Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, May 6; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate resume consideration of S. 3217, Wall Street reform, as provided for under the previous order.

Mr. President, under the previous order, at 10 a.m., the Senate will proceed to vote in relation to the Tester-Hutchison amendment regarding insurance premiums.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask it adjourn under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Mark Udall of Colorado.

Mr. President, I will be brief at this point.

First, let me thank the leadership and my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, for allowing us to get to this point. Now we are on the bill after all this time.

I didn't hear all the comments of my friend from Tennessee, but clearly we are making an effort to reach agreement where we can on some of the critical issues. Senator Shelby and I and our staffs have worked very hard over the weekend to try to come to closure on the resolution title of the bill, title I and title II, that Senator Corker spent so much time working on. We thought we had done a pretty good job, but there is always room for improvement to satisfy the interests people have to make sure taxpayers will never be exposed. My hope is we will be able to present that, Senator Shelby and I, to our colleagues to be able to close that issue and move on to the other areas of the bill that people have interests in.

We have a number of amendments that I believe should be relatively noncontroversial--either bipartisan amendments that Senators want to offer dealing with the Federal Trade Commission or dealing with the consumer title. There are a number of amendments on which we have already reached some agreement. My hope is we could have some understanding--obviously, I want to wait until Senator Shelby comes over--that we could enter a time agreement, a brief one, on the Boxer amendment. We have all talked about the Boxer amendment, so maybe, hopefully, we could have that vote when we come back from our respective caucus luncheons.

I hope at some point shortly thereafter, Senator Shelby and I will offer a proposal dealing with the resolution titles of the bill to close that. I am told Senator Tester and Senator Hutchison have an amendment, which sounds pretty good to us, dealing with some issues involving assessments on small banks that we agree with.

I know Senator Snowe and some others have amendments which we have worked on as well which we think are helpful to agree to.

Senators Hutchison and Rockefeller on the Federal Trade Commission, we have reached agreement on that as well. There are a number of issues which I would like to at least deal with here where we have consensus.

Then, obviously, there are going to be some areas and amendments that will come up that are controversial, that will require a good debate on the floor--hopefully, not an endless one but debate on those matters. I wish to get to those soon. I know my colleagues who have those ideas wish to be heard, and I certainly wish to give them the opportunity to do so. My hope is we will reach time agreements and have up-or-down votes on them. That is the way this institution is supposed to operate. We can avoid filibusters and those who want to extend the debate, even though they are not happy with the amendment and don't like the outcome. I think we serve our interests well if, with the exception of those that deserve some sort of attention like that, the overwhelming majority of these issues ought to be debated and voted up or down and move on to the next set of issues.

In the meantime, we try to work on ones that we know are coming along to see if we can't reach consensus as we have on a number of these items.

That is sort of the game plan as I see it, but I obviously am not going to make any unanimous consent requests regarding time agreements until my colleague from Alabama is here in order to agree with that, but my hope is to offer such unanimous consent proposal that on the Boxer amendment we reach a time certain fairly quickly. Again, it is a three-line amendment that I think everyone has had a chance to hear us discuss over the last couple days. That goes to the heart of what Senator Corker was talking about; that is, to emphatically state taxpayers not be exposed to the costs of any institution that fails and is wound down, either through resolution or more likely through bankruptcy--there is not taxpayer exposure. Since we all agree on that and the language is rather clear, my hope is we could spend a few minutes talking about it, making that point and vote and then move on to these other matters, seeking time agreements where appropriate.

That is how we will proceed. I have talked to the leader. Obviously, we do not have an endless amount of time for this debate and this subject matter, but my hope is, over the next week or two, to conclude, starting early, staying a little later in the evening than we normally do, even, if necessary, spending some time on the weekend. I know that is not normally done here, but, again, to get to the finish line on this bill is going to take some time, given the numbers of amendments people have on which they would like to be heard, in order to meet the goals of the leadership to complete our work on this bill and move to the other items that must be debated in this Chamber, aside from the financial services reform.

We have a lot of work to do in the coming 2 weeks on this matter. My hope is, people will bring their amendments early to us, to Senator Shelby and to myself or our committee members, let us look at them and work on them. Where we can accept or modify them, we will try to do so; where we cannot, provide the time so we can have a debate and vote on your ideas. That is where we stand.

I have a number of requests for time. I am not going to make any unanimous consent requests for these, but a number of Members have asked for some time to speak today either on amendments they are going to be proposing or on the bill itself. I have that list. I will try to accommodate those Members, when I can, this afternoon. Again, the first order of business would be on the Boxer amendment.

Let me just say about that amendment, that again, the language of the Boxer amendment is rather straightforward. I read it the other day. It is a very brief amendment and very clear. It says:

At the end of title II add the following.

At the end of the resolution title, which is an elaborate title we spent months working on so as to make sure we would get it right; that is, the presumption is bankruptcy and, in the most painful alternative, a resolution but one that you would not like to take at all. It is bankruptcy, putting these companies out of their misery and the country out of its misery without exposing the taxpayers to the cost. The managers all get fired under our bill. They are gone. Not only do they not get bonuses, they don't have a job having done what they did. The shareholders lose, so shareholders have to pay more attention to what is happening to their companies of which they are owners. Creditors also take tremendous hits in this proposal as well.

Senator Boxer has offered some very straightforward language, almost an exclamation point at the end of title II. I will read the amendment because it only takes about a minute to do so. She says:

Liquidation Required.--All financial companies put into

receivership under this title shall be liquidated.

If there was any doubt about the provisions--sentence No. 2.

No taxpayer funds shall be used to prevent the liquidation

of any financial company under this title.

A very clear, declarative sentence.

(b) Recovery of Funds.--All funds expended in the

liquidation of a financial company under this title shall be

recovered from the disposition of assets of such financial

company, or shall be the responsibility of the financial

sector, through assessments.

Then:

(c) No Losses to Taxpayers.--Taxpayers shall [again, shall]

bear no losses from the exercise of any authority under this

title.

Again, it is very straightforward, a very clear amendment, one that basically incorporates the views shared by all 100 Members of this body.

Maybe there is someone who disagrees. If they do, I don't know who they are. Every Senator I heard address this issue agrees with what Senator Boxer is suggesting with this very important language. It is not a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. This is statutory language in the bill. My hope is, unless people want to have an elaborate discussion about it, it seems pretty straightforward. I would like the first vote to be an amendment on which we can all come together as we begin our debate in this Chamber. Not all amendments are going to end up that way, but on this one I think there is clarity and we ought to get behind it and demonstrate our willingness to say, without any equivocation whatsoever: The taxpayers will not be exposed to the kind of charges and costs that they were in the fall of 2008.

I will sit and wait for Senator Shelby to come over and, in the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, briefly, let me say to my colleague, I appreciate his efforts in this regard. He and Senator Lugar and others have worked on it. They are absolutely right. People ought to have a right to know what their credit scores are. They are critical when it comes to that home mortgage. The interest rate that one pays, the downpayment they are required to meet, are all linked to what the credit score is. We have seen in the past how credit scores can actually be very different than what they should be. When people have had to fight for years to get a credit score restored because of identity theft, all sorts of things can happen. We had a hearing not too many years ago on this issue where the theft of identity requested in a person running wild with some credit cards. The individual who had his credit cards stolen then spent years trying to rehabilitate his own name and reputation because of what had happened and could never get access to his credit scores except that every financial transaction he went to engage in, he paid an awful price because the credit scores were obviously low, in light of the fact that people had stolen his cards and had run up huge debt. So in, everything else he was involved in where an interest rate was involved, his family paid a price for it.

Aside from having the knowledge of what it is, the ability to correct it as well is something we have spent a lot of time on. There is hardly an American citizen at one point or another who hasn't run into this difficulty. Today, in an era when so much of our well-being depends upon our credit scores, how we are rated, this becomes a critical point. People ought to know, what is my credit score, so they can either strengthen it or understand why they are being charged the various rates they are.

I commend my friend from Colorado and Senator Lugar. He mentioned others who are on the bill with him as well. I thank him for raising it. In the coming days, my hope is we will be able to provide some time to further debate it, if he so desires, and maybe get agreement to adopt the amendment.

Mr. President, if my colleague will yield.

I have read the amendment so many times I could almost recite it verbatim. It is only four sentences. As I understand it, I don't hear any objection to it whatsoever. Someone recently said can't we just accept it. I said I think my friend from California would like to have a vote on it and she has a right to a vote. So, again, my hope is, frankly, we could have an agreement to cast a vote on this at 2:15 when we return from the respective caucus lunches. I am waiting to hear from my Republican friends and colleagues because obviously I can't make a unanimous consent without them being in the room.

Mr. President, I commend my colleague from California who has been patient and has done a good job. I describe her statutory language as sort of the exclamation point in this. As the amendment reads, the very first line--and, again, I don't have to read it--at the end of this title includes the following. So it is at the end of the title. It is complicated to get this right, so we have a winding down and a disposition in receivership and bankruptcy in these institutions.

In case anybody had doubts about what the language does, the amendment says the word ``shall'' in every sentence. There are no ``mays.'' The taxpayer ``shall'' not be exposed. There ``shall'' be liquidation. It is very clear what we are trying to achieve. I know nobody objects.

We are on the bill. We ought to be able to start on a positive note. We are going to have times of significant division and debate on this bill coming up. I thought it might be worthwhile for the American public to witness a Senate that can actually, as it begins debate, do so with some unanimity. That doesn't happen with great frequency, but to start on that basis makes sense to me.

I hope our colleagues will agree with that conclusion and allow this amendment to be voted on as soon as we come back from our caucuses and then move to other amendments, hopefully, where there is agreement, demonstrating again that we are not fighting every single issue with each other. There is a lot of agreement about what ought to be in the bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until the hour of 2:15 p.m.

Will my colleague yield before yielding the floor?

Mr. President, I commend my colleague and friend and our colleague from Texas, Senator Hutchison. This is exactly the kind of effort we are trying to achieve in this bill. It is a complicated area of law. I appreciate the work of Senator Tester and others. I didn't hear all. I gather it is Senator Tester, Senator Hutchison, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Harkin--you have a list of Democrats and Republicans here who have worked on this amendment to bring it to this point. I support the amendment. I think this is a strong amendment that will require the FDIC, as I understand it--my colleague will correct me--to change how it charges for deposit insurance, which I think makes a lot of sense--from charging each bank's domestic deposits as it does now, to charging its total liabilities, which makes far more sense. This is a great help to community banks across the country, of which Senator Tester has been a champion since his arrival in the Senate and as a member of our Banking Committee. The change will help ease the burden of FDIC assessments on our community banks by requiring the largest banks in the country to shoulder a little more of the responsibility to rebuild and maintain a sound deposit insurance fund.

The amendment is fundamentally about fairness, which I think is one of its most important features. Community banks, as we all know, have been victims of a severe economic recession brought on by the behavior of major Wall Street firms. This has led to a high rate of community bank failures and a sharp increase in premiums necessary to rebuild the FDIC's insurance fund. Meanwhile, the largest banks have been saved by TARP moneys and other government programs that were necessary, obviously, as we all know, to avoid the economic meltdown and catastrophe we were facing in the fall of 2008.

The change required by this amendment will lead to a far more equitable distribution of the responsibility to maintain a strong deposit insurance fund. It also will free up new resources for smaller banks to lend to households.

So on every front, this amendment is a very positive contribution to this overall bill and one of the real features Members ought to keep in mind as we try to get this bill done. Without this amendment, which I support and want to see included, this will make even additional pressures on our community banks.

I thank both our colleagues, from Montana and Texas, as well as our new Senate colleague from Massachusetts, and Senator Harkin as well, for their contribution. As soon as we find a window here to bring this up, we wish to see this amendment get adopted and be part of the bill.

Mr. President, we have some potential action here. I hope in a few minutes to move along. The amendment of Senator Tester and Senator Hutchison is an amendment I hope we can deal with at some point fairly quickly. Again, it is one of those amendments where we have reached an agreement on both sides. My experience is when you have an agreement such as that, you better move on it.

I know there are others as well. The Boxer amendment I hope we can get up. Senator Shelby and I have worked on a larger amendment to deal with the too-big-to-fail provisions. Again, all of us want to see language, but let me say in the absence of language, we have reached agreement. Obviously we both need to look at the language of it before we can say that categorically. But I am satisfied, as is, I believe, my colleague from Alabama, that we have reached that agreement on the too- big-to-fail provisions which, with the Boxer amendment, takes that issue completely off the table as far as any further debate goes about title I and title II of the bill.

We have other issues. Senator Gregg mentioned a couple that obviously are going to need some work and some amendments are going to be offered on those. But in my view the sooner we move along on the ones where we have agreement, such as the Tester-Hutchison amendment, and some ideas I believe our colleague from Maine, Senator Snowe, wants to offer, we will demonstrate, I think once again, that we have the capacity to work with each other to actually advance what we are all trying to achieve, and that is reform of the financial system. My hope is rather shortly we will get to some agreements on time and bring up these efforts and not have another day go by when we are not actually dealing with specific amendments in this bill.

With that, I don't see another Member seeking recognition, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Gillibrand.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending Boxer amendment No. 3737 be temporarily set aside and that Senator Snowe of Maine be recognized to call up two amendments, Nos. 3755 and 3757; that no amendments be in order to either amendment; that upon the conclusion of debate with respect to the Snowe amendments, they be set aside and the Boxer amendment reoccur.

Madam President, I thank my fellow New Englander and colleague for her two amendments. They are very strong and positive contributions to the bill. She raises very worthwhile points. We have a tendency to think of small businesses all operating the same way, and they obviously don't. Particularly, the seasonal businesses have moments of peak activity and then periods when not much happens, whether we are talking about farming or fishing or tourism, other such industries. It was never our intent that they be adversely affected, but the amendment she has offered makes a huge difference in that regard. I thank her. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency to allow mortgages to be made on the basis of seasonal income is of great value.

The second amendment, 3755, on the collection of deposit account data, is a very good suggestion. The last thing we want to do is overburden the regulatory environment. The intentions were sound enough. We have an awful lot of people who go into the sort of nonbank, nontraditional sources of support financially. That was sort of the motivation behind it. Her concern, that this could be burdensome--and the last thing we need is more burdens--is worthwhile. I thank her for her contributions. I support these efforts.

I believe, at the appropriate moment, we can adopt these amendments.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, very briefly, let me thank my colleague from Texas. I already commented when Senator Tester of Montana spoke, but I will again thank her and the Senator from Montana and others cosponsoring this amendment. It is a very solid contribution to the bill.

Again, I think the idea of considering the total liabilities obviously makes a lot more sense. It alleviates the burden financially on smaller institutions. It adds that larger institutions have a greater capacity to share more equitably in these costs. Whether it is in our State or not, we read accounts of--as we have seen over the last year and a half--small banks having to close their doors. The pressures on the FDIC are mounting. Again, you don't want to keep adding assessments on institutions that are already trying to lend to

businesses in their communities, to provide mortgages and the like.

This is a very constructive amendment and a very solid idea to add to the bill. I thank the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Montana and the others involved. As soon as we work out time agreements, hopefully we can conclude and give the Senator from Texas a couple of minutes before we vote. It is exactly the way I want to manage this bill, if I can. There is a lot of commonality and many common interests, and too often the public only sees the fights we have and they don't realize how many issues we agree on. We are making the effort to try to reach agreements with each other. Obviously, it is not as interesting a story when we agree. It is not as exciting as when there is a brawl on the floor over some issue. I appreciate the media's appreciation of the brawls, but my intention is to limit that and get us to the point where we have common interests in putting a good bill together. Senator Hutchison's contribution to this amendment does exactly that, just as our colleague from Maine, who talked about her amendment a moment ago. Senator Warner has also been very helpful in this bill. I see Senator Whitehouse here. He is also interested in the subject matter. I thank my colleague from Texas.

Madam President, one of the important things about this amendment is this: There will be amendments offered in which we will take things out of the bill or put things in, but this is an idea which has great value as a freestanding idea in many ways. That is why it has great value. This is something we clearly need to do. You can talk about other parts of the bill, but this is an idea that brings value to the bill--significant value, in my view, in light of the economic circumstances we are in. I appreciate this amendment more than kind of a strike something in the bill or modify something. This adds real value to the legislation. I am appreciative of that.

Mr. President, I just wish to say to my friend how much I appreciate his involvement and support and effort over the past many months that we have worked in this area, since the collapse of our economy back in the fall of--well, it began earlier than that, actually, as we witnessed early in 2007 the mortgage crisis occurring across the country.

Senator Johnson has been tremendously helpful and valuable. He is my seatmate on the Banking Committee. We have been sitting next to each other on that committee for the past 3 years and working on these issues together. He brought great value to this debate and discussion, contributed significantly to the product before us, and I wished to thank him for that.

We have some work to do, obviously, in the next number of days on this bill. But it is a good bill. I appreciate his comments about how it has been a bill crafted not by one member, not by a chairman of a committee but by a group of us on that committee, Democrats as well as Republicans who contributed to this bill.

So I thank him for his work.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session on May 4, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The President's Proposed Fee on Financial Institutions Regarding TARP: Part 2''.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``ESEA Reauthorization: Improving America's Secondary Schools'' on Tuesday, May 4, 2010. The hearing will commence at 2 p.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on May 4, 2010, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Wall Street Fraud and Fiduciary Duties: Can Jail Time Serve as an Adequate Deterrent for Willful Violations?''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 4, 2010, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing titled, ``Recruiting and Retaining a Robust Federal Workforce.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as I understand it, the Senate is now going to resume consideration of S. 3217, the Wall Street reform bill, and I am told there will be no rollcall votes during today's session of the Senate.

Mr. President, first, I thank our colleague from Illinois for his predictable eloquence. He is not a member of the Banking Committee, but I began to think he was listening to him talk. He has a wonderful awareness and knowledge of the legislation, and I appreciate that very much. It is a complicated area of law. The fact that he has spent as much time analyzing what is in the bill and the important work that has been done over the many months we have been involved in this debate is something I appreciate very much. I thank him.

I know my friend from Kentucky is here as well. I will not take long, I say to Senator Bunning.

I am one who is supportive of the Boxer amendment. It is straightforward. The Senator from Illinois read the amendment. What I think is important is in the very first line it says, ``At the end of title II, add the following.'' That is the resolution title.

As the Senator from Illinois said, this is not a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. Title II of the resolution title is a title the Presiding Officer, Senator Warner of Virginia, and Senator Corker of Tennessee were the principal authors of on a bipartisan basis in November or December. I asked a number of my colleagues if they were interested in working on various sections of the bill. Senator Warner and Senator Corker had a strong interest in the resolution sections of title I and title II of the proposed legislation, the too-big-to-fail concept, something which I believe every Member of this Chamber endorses.

None of us wants to ever again be put in the situation that unfolded in the fall of 2008 when we saw a check for $700 billion being written out to stabilize a number of large financial institutions in the country.

The good news is that at the end of all of that, we are getting money back. But, obviously, it was traumatic to go through all of that, to watch institutions that should have been far more cognizant of the difficulty they were getting into, and when they got into deep trouble, in order to stabilize the

economy or have what the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury warned that had we not stepped in could have caused the entire financial system of this country of ours to melt down, to use their words exactly, in the fall of the 2008. All of us here collectively started with how do we write a piece of legislation that would minimize the events that unfolded over the last several years.

Once again, the statistics get repeated frequently on this floor, but they are deserving of being repeated. Mr. President, 8.5 million jobs have been lost, 7 million homes went into foreclosure, a 20-percent decline in retirement incomes, a 30-percent decline in home values, the $11 trillion to $13 trillion--that is with a ``T,'' trillion dollars-- in loss of household wealth. Senator Durbin enumerated a number of those statistics more on an individual basis or a family basis.

So we are determined, as we begin this process, that we begin with titles I and II. The titles of the bill don't always reflect priorities, but in this case they do. There is nothing more important we do in this bill than to end the too-big-to-fail concept--the notion there is an implicit guarantee that if you get in trouble as a financial institution, whatever it may be, that the Federal Government will bail you out when that happens. So we have worked very hard, over many months, to craft the language that will actually bring us to that conclusion; in the rare case, resolution; in most cases, bankruptcy or receivership, where management gets fired under our legislation or where creditors lose, shareholders lose their market value or the value of their shares, there is a tremendous decline there. This is a very painful process to go through but a necessary one.

What Senator Boxer has crafted is merely, in a sense, restating what we have in the legislation, in title I and title II, but to make it more clear and more emphatic, using all the tools we have written--and that is a significant section of this bill--with a tremendous amount of input from people whose knowledge and background in this area was critically important.

I wish to thank my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, because our colleague from Arizona is correct, there were issues involving bankruptcy that we had to work on in this legislation. With the cooperation of the Judiciary Committee as well, we were able to fashion what we have in this bill to end too big to fail. Senator Boxer's amendment emphasizes that point.

When she says in her amendment, very clearly, that all financial companies put into receivership--which is what the language of titles I and II does--under this title shall be liquidated. Shall be liquidated. Not maybe or we hope you are or wouldn't it be a nice thing if you were but you shall be liquidated. What words do my friends not understand in that sentence?

No taxpayer funds. The second sentence. No taxpayer funds shall-- again, for those who know the English language, that is not may--be used to prevent the liquidation of any financial company under this title. I don't know how much more clear you can be. Again, I commend her for the language because I think it is the kind of language that anyone ought to be able to understand.

All funds expended in the liquidation of a financial company under this title shall be recovered from the disposition of assets of such financial company or shall be the responsibility of the financial sector through assessments. In other words, they shall pay, not the taxpayers. Again, I don't know how much more clearly you could write the language.

What we did through page after page and chapter after chapter and title after title, if you will, was to legally tell you how we do this. But Senator Boxer has then put an exclamation point on it by telling you this is what all this means, in case anyone fails to understand it.

Then, in the third sentence, taxpayers shall--again--bear no losses from the exercise of any authority under this title of the bill.

So I applaud and thank my colleague from California for the language. Again, we think we have done it. But, look, anyone who tells you they have written the perfect bill, be careful of them. I have been around here long enough to know there is no such thing as the perfect bill. Senator Shelby, my partner, the ranking Republican and the former chairman of the committee, and I are working on additional language that some have raised as a way to tighten this down even further, should there be any doubts. My hope is, shortly, maybe even as early as tomorrow, we will be able to present a united front on how we do that to further allay the fears some have that titles I and II don't quite complete what they were designed toward achieving in this legislation. So I look forward to that.

I am a supporter of the Boxer amendment when it comes up. The other parts of this bill, again, we have talked a lot about. Senator Kyl talked about various other ways of dealing with bankruptcy. He is correct; it is complicated. It is not a straight, normal bankruptcy because there are counterparties; that is, other people, other institutions that may be in very good shape, not in danger at all of coming undone, that could be adversely affected by the financial collapse of another firm. So we want to be careful, as we begin that process of liquidation, that we don't put the country at greater risk than would be the case with the single company or the single institution going into receivership.

So there are aspects that have required a very thoughtful process and, again, the Presiding Officer--and I commend him for it--along with Senator Corker and others, has been very involved and has been able to work on it over these many months. This is not a bill that was drafted over the weekend or in a few days. There has been a tremendous amount of work that has gone into it. Again, my hope is, as we gather in the coming days on this bill, that we will be talking about what is in this bill and how it works, rather than people listening to some talking points out of a political document about what they hope might be or might not be in the bill in order to arrive at some political judgment. This issue is far too serious. If we fail in this effort over the coming days, then we will leave this country of ours so exposed to the exact situation we saw in the fall of 2008.

We know in the world in which we live today, it isn't just a matter of what happens in our own country--all the headlines we have read about now over the last several weeks of a small country in the Mediterranean--Greece--going through great economic difficult has all of a sudden put Europe at risk financially. The Euro has declined in value, the debt instruments have lost their value. Now the IMF has jumped in, and the Europeans apparently may have jumped in, but let it be a warning to people that we are not living in a world any longer where an American institution, an American bank or some financial institution gets in trouble; we are now talking about a world where what happens in Shanghai, what happens in Europe, what happens in small countries can affect all of us.

We need to recognize that in this 21st century, the rules we are operating on basically were written 100 years ago or more and we need to update those rules and regulations to make it possible for us to manage the next crisis when it comes, and it will come, certainly. When it does occur, will we be able to deal with it effectively, early on, so as not to watch it explode across this country and cause as much devastation as the present events over the last 2 years have?

That is what this effort is all about. It is not more complicated than that, although the answers can be complicated as we try to fashion them in a way that makes sense. I pray this will not become an ideological or political debate. We bear far too great a responsibility to our fellow citizens not to give our best judgment on how to resolve these matters. It ought not to be a question of who wins and who loses 6 months from tomorrow when it will be election day--6 months tomorrow, on November 4. I know there is a great preoccupation with that. I don't deny that. But our efforts on this bill ought not to be wrapped around that conclusion. We ought to be trying to do our very best to fashion the steps, the rules that will allow us to minimize the effects of another economic crisis.

I can't imagine walking away from this session of Congress, after all the effort that has been made to bring us

to this point, not to sit down and resolve these matters in a way that allows us to move forward. So I intend to be supportive of the Boxer amendment. I hope and believe Senator Shelby and I can agree on a second set of ideas to present to our fellow colleagues tomorrow. I have listened over the weekend. We have worked very hard with all our colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, who have come up With additional ideas they would like to incorporate as a part of this bill, and we are working with them. My hope is we can lay those out in the next 2 or 3 days to reach agreement on some of those matters.

There will be some matters which we probably can't resolve, despite our good efforts. If that is the case, then we should have a good, healthy debate for an hour or two, then vote in this Chamber and decide whether to accept or reject various ideas. That is the way this institution was designed to work. So in the coming days, I intend to be standing at this very spot, acting as the manager of this bill, along with Senator Shelby, and again the members of the committee who spent so much time and effort over the last number of months will be a part of this discussion. They offered their intelligence, their background, and their information that I think will enlighten and inform not only the membership but the country as well to what we are trying to achieve.

I look forward to that debate, when we begin in the next 24 hours, and hope that over the next week or so we can conclude that debate; that we will have that good kind of civil conversation, partisan at various points, as I am sure it is apt to be, but remind each other that we bear a joint responsibility to get this right before we adjourn this Congress and to see to it that the American people have a good answer, at least the best answer we can give them under the circumstances, as to how to minimize the effects that have caused so much harm to our country over the last 2 years.

With that, I thank my colleague from Kentucky, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am delighted to see that my good friend and colleague from Tennessee is here.

Let me say, there is not a word the Senator from Tennessee has just said--I listened to his remarks--that I disagree with. In fact, I agree with everything he just said. I hope that mentality and attitude will prevail in the coming week or two we are going to be engaged in this discussion. I was thinking--when the Senator was talking--about an article I read the other day. It was making the same point the Senator from Tennessee is making; that is, that of the 50 largest banks in the world, 4 of them are located in the United States, 5 are located in our neighbor to the north, in Canada. Canada has a much smaller economy. Obviously, it is a smaller country than ours. They did not suffer any of the difficulties we have gone through during the last couple years during this economic crisis. They had a downturn. I do not mean to say it was all working beautifully for them, but, nonetheless, they did not have the problems within their financial structures we have had, despite the fact they have actually 1 more than we do of those 50 largest banks.

Paul Krugman, of the New York Times, whom I do not always agree with, has written about this point as well. I do not know if my colleague has seen his articles. Size, I understand, is important to people, and that may be one way of looking at all this. But it is excessive risk, it is a question of whether there is proper regulation of activities. It is leverage. It is capital requirements. It is liquidity. It is all these other factors--the ones we are trying to keep an eye on--because size then can become a problem.

But size may not be the only issue. You could be a small institution engaging in the marketing of products that put the system at risk. So we need to get focused on exactly what are the issues we are trying to address in all this. That is what we have tried to do. Again, my compliments to both the Acting President pro tempore and the Senator from Tennessee for their tireless work. The Senator from Tennessee knows he and I worked and spent a lot of time talking about all this as well. A lot of what is in this bill is a reflection of the Senator's labors. I realize it is not exactly everything he wants, but I think it is 90, 95 percent of what we are talking about. My hope is in the coming days we can try to close whatever concerns and gaps people have that do not do any underlying damage to the overall thrust of what we are trying to improve.

I wish to pick up on a second point as well because I think it is very important. I have said the three goals I have for this bill. I hope all of us have for this bill. One is to try to close the gaps where we have this unregulated part of our economy that went kind of wild out there and caused so much of the difficulties our country has been going through. So to the extent we can do that--recognizing it is not our job to regulate. I always say there are two things we do not do very well in this institution: One is to set accounting standards or necessarily write regulations. It is not within our pay grade to try to do all that. We try to focus on institutions that have that responsibility and then demand the accountability. But I, clearly, want to see us plug in those gaps so we do not have shadow economies operating that can put us at risk.

Secondly, to try to see if we cannot create--there is always some danger in trying to do this and I commend both my colleagues because they have been the principal advocates of this--some sort of an early radar warning system. I do not know how perfectly it can work or how well it can work but at least having the idea that we have people with eyes who will bring a different perspective to all this, to kind of keep an eye out to the Greeces, the Shanghais, as well as to what happens here because we live in that global economy, as my colleague from Tennessee has just articulated.

So if this next crisis comes--and it will come as certain as I am standing here, maybe long after we are gone from here--there will be another economic crisis, some bubble, I suppose, someplace--the question is, Can we identify it early enough before it metastasizes--I use that word--into the rest of the economy or globally, as is Greece, for instance, today. It is the downgrading of their debt that all of a sudden caused the Euro to decline, and Europe finds itself, once again, on the precipice of an economic disaster, spilling potentially over to the rest of the world. So that is the second point of the bill.

But the third point is equally important; that is, to make sure, in our determination to satisfy point 1 and point 2, we do not end up strangling a financial system. We need to make sure the creativity, the innovation, the flow of credit and capital that are critical for job creation, wealth creation, and economic growth are going to be there.

That is a very difficult sense of balance to maintain. No one has ever gotten it absolutely right. It is always one side or the other that seems to be dominating the other. But those are my three goals, in a sense: to make sure we satisfy those first two, while simultaneously making sure we do not end up making it more difficult for that kind of innovation and creativity to spring forward.

So it is exactly as the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Tennessee and many others have done--because they had an idea, they had imagination, they had determination to go out and to create an idea, to see an idea that would put people to work, to solve problems for people, whether it is a medical device or a prescription drug or creating a new widget that improves the efficiencies of how we function as a country. There are all sorts of ideas that have been the wellspring of what has made America such a unique place in the world, particularly in the 20th century.

So before we begin this whole amendment process--I will repeat this as many times as I can--those are the goals. I think they are the shared goals. I believe they are the shared goals we all have. Obviously, there are debates about whether certain points advance those goals or cause some retreat in them, and I believe honest people can disagree about how to do that.

In our job, which is the hardest thing in the world--I am speaking about a former Governor and a former mayor. They have come out of the executive side of the government, where it must be awfully frustrating to be sitting in a body with 98 other people who are also, in a sense, executives--we are all coequals--to bring forth our ideas to try to forge, out of a body such as this of 100 people, some clear, focused vision of how to achieve those goals.

But that is the challenge we have in the coming weeks. Again, I am very grateful to both my colleagues for the contribution they have made. I say that with complete sincerity and appreciation for their efforts. This can be, I hope, a good, honest discussion and debate. Hopefully, we can agree on some things. Others may have to have that debate and those votes to see where it lies and not try to bind up the place in filibusters and other things. It is not an unlimited debate. We do not have unlimited time, obviously, to do it. But we can spend the next couple weeks to try to get this focused in a way where we can come out and, again, not solve every problem. This bill does not take on every imaginable financial institution and issue out in the country, but we think it focuses on some of these critical ones that are important.

I appreciate my colleague from Tennessee coming over and sharing his thoughts. Again, I agree with him on our goals. That is my point.

Mr. President, again I wish to thank my colleague from Tennessee for his comments and thoughts. I won't address each and every point, but I wish to make a couple of suggestions.

Most people I have worked with over the years, many of whom have long since left this Chamber since the day I arrived here in January of 1981, I think people believe this about me, which is that I never chaired a committee before 36 months ago, 37 months ago, despite being here for 30 years. I had the wonderful privilege of sitting next to some people who have had longevity, both politically and healthwise, so I ended up having the wonderful experience of being a junior Member for virtually my entire service. Only about 37 or 38 months ago did I become a chairman of a major committee the first time, the Banking Committee. It was through the departure of my great friend Paul Sarbanes who has now retired, the elevation of Joe Biden to the vice presidency, and the passing of my best friend in this Chamber, Ted Kennedy, that created an opportunity for me for the first time in a quarter of a century to actually chair a committee.

But I have managed bills on the floor in the past, either as a subcommittee chairman or for other matters. In every single instance, with the exception of one or two, I have always had a Republican partner in what I have done. Kit Bond and I did family and medical leave together, along with Dan Coats of Indiana. Orrin Hatch and I wrote child care legislation 27 years ago. I worked on private securities litigation reform with Phil Gramm of Texas. Mitch McConnell and I did the Help America Vote Act together. Lamar Alexander and I did premature birth infant screening. There is a long list without exception. I don't have a public partner yet on this one here and, again, I think it is a reflection on the times we are in, in terms of people's willingness to come together and say this isn't exactly what I would write, anymore than this bill is today, but to sit down and help manage something through so we get to that point of getting the best result we can under the circumstances in which we live, the times in which we live.

So over these coming weeks, while I don't have a partner yet in all of this, I will certainly be reaching out the best I can to people to say, Come along. Again, if you are looking for perfection, if one side wants to totally dominate the other, obviously, you don't get that. But my experience, with some success over the years, includes in our own committee where during the last 37 months we have had 42 measures come out of the Banking Committee. Now 37 of those 42 measures are the law of the land today because Richard Shelby and I have been able to work together with others on a wide range of issues, by the way. We worked on transit security, terrorist risk insurance, port security, a lot of major balls, Iran sanction legislation, and the like. So I am hopeful that will happen here in the next couple of weeks, and I am reaching out to people so that will be the process.

Let me mention specifically a couple of things. I agree with my colleague, I hope we can resolve the derivatives issue. I commend Blanche Lincoln for her efforts, and Chuck Grassley. By the way, the only bipartisan proposal that is on the table right now is the one Senator Lincoln forged and managed to get some bipartisan support for. So I commend my colleague from Arkansas for her work on that committee.

It is going to involve all of us here to come up with some answers on derivatives. Despite the fact that my friend from Tennessee would love to sit in that chair of his over there and have a good laugh, as we end up having a battle here--no, sir, the Senator from Tennessee is going to be involved in that whether he likes it or not if we are going to end up resolving it.

On the issue again of too big to fail, the Presiding Officer and the Senator from Tennessee have done about 98 percent of the work. There are a couple of issues we are going to try to work ourselves through over the next couple of days and present to our colleagues what we believe is a fair resolution of that matter that will deal with those issues and that will guarantee I hope once and for all the end of the debate about whether anything in this bill is designed to perpetuate the too-big-to-fail concept.

Let me mention the issue of underwriting, because we have written-- and of course the Federal Reserve has now written underwriting standards, at long last, by the way. I was around in 1994 when we passed the legislation mandating the Federal Reserve to promulgate regulations against deceptive and fraudulent practices in the residential mortgage market. They never promulgated one in all of those years, so we ended up in this unregulated part of the economy, again, where a lot of these brokers and others were out there luring people into complicated matters. I get a kick out of this: Having owned several homes in Connecticut--two, actually--over the last 30 years, and one home here, we have all been to those closings, when we sit down across that table and there is usually a stack of papers with tabs on them and someone who is representing the buyer and seller is asking us to sign. I have yet to meet anybody, whether it is a banker, a lawyer, a Senator, or a Congressman, who reads all of the details in those things. We sort of assume whoever is representing our interests has protected us. Well, we can imagine an awful lot of people in the country who lack the understanding or even the financial literacy who appreciate what they are reading.

Clearly underwriting standards are important. How do we achieve that? For the first time, what these community banks like about our bill is we are not going to have that unregulated part of the economy, so they are going to play by the same rules. That has been unfair to those who have been regulated. I can't speak for community bankers in Tennessee or Virginia, but I can tell my colleagues in my State of Connecticut, I forget the numbers, but it is so infinitesimal, the number of foreclosures that occurred or subprime lending that went on within my community banks, and I presume that is pretty true nationwide based on the evidence I have heard over the last

number of months. So we need to get that unregulated shadow economy regulated.

We also know what has happened. In securitization, the difference between Canada and the United States and Europe and ourselves is we have had a deep appreciation for the ability of the average American to buy a home because we have understood how much that meant to people. The idea that they can have their own home has been the greatest source of wealth creation for most Americans, an acquisition of equity in a piece of property that would ultimately provide a source of revenue to help educate your children, provide a cushion in your retirement. It stabilizes families, stabilizes neighborhoods and communities. Look at neighborhoods where you have renting and where you have people who have a financial interest in that property in which they live, and the differences are huge. So we are different. I know in Europe and elsewhere you get 5-year loans and so forth. We are the only country in the world, the only one, that provides a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage for people. It has been a remarkable tool to provide stability and wealth creation for people. Other countries don't do that.

I certainly believe you have to have underwriting standards. You have to have them. The question is how do you get them and what is the standard, because as my friend points out--and he is absolutely right about this--having that 15 percent or 20 percent may be absolutely critical under one set of circumstances, but for someone else it may not be necessary. You may actually have a zero down, again, based on the FICO scores and other factors that are there to apply one standard over another. What we want is underwriting standards that will take into consideration the ability of that borrower to meet those obligations so they understand what they are getting into.

The securitization of the real estate market has provided a source of capital and liquidity that has allowed for a further expansion of home ownership. So I am not opposed to securitization at all; it is a question of whether it can be done responsibly, the rating agencies that brand these bundled products as being AAA or AA and whether the institutions are actually marketing products that they are going to be concerned about what happens to them. We all know what has occurred for a lot of the unregulated brokers. We recall we had those hearings in which they showed their Web site where the first rule of the broker was: Convince the borrower you are their financial adviser. Of course, we have learned they were anything but in many cases their financial adviser. They are being paid rather quickly. The banks that are writing the mortgages hold on to them on average 8 to 10 weeks. That is the average time. So basically in that 8 or 10 weeks they bundle these together and sell them off, so they are out of the game; they have been paid. The broker is paid, the bank is paid, and some unsuspecting investor has just acquired something that has a brand on it of AAA or AA and they feel pretty good. Home mortgages have been a pretty reliable investment over the years. People pay their mortgages. And of course no one was sitting there insisting that we look at exactly whether that borrower could afford to do this under these circumstances or looking at whether it was a fully indexed price or looking at all of these other teaser rates and things that went on in there.

We will have someone there who will now be accountable, because we are going to keep an eye on you. There is a cop on the beat who says to the broker that you have to do this right. We are saying to institutions out there you are going to, one, either put up skin in the game, because I know if you have skin in the game you will pay more attention to what you are doing; you will not expose yourself to losses if you have skin in the game or--and this is where we need to come together--meet some underwriting standard. Make the choice. If you don't want to do that, put some money on the table, because I want you to bear some loss if that thing goes out the door and you have allowed it to happen because you decided you didn't care. I prefer to have the underwriting standards. That is one option I looked at, and I invite my colleague to look at this, to get good underwriting standards, in the absence of which we might have an inability to move forward. I raise that as one thought.

On the consumer side of the equation, a lot more gets made of these issues for the very reason my friend from Tennessee worries about. I find people sort of pumping up politically trying to fire up people because they have other motives in all of this. I am aware that people can demagog on the issue of what we are trying to do. For the first time in our country, seven agencies have had a consumer protection responsibility, and virtually all of them have failed. It is not a priority. There is always something else that comes in that takes a priority position, including those who have the prudential responsibilities of safety and soundness. I acknowledge that safety and soundness is critical. I am also painfully aware that for quite a bit of time, between 2005 and 2007, people were saying: Our institutions are safe and sound. What are you talking about? How do you know that? Look at how much money they are making--when, in fact, it was rotting from within, because of the very things my colleague talked about: lack of underwriting standards, people were pushing this stuff out the door, and there were unregulated sections of our economy running wild. It was hardly safe and sound; nobody was watching what was happening at the most fundamental level--that person who picks out a home for their family and decides this is what we would love to have; they pick out colors for the rooms and get excited, and then they are across the table and they close on the deal. It is hardly a level playing field.

For the overwhelming majority of Americans, it is hardly a level playing field. When you are excited about it and you are convinced this is the right thing for your family, you can get lured into those deals. I am not excusing the consumer. We all have to be more responsible. Senator Daniel Akaka has spent time talking about financial literacy. We tried to include provisions to raise the level of financial literacy. My colleagues know I have two young children--an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old. My 8-year-old is in second grade here in a public school in the District. They are trying to get them to talk more in math classes early on about how to balance a checkbook, so that we start raising a generation that will understand financial responsibilities at an early age.

I don't discount the moral responsibility and the financial responsibility people have. That is where a lot of this began. All we are trying to do here is say that average citizen has an advocate in this process.

We saw what happened to the credit card industry, which was gouging people right and left. That bill passed 90 to 5 here, trying to do something about that issue. I worry that sometimes people glom onto these ideas and say the sky is falling, and what a dreadful thing we may do, when that is hardly the intention at all.

I am prepared to listen to ideas on how we can make this work better. I don't want someone to exaggerate what this means and then suggest somehow that the bill should fall because maybe we are trying to do a little more in this area of protecting people, who have very little protections out there in the world today.

I am not talking about what happens at some community bank level. In fact, the community bankers--again, providing regulatory coverage to those nonregulated areas is important, as we are talking about here; it is not the Federal regulators. If your financial institution's business assets are less than $10 billion--and I only have one in Connecticut that has assets in excess of $10 billion--then your cop is that local involvement, not the Federal Government or some national consumer protection agency jumping all over you. It is going to be done at a local level. Again, we will have to watch it and see how it works. I think we would be remiss in the bill if we didn't end up with something that says to the American consumer: What do I get out of this?

Lastly, I don't like the bashing that goes on. I realize that happens. To make a point, sometimes people engage in that. My colleague said this at the outset of his remarks, and I commend him. The idea that we want to provide that capital, that credit for that person, with an idea that if someone

wants to expand a plant, we need to have a Wall Street that helps that happen. This is too circular. It was all happening within the sort of closed circulatory system, where little of that capital was moving out. Basically, people were thinking how to scam it. By making bets for and against certain things, their wealth increased, but very little of it got out through that mechanism to that person you are talking about there--maybe that person you went to as a young man of 25, who took a chance on you and said that guy has a good idea and I am going to get behind him. That is the idea we ought to have more of, where a person with a good idea can come through the door, and someone may be interested in your idea.

That happens in venture capital and equity markets. My colleague from Virginia can bear witness to what angel investors can do. I spoke last evening with our colleague from Missouri, Kit Bond, who cares about it, as Senator Warner does. We will have amendments on that. We possibly went too far in the bill in that area. We need to fix that so that the venture capitalist who thinks you have a good idea can get behind it. Too much of Wall Street gave up on that. No customers were coming in the door as we know them here, and it got so self-absorbed in its own capacity to generate wealth for itself that it lost sight of what this is supposed to all be about. That is what makes people so furious.

I thank my colleague from Tennessee--this is probably not something he wants to be thanked for, but having been charged, he has been very involved in this. I will never forget as long as I live that morning meeting about six of us had. He was included. It was on the first floor. We met to figure out how to do this thing in the fall of 2008, to put us into a position where we don't find a financial meltdown and collapse. We will never know the answer as to whether that would have happened. But when you have pretty important people telling you we are on the brink of that, we had to respond. We stepped up and managed to write something that I think made a difference. But the ability to come together and get that job done, to move us away from that, and then to watch, after we stabilized these institutions and kept them on their feet, provided the kind of security and predictability, turn around and sort of almost disregard all of that and get into these silly arguments about how much of a bonus I can take, in the midst of everybody else suffering, is where this arrogance comes in, which people in the country got so irate about.

There was a notion that having written that check for $700 billion to stabilize and provide certainty that we weren't going to collapse--you would have thought at that moment, for a couple of years, leaders of these institutions would say: Thank you, America, thank you, average Joe taxpayer, you kept this country alive. You stood up and made that choice. We thank you for doing that. By the way, for the next few years, we are going to take some hits for ourselves, self-imposed. We will not take huge bonuses of millions of dollars. We are going to roll up our sleeves and figure out how we can do a better job of doing like Bob Corker and Mark Warner did. Someone stood behind them and with them, and they grew a business, employed people, and created jobs in our country. I don't recall hearing one voice say that during all of this--not one stood up and said: Thank you, America; thank you for writing that check to help us stabilize our economy. It was the arrogance of it that drove people to distraction. I don't disagree. We need to move on in the debate. But it is also important to understand what happened here and why people are so angry and upset. Jobs have been lost, lives have been ruined--absolutely ruined--because of what happened over the last 18 months, and a little before that. They are never going to get it back again. That retirement income is gone, the home has been lost, and that job has disappeared. So they are never going to get back on their feet again.

When they hear somebody saying that is the way life is, and I hope one day life gets better for you--why not have a consumer protection agency to keep an eye on these things. Obviously, some people aren't going to watch out that closely for you. Maybe that is part of our job to do that. I don't want to create a situation to take small businesses and others--I know there has been a lot of talk about that, but that is not the intention. We can make it clear that that is not what we are trying to do at all. Too often sometimes we get insulated from what is happening out there. I understand that level. The tea party people-- many were at every event with ``dump Dodd'' signs and flags and bumper stickers. Certainly, it hurt personally that people would say that about me after 30 years of service. But I kind of understand it, too. I understand the average person. It wasn't about me personally, necessarily. They were deeply upset and frustrated. They are not bad people. Maybe there is some leadership out there and others who are frankly dangerous elements. I worry about that. I have a feeling that an awful lot of people who are not at a rally but are watching it on TV and reading about it feel that way too. They may say: I am not going to join in a crazy demonstration saying outrageous things, but I feel that way too. I think we need to acknowledge that in all of this. They are out there, and they are not Democrats, Republicans, Independents; they don't think about political affiliation every day. They wonder if anybody is watching out for them. Who cares about me? When these debates happen and people talk about systemic risk, derivatives, credit default swaps, and currency swaps, they say, what are you talking about? I don't understand what you are talking about. I presume it is important, but how does that affect me? I want to know is anybody in that place going to write anything here so when the credit card company or that bank, that is not necessarily the best guy in town--is someone standing up for me and giving me a shot that I don't end up in the ruinous position so many people did when we were going through a safe and sound period, when we were anything but safe and sound?

That is at the heart of all this. I will listen to ideas on how we can do a better job. If anybody claims they have all the wisdom, I get nervous about those people. We are not going to write something that will necessarily satisfy everybody. Hopefully, we can do something that makes sense.

I didn't intend to talk this long, but that point of not losing sight of our job here--it is about big companies that sell all over the world. I know that. Being able to have big financial institutions that they can stay with and compete in the global economy. But in our interest in satisfying that, let's not forget that person who is not a big company, a big corporation, who is going to work every day trying to raise their families and make sure if somebody gets sick, they will be OK, and they can retire with dignity and security, and maybe buy that home or take that vacation. They are not looking for much out there. They want to know in this debate, in this bill here, which has my name on it--the only name on it is mine at this point. There is only one name up here, and I will be the last to say there is anything Biblical about this. It is our best efforts to try to address some issues here. There are flaws in here, I will guarantee you. Sometimes things don't work as well as the author intended. But is there something in here that speaks to that individual out there, who is not a banker, not a Wall Street guy, not a big corporation, just a consumer in the country, and they would like to know we have them in mind.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, while we are on the subject matter, I appreciate the thoughts of my friend and colleague from Tennessee. Let me note one quick observation the Senator said. It goes back to the issue that Wall Street could have used a public relations firm. In a sense, that is the problem. When you have to hire a public relations firm, if you do not understand this yourself, then there is something fundamentally wrong. You do not need to hire a public relations firm if you are taking multimillion-dollar bonuses and 8.5 million people have lost their jobs and 7 million homes are in foreclosure, in no small measure, because of the problems you created. I don't think you need a public relations firm. Where is the sense of decency and ethics and morality that says: The average citizen made it possible for this institution I am running to stay alive? If I have to insist we hire a public relations firm, we are in deeper trouble than I could imagine.

That is usually the answer when things go wrong: hire a public relations firm. Just stand up and tell the truth. That might not be a bad idea. They always say it is the best defense on these matters.

I presume my colleague shares my view on this subject, that they should not have needed a public relations operation to do it. I could not resist responding. One would have thought a good look in the mirror would have done it, and saying to themselves: Why are people angry? What can we do to help get back on our feet?

That is what is going on out there. I thank my colleague. I did not mean to dwell on that point.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

That is correct, yes.

None whatsoever.

Amendment No. 3736

Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I wish to commend our friend and colleague from Hawaii. I have had the privilege and pleasure of knowing Senator Akaka for a long time. He is consistent in his issue cluster, if you will. He obviously has issues to deal with in his State, but I have never known another individual who has been as dogged as the Senator from Hawaii has been about seeing to it that people get that clear, understandable information, the ability to learn more about their own financial activities, that literacy he has consistently talked about for such a long time.

There are other accomplishments he has achieved. He is a wonderful member of our committee. He has made a significant contribution to this bill. This bill can bear his name on it as having contributed a major portion of the effort we are trying to achieve. I thank him for that.

We have a ways to go now on the floor in the debates that come here, but I am grateful to him for his consistent support, his ideas he has brought to the product we have now before us. I thank him not only on behalf of his colleagues but on behalf of the American people. He may represent one State, but his language here affects every State and every person in it. That is a significant contribution. I thank the Senator for it.

Mr. President, I did not get a chance to respond to our colleague from Virginia, Senator Webb, and, first of all, to commend him. His wonderful service to our country in uniform is known by many, but every year he comes to the floor and takes a moment to talk about the conflict in Vietnam, where he played such a significant role in the fall of Saigon. We are grateful to him for his service to our country.

We are a better Chamber because of Jim Webb's presence here and the knowledge and understanding he brings. I know the Presiding Officer, as his colleague from Virginia, appreciates the relationship he has with him and the difference he has made in the Senate by being here. So I thank Jim Webb for that.

He has offered an idea, as well, to this financial reform package, one to which I am very sympathetic. There are some constitutional issues we have with tax measures that have to originate on the House side rather than on the Senate side under the Constitution. I know my colleague from Virginia is probably aware of that, but nonetheless his ideas have some merit. Obviously, when he brings it up, we will have a chance to talk about it, but I would be remiss if I did not mention that particular issue.

I see my colleague from North Dakota, who is here with some thoughts.

I yield the floor.

Will my colleague yield?

One of the powers of the systemic risk council is, in fact, the power to break up large financial institutions. It is not one of the things they would do, but it is a power which resides in our bill for them to do that. I couldn't agree more about the excessive risks that institutions have taken,

but there is a distinction. I always think it is more about what risks these institutions pose. Do they have capital standards, leverage standards, liquidity standards that are in place? As we were discussing earlier, of the 10 largest financial institutions in the world, the United States has 1. Of the top 50, 5 are in Canada, a country with which my colleague is more familiar than most. We have four. They have had very few financial problems during this crisis, not because of the size of their institutions so much as they are far better regulated in terms of what they can do, what risks they can assume. There are other things they engage in as well.

The point my colleague is making is a very sound one, to make sure we are not seeing our system exposed to the kind of actions that can bring it down. But I wanted to at least mention to him that we do have the power to divest, and we are trying to work on that issue of excessive risk. I appreciate his comments.

That is true.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we have been having a conversation this morning. Senator Corker of Tennessee was on the floor, a member of our Banking Committee, and he and I engaged in a conversation about our legislation. Senator Akaka from Hawaii, a member of the committee as well, was here to talk about the bill. Senator Dorgan was here talking about arms control, but also about our legislation. Senator Jim Webb was also here this morning to talk about provisions in the bill. While there are no votes today, it was an opportunity for people to come and talk about either what they are in support of or what they object to and what additions they may wish to make.

Let me emphasize again my hope that today and over the weekend and Monday, Members who have amendments to this bill, Democrats and Republicans, if they would let us know what those amendments are so we can begin to process them and possibly accept, hopefully, as many as we possibly can as additions to the bill, and modify some, making them acceptable, without having necessarily to go into votes. Of course there will be some that will require a debate and discussion and votes on the floor. We wish to accommodate as many Members as we can over the next couple of weeks on these matters. I know the leader has indicated to me that his intention is to come in very early every day and to stay late next week and the week after if necessary so we can accommodate as many Members as possible in this debate. I know the floor staff of the Senate is delighted to hear those comments about being in early and staying late, but obviously we want to get this bill done if we can. It is an important piece of legislation. I know there are others who want to be heard on it. Obviously it is an emotional issue, given what our country has gone through over the last 2 years. So I lay that out as a backdrop for my colleagues and ask them to let us know how we can be helpful to them.

I will also respectfully ask that when Members bring up their amendments, if we can limit the time of debate so we don't have extended debate. A good, strong debate can occur over a half an hour or 45 minutes and might be more than adequate, and to then give our colleagues an opportunity to vote.

Briefly, this afternoon, before closing out this discussion, I wish to talk about a very important part of this bill. We have been hearing a lot of discussion about too big to fail and about the derivatives sections of the bill and the early warning system. One of the major attributes of this legislation is the establishment of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or division. We have never had one before. In fact, we have had many of them, but not one. We have around seven of them at the Federal level, various prudential regulators. I have great respect for the people who work in these divisions.

Candidly, as I think many of them would attest, the predominant function of the regulator has been the safety and soundness function, and the consumer side of that equation has always been sort of relegated to a second-class status in too many cases. As a result, over the years we have seen that consumer protection has not had, when it comes to financial services, the elevated status it deserves. So I wish to talk about briefly what is in our bill. I wish to take great exception to some of the falsehoods that are being bandied about to describe what is in this bill, address them each directly by quoting from the bill. Members themselves can then read the legislation to determine whether they think the language is adequate. Obviously we don't want to overly burden anyone, nor do we want to leave a situation where people are burdened, tremendously so, when their homes, their incomes, their retirement have been lost because consumer protection was not being considered at all during the time the economic crisis was emerging and during the time it exploded.

I would be very surprised if any Member of this body comes to the floor and says, Well, I don't think we need to put a focus on consumer protection. Virtually everyone I have spoken to has said this is very important. We need to have consumer protection in the financial modernization and financial reform bill. After all, I think it is widely understood that it was a failure of consumer protection that was at the very heart of the financial crisis. It was, of course, these bad mortgages that were being sold and that people were being lured into that caused the fires that began and that consumed our economy, or nearly consumed our economy. Over the last year and a half, in fact, as the Banking Committee has held a long series of hearings on the root cause of the crisis, the pattern has been clear. Americans, as we now know painfully, were sold mortgages they never understood and could never have afforded.

The very first witness we had before the Banking Committee when I became chairman in January and February of 2007--I had never been chairman of a committee before, until the retirement of my great pal and friend and wonderful chairman, Paul Sarbanes, who had served as chairman, and as Richard Shelby, my now ranking member had been chairman. In February the very first hearings we held were on the mortgage crisis.

The very first witness we had was a woman named Delores King, who is an elderly woman from Chicago. She is retired. She worked all her life. She had lost her husband, as I recall, but they had been able to buy a home years before. They had lived in that home and raised their family. She tragically lost her husband and she was on in years. She had a very small amount of debt. I don't know whether it was a credit card debt or utility debt, but I am talking small--$2,000 or $3,000, as I recall now. Three years ago she appeared as my first witness as chairman of the committee to talk about the mortgage crisis in January and February of 2007.

What happened to her happened, unfortunately, over and over again. A mortgage broker came and said: I know how to take care of that debt you have, Mrs. King. What we will do is rewrite your mortgage for you on your home. Here she was on a fixed income as a retiree in our country, trying to make ends meet. She had not a lot of retirement income. I think she may have worked in the postal department. She worked in the library. I thank my staff member here recalling from 3 years ago who was with me that day. She worked in a library in Chicago, obviously not making a lot of money as a librarian, or working in the library. So she was on a very fixed, narrow income as a retiree. That mortgage this guy sold to her ended up exploding on her in a matter of months to the point where it consumed 70 percent of her fixed income and she lost the home. Here is a woman who had done everything right, and that went on over and over again.

If you want to know why we are in the mess we are in, although things are getting better, it was Delores King's story being repeated over and over and over and over and over again that

caused the situation we are living in today.

So when I say the root cause of what happened to us financially began in the living rooms of Delores King and those like her, that is exactly what happened. There are other factors as well, but that is the root cause. So to talk about drafting a bill on financial reform and excluding the kind of protections that would have avoided Delores King losing her home and going through the financial turmoil as a retiree must be a critical part of this legislation and why I feel so passionately and strongly about this in our bill.

The regulators today we have in place simply can't get this job done. I won't dwell on it. I have great respect for people who work in our respective public sectors at the local, State, and national level. I am sure there are many good and talented people. But when you are subjected to a division or a bureau that kind of separates you out in sort of the basement or wherever else you are, if not physically at least how you are treated in the context of everything else, you get some flavor of what has happened here. Their jobs in these seven other regulatory bodies have been divided up among different regulators where consumer protection is an afterthought to their primary safety and soundness missions and responsibilities. So the legislation we have before us replaces that failed setup with a single regulator, with the independence and authority to do the job right. That is what we are trying to do.

This regulator will be a watchdog with a bark and bite, one with the ability to take meaningful action to stop the ripoffs and the mission to empower consumers to make good financial decisions.

The bureau will force large banks and credit card companies to explain their offerings in plain English so that you do not need a master's in business administration to be an informed consumer. It will shut down the scam artists and the sleazy lenders--and they are out there in droves--before they can take advantage of the Delores Kings again. There would not, of course, be scam artists and sleazy lenders if these abusive practices were not profitable--and they are profitable--when we have large Wall Street firms that have earned-- ``earned'' is not the right word--gained, they gained billions of dollars by engaging in these practices. Don't think they were not. They were not the broker who walked into Delores King's house. They were not the small banks that decided to write that mortgage. But these large firms were involved in the securitization, the marketing of these products all bundled together.

We have now learned even in the hearings last week that they knew what crummy bundles they were. There was a lot of junk and trash in there. Delores King was given a mortgage knowing she could not pay, she was on a fixed income, they knew it would balloon to the point that it would consume 70 percent of her income--don't tell me they did not know what that was. And expecting that 80-year-old woman to read and understand all she was going to be subjected to in the fine print of the mortgage contract is ridiculous. Yet that is how this daisy chain worked and why we ended up in the mess we did. This consumer bureau must be a part of our bill.

The Chamber of Commerce is circulating some talking points about what this bureau is and how it will impact American businesses. Tom Donahue and I are good friends. I have known Tom a long time. We have worked on issues together. He runs the chamber. It saddens me that an organization such as that would put out a piece of paper with that much false information. I know they do not like consumer protection at the Chamber of Commerce. That has been a standard, unfortunately, for too many years. I don't mind them taking on and arguing with me about the bill if they want to, and you are entitled to all the opinions you wish to have, but you are not entitled to your own facts, as the old saying goes. What they put out is factually wrong.

I want to spend a couple of minutes addressing each one of their false accusations in the document they are spreading around and address them directly.

The chamber claims that the bureau would regulate ``virtually every business that extends credit.'' Suddenly, they will have you believe that anyone who bills you at the end of the month will be caught up in sweeping new regulations. That sentence is totally false.

You may not accept what I said, that it is totally false, so let me read from the bill. The bill is here, this tome, these 1,400 pages. Let me read from the section of the bill that covers this particular point. I will read it carefully:

The Bureau--

Speaking about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--

may not exercise any rulemaking, supervisory enforcement, or

other authority under this title with respect to a merchant,

retailer, or seller of nonfinancial goods or services that is

not engaged significantly in offering or providing consumer

financial products or services.

I don't know what part of that sentence they do not understand, but that is about as clear as it could possibly be. You must be significantly involved in the selling of financial services and products. A dentist, a butcher, a retailer who sells you products and allows you to pay later or on some delayed paying process is not in the business of financial services and products. Allowing their clients, their patients, their customers to have some delayed payment process does not bring them under the purview of this law.

The line that ``virtually every business that extends credit'' is a completely false sentence, and yet it is in the talking points of the Chamber of Commerce.

I will read the sentence again in the bill:

The Bureau may not exercise any rulemaking, supervisory

enforcement, or other authority--

Other authority, Mr. President--

under this title with respect to a merchant, retailer, or

seller of nonfinancial goods or services that is not engaged

significantly in offering or providing consumer financial

products or services.

What does that mean? If you run a tab at your butcher or grocer, you are not covered. Again, merchants, retailers, sellers of nonfinancial services are not covered. If a doctor charges you a late fee, that is not covered. If a retailer refers a customer who has not paid his bill to a debt collector, that is not covered under this bill. If a store accepts credit cards, that is not covered. If your dentist or retailer or merchant allows you to pay your bill over time, they are not covered under this bill.

The consumer bureau is not going to regulate accountants and orthodontists. It is not going to regulate anyone who--and I will quote again--``is not engaged significantly in offering or providing consumer financial products or services.''

Any time we hear a Member of this body--and some already have--come to this Chamber to object to this bureau by invoking a small business in their State, keep your ears perked. The strong likelihood is that the false talking point is surfacing yet again.

The second falsehood in the chamber's epistle: I heard people say that this is a wild new bureaucracy with powers that ``extend far beyond traditional financial services products to the entire economy. In short''--this chamber letter goes on--``In short, it creates a new regulatory overlay over the entire business community.'' Not true. Completely false.

The powers under this bill already exist. I am not writing new powers under this bill. They exist under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Truth-in-Lending Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act, and RESPA. There is a long list of legislation that passed years ago that is out there. This bill says those laws must be enforced. We are not writing new laws. These are the laws that are on the books.

We add one new word. ``Deceptive and unfair practices'' is covered, and we had the word ``abusive.'' I acknowledge that. There is one new word called ``abusive'' that we add to the litany of the kinds of practices that have caused consumers the difficulties they have been through. There is no other new authority. The rest of the authority exists in current Federal law under the statutes I enumerated and there are many others, by the way, that are presently covered.

All we are saying is, what is the point in having these laws? They are

on the books designed to protect people. The issue is whether anyone is able or willing to exercise the authority.

Financial firms, I believe, will benefit from this in many ways when we streamline and minimize regulatory burdens. There are seven other agencies responsible to one degree or another for this list of existing Federal law. It seems to me the financial services sector will benefit by having a single regulator with the ability to enforce this collection of laws I described. It seems to me that would be a welcome opportunity rather than having so many different regulators to deal with. The single new agency will easily be held accountable for its performance as well.

The third false claim. I quote again:

The bill gives the consumer financial product agency

authority to write rules, enforce rules, conduct

examinations, require new review and approve disclosures

regarding consumer financial products, impose fees or

assessments on all covered persons, and require reports from

any covered entities.

Again, false. Not true at all. This bill does not give this new bureau any authority to charge anyone a fee or assessment. There are no fees or assessments in our bill--this bill--on any of these entities. Yet the report that is out there indicates it does. Completely false. It does not create a new government power.

What it does do is allow the Bureau to write rules that create a level playing field for small community banks and credit unions which today face unfair competition from largely the unregulated shadow banking industry. We heard from our community banks over and over about this point. Where is the level playing field? We get drawn in, we do our job, we are regulated, we operate carefully, and then you have these operators out there totally unregulated, and the reputation of everybody in the financial services sector suffers because of some of these unscrupulous payday lenders, these check-cashing operations that do not have any regulator at all. They are functioning, they are abusing or deceiving people. And that regulated bank on the corner is saying: Why isn't that guy being regulated? I am regulated.

Our bill changes that situation. We apply those same rules, and that is a great advantage to the community banks in the country to have a level playing field. Because this new bureau will be able to write rules that prohibit unfair and deceptive practices in the shadow banking sector and conduct examinations and gather information from nonbank lenders and brokers. Those shadowy firms will not have an unfair leg up on our community banks, allowing those smaller institutions to compete more effectively and to provide capital more freely.

The fourth false claim is the following, and again I am quoting from this document:

The consumer financial protection agency would set the

floor, not the ceiling, regarding State consumer protection

laws. This will create a new regulatory regime companies will

be subject to and consumers will be lost in the maze of

Federal regulations and disclosures, 51 State laws and State

attorneys general interpreting and enforcing Federal law at

State level. This is directly contrary to the goals of

streamlining, modernizing, and simplifying the regulatory

system (and disclosure to consumers.)

That is the claim. A Federal consumer law has historically established a minimum standard, and that is what this bill does as well. Ever since the Truth in Lending Act passed in 1968, Congress has allowed the States to adopt consumer protection laws as long as they do not conflict with Federal law. State attorneys general have always been on the front lines of consumer protection, and they will continue to play that role.

Meanwhile, this single bureau will help to streamline, as I said a moment ago, and simplify disclosures. For instance, two agencies regulate mortgage laws, meaning consumers and community banks are forced to contend with two different Federal mortgage disclosures. Under our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we will eliminate that unnecessary duplication and create one single form.

Fifth: The Chamber claims:

The consumer financial protection agency will have the

authority to mandate that any company offering a consumer

financial product has to offer a product with terms and

conditions set by the government. Alternative products cannot

be offered unless the ``plain vanilla'' is extended. This

gives the largest banks a significant competitive advantage

over smaller banks, limits consumer choice, and will

significantly increase the cost of any alternative products

that are tailored for specific needs.

This one is entirely made up of whole cloth. There is no such thing in our bill. None. I don't even know from where it comes. It is one thing to disagree over the wording of something, but when you make up one out of whole cloth entirely, I don't know how to address that. I don't know what they are talking about. This one comes out of the blue.

Finally, I wish to address the claim that ``the bill gives the consumer financial protection agency the authority to request and hold reports from any covered entity--including reports from banks about their types of accounts and the balances in each account.

In fact, just as regulators today collect and share information about the companies they oversee, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be able to collect information and share it with other regulators. There is nothing new about that at all. But, unlike some of the claims that have been made that this information will be made public or sent to Wall Street--the idea is that this new government entity will be collecting private information about your finances and making it pubilc, that is not true either. That is false.

Strong privacy protections are included in our bill to make sure that proprietary, personal, or confidential consumer information is kept just that--private.

Think about this for a moment. Opponents of this new bureau are actually suggesting it will benefit consumers for regulators to have less information about what the companies they regulate are doing.

I have said before people are welcome to their opinions but not their facts. Again, I am more than happy to consider ideas people have and how they think we can make this consumer bureau work better. I have not shut the door on any ideas people may want to bring up. But what I can't tolerate is people making totally false accusations to inflame the passions, to incorrectly and falsely cause great concern among retailers and merchants and others across the country. That is the intent of all this. I know what it is. They do not want to take on the bill itself and what it does, so they are out there propagandizing with false information about this to undermine what we are trying to achieve. Again, some of those very businesses are the ones that pay an awful price.

I had a wonderful couple last year in my State who had started a business 40 years ago. They are a family-run small business. They were late by 3 days for the first time in 40 years on a credit card payment--the first time in 40 years, 3 days late. They watched their interest rate go from 5 percent to 22 percent, and it put them out of business--after 40 years. That is a small business that extends credit, works with customers and others. They were taken to the cleaners because there wasn't anyone around to say: No, you can't jump from 5 percent to 22 percent. That is unfair and that is wrong.

I tried for 20 years to pass a credit card bill in this Chamber and was never able to get it up even for a vote, except on amendments to bills. Last spring, we were able to bring it up, and it passed 90 to 5 in this Chamber, although it was a highly partisan vote coming out of the Banking Committee. As a result, today we have protections in place for that family in Connecticut, similar to so many others who have watched fees and interest rates skyrocket for almost no reason at all. In fact, the language of the contract says they can do just that, for no reason at all.

Every time consumers get taken to the cleaners, it shouldn't take 20 years to pass a law to address it. The power of the credit card companies was such they were able to stop me, year in and year out, from getting that bill passed. Why can't we have protection for consumers who purchase and use--as we all do today for toasters, cars, and other products--financial products?

I have used the example lately of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We have one in place. We all read the tragic stories recently of a car company that had problems with an accelerator. What happened? There was a recall of those automobiles to protect

people against the harm that could befall them if that happened to them while they were driving that automobile.

When someone marketed a crummy mortgage in an unregulated sector of our economy and took Dolores King to the cleaners and ruined her life-- she lost her home, lost the earnings she had--where does she go? Nowhere. There is nowhere to go. Maybe some sympathetic banker might take pity on her. But why should Dolores King be subjected to financial ruin, when the producer of an automobile that is faulty is protected or a toaster or a television? For all these products, if they are faulty or deficient in some way, there are places we can go to get our situation addressed. Yet in the world in which we live today, of mortgages and credit cards and financial products, there is nothing that exists to give people a chance to get the protections they deserve.

Our bill isn't perfect. I will be the first to admit there may be better ideas on how to do this. But I am not going to sit around and listen to people issue false statements about what is in this bill and inflaming innocent people who want good legislation that this bill will do them harm. It does the opposite.

So next week we will begin the debate. I am sure there will be a ton of amendments that will try to undermine the consumer protection bureau we have established. But I would hope my colleagues--Democrats and Republicans--will join in an effort to write a good, strong consumer protection bill, along with the other pieces of this legislation, so we can provide at least a better sense of security.

I will end on this note. I wish to pick up on a point Senator Dorgan talked about in his remarks earlier this morning--something I have addressed occasionally over the last number of days, but I don't think I have emphasized it as much as I should. I have been reciting statistics--8\1/2\ million jobs lost, 7 million foreclosures, 20 percent decline in retirement, 30 percent decline in home values, $11 trillion lost in household wealth. I hear the numbers and I have said them so many times I can recite them. But I don't have a number for-- and this actually worries me far more than those statistics, as devastating as those numbers are--I don't have a number for what the cost is to our country because the American people have lost faith and confidence in our financial system. I don't know how to put a dollar sign on that one for you. I don't know if anyone could. I don't believe anyone can.

But I know this much. People don't trust and don't have faith that the system is going to work for them when they see, as we all have, these stories of these credit card fees and charges and every gimmick you can think of to reach into the pockets of hard-working families. You begin to understand why people have lost faith, when they see and hear stories about Dolores King and others who have done everything right in their life and someone comes in and decides to take advantage of them or they read these e-mails, as we had last week, of these arrogant characters up there laughing about the widows and orphans they have taken advantage of at a major investment bank. What do you do about that? What is the number to put on that one?

I will tell you this much. We can write all the bills we want, we can pass all the regulations, but if we don't get back that confidence and faith, which has historically been very much a part of our system--I remember once I talked to a man who was not a citizen of our country, but he invested here. He took his money and invested it in the U.S. financial system. I said: Why do that? He said: One, you people are a strong economy and you do well. But more importantly is the second reason. He said: I have never lost a wink of sleep because I was investing in an economy or a structure that was unsafe. I may make a bad bet and lose because of that, but I have never worried about ever losing a nickel because someone in this country in your financial system would take advantage of me.

A wonderful reputation to have had, and that reputation has been shattered, not just for some foreign investor but I think for people here at home. I am not suggesting that by the passage of this bill we will miraculously change all that, but I think it moves us in the right direction.

I know my colleagues have a lot of good ideas. Some like what I have done, some don't think I have gone far enough, and some think I have gone too far with the bill. But what I have tried to do over the past few months is to put together the best ideas I could and to attract broad support from the 100 of us in the Senate. Ultimately, if I can't produce 60 votes or whatever we have to get these days, no matter how good the ideas are, they will not go anywhere. So I hope my colleagues will read this, and if they have constructive changes to make to the bill, I welcome those.

I apologize for taking so long on this, and now, if I can, I wish to conclude the business of the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, today, during Child Abuse Prevention Month, I wish I wish to recognize Sara O'Meara and Yvonne Fedderson, founders of the nonprofit child abuse prevention group Childhelp, for all of their work on behalf of abused and neglected children. For half a century, these two heroes have spoken up for at-risk children and I am grateful for their ceaseless work to create better lives for children.

Sara and Yvonne first started this work 50 years ago as American actresses when they had a chance encounter with 11 homeless orphans in Japan, while entertaining U.S. troops. Sara and Yvonne tried to place those children in a Japanese orphanage only to discover they were unwelcome because of their mixed race heritage. Returning to California, these women founded International Orphans Incorporated, now Childhelp, and raised funds that eventually built four orphanages caring for abandoned Japanese-American children as well as Vietnamese children. Over the years they have worked to create the Childhelp Hotline, children's advocacy centers, high-quality foster care homes, and training around child abuse prevention.

In 2008, nearly 800,000 American children were victims of child abuse or neglect. Nearly 1,800 of them died as a result. It is our youngest children who suffer the brunt of the abuse. Four in ten of those fatalities were children younger than one year of age and three in four fatalities were younger than four. These statistics are overwhelming. But for each individual case, each child who suffers, there is a lasting story of pain and loss. Child maltreatment affects the emotional and behavioral development of its victims, often for a lifetime.

Without Childhelp these statistics would be even worse. Childhelp's professionals and many volunteers focus their efforts on advocacy, prevention, treatment, and community outreach. I know my colleagues join with me in congratulating these two amazing women and their life's work in protecting our most valuable resource, our children.

Even one case of abuse or neglect is too many. But every child we save from maltreatment is a child who can go on to achieve great things. For half a century, Childhelp has done so much good for so many kids. With Sara and Yvonne's tireless devotion to children in need throughout the world, Childhelp is well prepared for another 50 years of protecting our children from abuse and neglect.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Record remain open today until 1:30 p.m. for the introduction of legislation, submissions of statements, and cosponsorships.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 510, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.