when it 
is people who might be vulnerable to losing their homes.
  I live in Cleveland, OH, Connie and I. We live in ZIP Code 44105. 
There were more foreclosures in my ZIP Code than in any ZIP Code in the 
United States of America. You can still see the urban blight and the 
residue in what is left--the remains of those foreclosures.
  Think about what it means to a family personally. The first thing 
they have to do is get rid of their pet. Their pet costs too much 
money, no matter how close their son or daughter or they themselves may 
be to their dog or cat.
  Then they have to make all kinds of decisions: We are going to have 
to

[[Page S2375]]

move. We are going to have to go to a new school district--all the 
kinds of heartache when your life has been turned upside down because 
you are foreclosed on.
  I am not an alarmist or predicting anything in the next few months, 
but if we keep going down this path, weakening Federal banking law, 
doing the bidding of Wall Street, if the lobbyists continue to go in 
and out of the office of Senator McConnell, the Republican leader's 
office, and the bank lobbyists who go in and out of there and get their 
way--if that happens and continues to happen, who knows what will 
happen again in the next 2, 3, 5, 10 years.
  The more we roll back these rules on Wall Street, the more we give 
breaks to foreign megabanks, the greedier the big banks get, the more 
risk they take on, and the higher the chance that one of their big 
risks doesn't pay off.
  Mr. President, you know who is paying the price when Wall Street bets 
don't pay off. It is you, it is the workers, families, and taxpayers. 
It is your money, the American people's money they are gambling with. 
So instead of making it easier for Wall Street to make big bets and 
break the law without reaping consequences, why don't we make it easier 
for families to afford healthcare? Why don't we make it easier for 
working parents to afford childcare? Why don't we make it easier for 
workers to save for retirement? Why don't we make it easier for 
students to pay for college? Why don't we honor the dignity of work and 
make sure hard work pays off for everyone, whether you swipe a badge or 
punch a clock or work for tips or work for a salary or whether you are 
taking care of children or an aging parent? Why don't we make it easier 
for them with a tax code and trade policy that works? Instead, all our 
efforts and all of the administration's efforts--as I said, the White 
House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives. So much of their 
efforts are to make it easier for corporations and to make it easier 
for the big banks.
  It is time we listened a little more to the Americans we serve, a 
little less to the biggest Wall Street banks that have gotten enough 
handouts already.
  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. LEE. 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. LEE. Mr. President, we have no further debate on the nominee.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
  If not, the question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the 
Morales nomination?
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Georgia (Mr. Perdue).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker) 
and the Senator from California (Ms. Harris) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
wishing to vote or to change their vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 56, nays 41, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 75 Ex.]

                                YEAS--56

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McConnell
     McSally
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sinema
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--41

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Booker
     Harris
     Perdue
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with 
respect to the Morales nomination, the motion to reconsider be 
considered made and laid upon the table and that the President be 
immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
mandatory quorum call be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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