Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to take the opportunity to honor the life and memory of Sergeant Sean Gannon of the Yarmouth Police Department, who was killed in the line of duty on April 12, 2018.

This week is National Police Week, a time to honor the brave law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the line of duty. Last month, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts suffered a terrible loss when Sergeant Sean Gannon was killed while serving an arrest warrant in Barnstable. He was only 32 years old.

A native of New Bedford, MA, Sergeant Gannon graduated from Bishop Stang High School in North Dartmouth and then earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Westfield State University and a master's in emergency management from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

After college, Sergeant Gannon jumped head first into public service, first serving as a public safety officer and later becoming a police officer with the Yarmouth Police Department, where he served for 8 years. Sergeant Gannon loved working with police dogs and was the first full-time K-9 narcotics officer at Yarmouth PD. His loyal patrol dog, Nero, was seriously injured in the incident that claimed Sergeant Gannon's life, but is expected to recover and return to the Gannon family.

Sergeant Gannon had a huge heart and spent his free time volunteering with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, traveling, enjoying the outdoors, and working with his hands.

Thousands of mourners, including law enforcement officers from across the country, gathered to pay their respects at Sergeant Gannon's wake, a testament to the high esteem with which his community held him and to the power of his sacrifice. Yarmouth Police Chief Frank Frederickson called Sergeant Gannon the ``Tom Brady of our department'' and posthumously promoted him to the rank of sergeant.

Our hearts are broken by the loss of Sergeant Gannon.

Today, we honor Sergeant Gannon's service, we honor his sacrifice, and most importantly, we honor the life he led and the legacy he leaves behind.

Mr. President, at this very moment, a high school junior is reading a report online for a class paper she has due at the end of the week. Not far from her house, a single mom who recently quit her job to follow her dream of becoming an app developer is online teaching herself to code. In a city thousands of miles away, a small business owner is processing an order online to keep the lights on and the bills paid for another month. Every night in living rooms across this country, grandparents pick up their smartphones to video chat with newborn grandchildren who are hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Let's face it, the internet is intricately woven into the fabric of American society. It is a very important part of our lives, but right now our access to a fair and open internet is under siege. In December, the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, voted to eliminate the net neutrality protections that stop internet providers from blocking access, filtering content, or charging higher fees for fast lanes-- three tactics that giant internet companies want to use to control the internet.

The repeal of these protections has corporate greed and corruption written all over it. This may be what the special interests want, but the American people are opposed to the very idea of a restricted internet. Net neutrality provisions are wildly popular. When it comes to a free and open internet, 83 percent of Americans are clear about their position. They want and demand a free and open internet. That is true for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and people from all backgrounds. You have to ask yourself, Why would the FCC vote to eliminate those protections?

I will tell you why. Because under this administration, the FCC has become a puppet for giant internet providers. The FCC's current Chairman, Ajit Pai, has made it clear he will work to put special interests over what is good for the American people.

The FCC was once an agency dedicated to protecting and promoting the public interest, but it has morphed into an agency that exists solely to do the bidding of giant telecom companies. It is a disgrace. Who can say we didn't see this coming? When Donald Trump won the White House, then-FCC Commissioner Pai said that net neutrality's days were numbered.

Once Trump selected Pai to lead the FCC, Chairman Pai immediately got to work getting rid of net neutrality. He opened up a new public comment period, laying out a plan to destroy net neutrality, and he made it clear he would ignore the views of millions of Americans who weighed in to urge him to abandon that plan.

The FCC received more comments on Chairman Pai's plan to kill net neutrality than any other rule in the FCC's history. Millions submitted comments opposing Chairman Pai's plan to kill net neutrality, but the FCC said it would ignore those comments unless they were, in its opinion, serious legal arguments. During the comment process, it was revealed that some of the comments had come from bots that had stolen Americans' identities and others had come from Russian addresses, but Pai dismissed those concerns. He demonstrated that, no matter what, he would forge ahead with his plan to hand over the internet to the biggest and most powerful internet providers.

If Chairman Pai's plan is implemented, internet companies will literally get to set their own rules governing access to the internet. As long as they put their rules somewhere in the fine print, internet providers can pretty much do whatever they please. That is not the way government is supposed to work. The internet was created by a bunch of government and government-funded workers, and it is the government's job to protect Americans' access to a fair and open internet.

The internet doesn't belong to giant internet companies. It belongs to the students striving to build a better future. It belongs to the young women and men working day and night on a new idea that will change the world. It belongs to the small business owner whose success depends on operating her business online. It belongs to the grandmas and grandpas, the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers, and friends who depend on the internet to remain connected to the people they love. It belongs to people who like to watch their favorite shows online or read the news or shop or play video games or just browse the internet. It belongs to all of us.

If the FCC will not stand up for the public interest, it is up to Congress to do so, but it will take this Republican-controlled Congress prying itself free from the grip of giant companies and doing what is right for the American people.

Today, we can take the first step. I ask every one of my colleagues in the Senate to join me in voting yes on the CRA resolution to restore net neutrality provisions.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague from Rhode Island for both his powerful analysis of the influence of money on the selection of our judicial nominees and also for his point about the blue slip and the implications of what this means for an independent judiciary.

He has been a strong voice on this for a long time, and I think his speech on it was extraordinary and something that I hope everyone listens to and pays attention to.

We are facing an unprecedented attack on our courts. This week, once again, Senator McConnell has scheduled confirmation votes on a slate of extremist judicial court nominees--nominees who have demonstrated that they are not committed to the principles of equal justice under law. In this administration, Senate Republicans have been working at breakneck speed to jam our courts with pro-corporate, narrowminded elitists who will tilt the scales of justice in favor of the rich and powerful and against everyone else. They are willing to bend and break and change every rule in the book to do it.

Their latest strategy is to ignore the blue slip. For over a century, home-State Senators have played a critical role in the judicial confirmation process by using something called a blue slip to determine whether a judicial nomination should move forward. The Senate Judiciary Committee has historically refused to move forward on a nomination without a blue slip from both home-State Senators. In fact, during the Obama administration, Senate Republicans insisted on maintaining that rule, refusing to move forward on any judicial nominee who did not secure blue slips from both home State Senators. They even stretched the rule beyond all reasonable bounds to stop fairminded, mainstream nominees from being confirmed. But now that Donald Trump is in the White House, Republicans have changed their tune. In order to force extremist nominees onto our courts, they are willing to toss the blue slip right out the window.

Michael Brennan, President Trump's nominee to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, is just the latest example. Even though Mr. Brennan did not receive a blue slip from both home-State Senators, Senate Republicans moved forward on his nomination. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that when President Obama nominated another candidate to fill this very same seat, Mr. Brennan penned a strong defense of Senator Johnson's decision to withhold his blue slip. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, those principles have magically disappeared.

Let's be clear here. There are plenty of reasons for any Senator to be concerned about Mr. Brennan's fitness to serve on the Federal bench. I will just mention a few.

Mr. Brennan has mocked millions of hard-working women who have faced sexism and obstacles to advancement.

He has dismissed the idea of a glass ceiling.

Mr. Brennan has defended a Wisconsin law that added unnecessary barriers to women who were seeking access to abortion, even in the case of rape or incest.

Mr. Brennan supports criminal sentencing policies that slap low-level offenders with long jail sentences and exacerbate the problem of mass incarceration in America.

And it gets worse. Mr. Brennan believes that it is A-OK for judges to refuse to follow binding court precedent when the judge just thinks it is incorrect. Now, that is extreme.

But Senate Republicans have shown that they just don't care. They are willing to do whatever it takes to hand over our courts to moneyed interests.

Madam President, I rise to express my strong opposition to President Trump's nomination of Mike Pompeo to be the next Secretary of State. There are many reasons to oppose this nomination, but the main reason for me is pretty straightforward. Mike Pompeo is completely unfit to serve as America's chief diplomat.

During his time as a public servant, Mike Pompeo has embraced a variety of views that betray America's values. Whether it is his support for interrogation techniques that amount to torture, his preference for war over diplomatic solutions, or his hateful, blatantly discriminatory views about Muslim and LGBTQ Americans, Mike Pompeo's confirmation would degrade America's diplomacy and erode our moral standing on the world stage.

Let's start with his evolving position on torture. In 2014, then- Congressman Pompeo praised the interrogators who used torture as ``patriots'' and ``heroes,'' but when seeking confirmation to become CIA Director, Mr. Pompeo suddenly said he would ``always comply with the law'' prohibiting torture.

When asked if he would comply with a request from the President to use torture, he said he couldn't ``imagine being asked to do so.'' Never mind that as a candidate Donald Trump boasted about his desire to bring back waterboarding and ``a hell of a lot worse.'' In his later written answers, Mr. Pompeo suggested he could support bringing back waterboarding and other torture techniques if he thought they were necessary.

So, first, Mike Pompeo was for torture, but when he wanted to be CIA Director, he miraculously changed his position. Now he thinks the United States should reserve the right to torture people in the future. This position undermines our core values as Americans, and that alone should disqualify him from being America's Secretary of State, but there is more.

Mike Pompeo's hawkish views could quite literally lead us into another war. Just look at his views on Iran. The Iranian Government is a bad actor, no doubt about it. That is why the Iran nuclear deal was so important. It is easier to counter Iran's bad behavior if it has no nuclear weapons than it would be to keep Iran in check if it could threaten the region and threaten the world with a nuclear bomb.

The deal with Iran imposed strong limits and intrusive inspections on Iran's nuclear program so it cannot develop a nuclear weapon, and our intelligence community tells us it is working. That is very important to the security of our allies and the security of the whole world.

The Iran nuclear deal is a negotiated solution designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and it was accomplished without resorting to military action. The deal is the product of putting diplomacy first. That is good for the security of the United States, good for our allies, and good for the world.

Mike Pompeo doesn't seem to understand that. He has called the Iran nuclear deal a ``surrender,'' and he has said the United States should walk away. Pompeo has even publicly contemplated regime change. How can we expect countries to trust America's word when our chief diplomat believes we have the right to break our word and violate international agreements at any moment?

Think for a minute about what it would mean for negotiating any deal with North Korea about their nuclear weapons if Mr. Pompeo is in charge. He said we can tear up our agreement with Iran, even though they have followed through on their part, just because Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo have decided they don't like it. Who would negotiate with a United States that has so little respect for the standing of its promises? I cannot in good faith vote in favor of Mr. Pompeo for the reasons I have outlined, but there is another reason I cannot vote for him, one that is deeply personal to me.

Shortly after the Boston Marathon attack, then-Congressman Pompeo accused Muslim leaders of being silent about the bombing and even said they were potentially complicit in the attack. After the marathon bombings, all of Boston grieved together, including our Muslim leaders. Our Muslim communities helped Massachusetts emerge stronger and more united. To suggest otherwise is insulting to the Boston Marathon bombing victims and to our Muslim American brothers and sisters. When he was shown to be wrong, Mike Pompeo refused to apologize. His comments were ignorant, offensive, and just plain wrong. They certainly aren't the words of someone who is fit to be America's chief diplomat.

But there is more. Mike Pompeo's longstanding attacks on the LGBTQ community also make him unfit to serve as Secretary of State. He supported legislation in Congress to allow States not to recognize equal marriage, and he relied on financial contributions from hateful groups like the Family Research Council. His public record paints a deeply disturbing world view.

The risk posed by this nomination is magnified because Mike Pompeo would be teaming up with John Bolton, President Trump's new National Security Advisor. John Bolton has never met a war he didn't like, and Mike Pompeo supported Bolton's disastrous Iraq War. Together, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton will fan the flames of war in President Trump's foreign policy because they both embrace military solutions first.

I hope that, if confirmed, Mr. Pompeo will take real steps to prioritize diplomacy, to improve morale at the State Department, and to fill key diplomatic positions that have been vacant for far too long. But at a time when we are facing enormous global challenges, the State Department needs a leader who will put diplomacy first to solve problems and to protect our national security. Mike Pompeo is not that leader. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote against his nomination.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, it is no secret that powerful interests are working to undermine our government. Giant companies and rightwing billionaires have been pouring unlimited sums of money into making sure our government works for those at the top and leaves everyone else behind, and a key part of their strategy is to capture our courts.

During the Obama administration, those powerful interests and their Republican allies in Congress executed an unprecedented campaign to stop fairminded, impartial nominees from filling judicial vacancies. Nominees weren't blocked because they were unqualified. They weren't blocked because they were inexperienced. They weren't blocked because they were out of the mainstream. They were blocked for one reason and one reason alone: because they didn't demonstrate a sufficient willingness to bend the law in favor of the rich and the powerful.

With Donald Trump as President, these same interests sense a once-in- a-lifetime opportunity to reshape our courts for years to come, and they are working to stack our courts with narrow-minded elitists and rightwing radicals. Stuart Kyle Duncan--President Trump's nominee to sit on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals--is one of those nominees.

Mr. Duncan has spent his career working to restrict--not to expand, but to restrict--civil rights in the United States. Over and over again, he has sought to tilt the scales of justice against women, against LGBTQ Americans, against people of color, and others. Mr. Duncan's record of supporting discrimination and injustice is quite lengthy, so I will focus on just a few of the most disturbing examples. Let's start with his record on women's rights.

Mr. Duncan has worked to make it harder for women to access contraceptive coverage and abortion services. He was the lead attorney for the arts and crafts company Hobby Lobby in the Supreme Court case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. In that case, he argued that business owners should be allowed to refuse to provide female employees access to contraceptive care based on those employers' religious views.

Mr. Duncan also filed briefs in many other Supreme Court cases, petitioning the Court to restrict women's access to birth control and abortion services, ignoring the fact that access to contraceptive care can help women lead better, healthier, or more financially secure lives. He is the man who is seeking a Federal judgeship.

Let's take a look at his record on LGBTQ rights. Mr. Duncan has complained about what he calls the ``general acceptance of homosexuality and homosexual practices'' in America, and he has worked very hard to convince courts to adopt his narrow-minded view of the world.

In the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Mr. Duncan filed briefs, asking the Court to reach the opposite result. After the Supreme Court handed down those historic decisions, Mr. Duncan, who, today, expects to be confirmed as a Federal appellate judge, claimed that the decision would jeopardize civic peace and openly questioned the Supreme Court's legitimacy.

Mr. Duncan also represented the Gloucester County School Board in its effort to deny Gavin Grimm, who is a transgender high school boy, the ability to use the boys' bathroom. He represented North Carolina's General Assembly in a lawsuit that challenged the assembly's bathroom bill banning transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals from using restrooms that are consistent with their gender identities.

In his asking courts to allow government-sanctioned discrimination in these cases, Mr. Duncan has completely ignored scientific evidence and medical expertise. Instead, he has asserted that transgender individuals are mentally ill. In one case, he argued that there was no sound scientific evidence proving that individuals who identify as transgender are not delusional.

In case after case, Mr. Duncan has defended discrimination and injustice.

On voting rights, he defended North Carolina's discriminatory voter ID law that a Federal court concluded targeted African-American voters with almost ``surgical precision.''

On immigration, he filed briefs that opposed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, DACA Program, which allowed Dreamers to contribute to our schools, our communities, and our economy without their having the constant fear of deportation.

On criminal justice, he fought to block the retroactive application of the Supreme Court's decision that ruled it is unconstitutional to sentence kids to life without parole.

Time and again, Mr. Duncan has been on the wrong side of justice and has worked to undermine the civil rights of groups that have historically faced discrimination.

Federal judges have one job and one job only--to dispense equal justice under law. That means everyone--man or woman, gay or straight, Black or Brown or White--should have confidence that the judges we hand lifetime appointments to will put fairness and fidelity to the law over their personal feelings or political ideologies.

Stuart Kyle Duncan has made it perfectly clear that he cannot and will not meet that standard. That is why I will be voting to reject Mr. Duncan's nomination, and I urge every Senator who believes in the principle of equal justice under law to do the same.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wish to take a moment to thank Senator Whitehouse for his bold leadership and continuing the fight to rid our political system of dark money.

All across our country, teachers are taking to the streets to demand what no teacher should ever have to ask for: fair pay and decent benefits. In State after State, education has been cut to the bone. They have even cut the bone. Kids are crammed into overcrowded classrooms. They are handed tattered textbooks. Their teachers are paid so little that some qualify for food stamps. In fact, salaries are so low in some States that teachers are working two, three, and sometimes four jobs just to make ends meet.

Many people don't know this, but teachers have always had a very special place in my heart. As a little girl growing up in Oklahoma, there was one person I admired more than anyone else in the world--my second grade teacher, Mrs. Lee. I will never forget the day that Mrs. Lee took me aside and explained that if I worked hard, I could become a teacher too. Those words changed my life. Today, I am the daughter of a maintenance man, who became a teacher, a professor, and a U.S. Senator because America invested in teachers like Mrs. Lee, and that meant investing in the thousands of students she reached through the years. I am grateful to that America. I believe in that America. But I will be honest--I am scared to death that our children and grandchildren may never know that America.

Right now, in one of the richest nations on the planet, American teachers are getting crushed. I want to tell you about one of those teachers--Jonathan Moy, or Mr. Moy, as his students call him. He is a teacher in Oklahoma. Every week, Mr. Moy juggles six jobs in addition to teaching. Mr. Moy coaches two sports teams, drives for Uber and Lyft, drives a schoolbus, and umpires a Little League team so that he can provide for his two daughters.

Sadly, Mr. Moy's story is becoming all too common. According to one estimate, teachers are five times more likely than other workers to have a second job. No wonder teachers are taking to the streets in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona. They have had enough.

I am standing shoulder to shoulder with teachers across the country because they deserve better, because our children deserve better, and because investment in teachers is an investment in our kids and ultimately an investment in our future. Like many of my colleagues in this Chamber and fellow Democrats across the country, I am in this fight for the long haul, but if we are to be successful, if we ever hope we can prevail, we should be clear-eyed about what it is that we are up against.

The perilous state of affairs for education funding in our States is not the simple result of a bunch of legislatures who, after listening to their constituents, decided against supporting public education. No, the movement of teacher protests sweeping the country has revealed corruption--corruption that Republican-controlled States have been sweeping under the rug for decades.

The steep cuts to education are the product of an all-out assault on our teachers and our schools that has been launched by a handful of billionaires. One of the principal tools rich and powerful people use is dark money. They have created an invasive enemy that slithers out of sight, with only a glimpse here or there, but make no mistake--this dark money has helped shape the anti-teacher, anti-worker agenda that undermines our democracy.

For decades, billionaires have been pouring unlimited, secret money into the hands of carefully picked candidates who will do their bidding. We often talk about the influence dark money has right here in Washington, but the truth is, the real battle is being fought at the State and local level.

Consider the State Policy Network, SPN. It is an umbrella alliance of over 60 member organizations covering nearly every State in the United States. Their member organizations hide behind deceptively apolitical names, such as the Platte Institute for Economic Research or the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. These organizations are anything but apolitical; these groups are the propaganda arm of rightwing billionaires. The State Policy Network, for example, is bankrolled by the Koch brothers through organizations like DonorsTrust, one of the Kochs' favorite investment arms. In 2016 alone, DonorsTrust made $20.3 million in

grants to State Policy Network members.

In addition to affiliates, the State Policy Network has over 80 associate members. It is a who's who of rightwing Koch-funded groups, such as the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Their funders also include an array of the biggest and most powerful corporations, including tobacco giant Philip Morris, food giant Kraft, and pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline.

The goal of the State Policy Network and its myriad affiliates is to trick the public into thinking they are genuine, unbiased think tanks researching public policy issues--think that, instead of rightwing, billionaire-funded groups dedicated to hijacking every legislature in America and passing laws that work for their corporations while they leave everyone else behind.

With friends like the aggressively anti-union Koch brothers, it should come as no surprise that one of the State Policy Network's top priorities is dismantling public sector unions. In a 2016 fundraising letter, the State Policy Network stated that its goal was to ``defund and defang'' government unions, and it bragged about the work of its affiliates to supply ``intellectual ammunition'' to weaken unions in States across the country. It touted its work in West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, in shepherding passage of laws that make it harder for unions to collect union dues that cover the costs of collective bargaining.

Although it focuses on State policy, the State Policy Network's agenda can have nationwide effects. Just look at the Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME, which will determine whether public sector unions that represent teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers in States and cities around this country will actually be able to collect fees from workplaces they represent--fees that allow them to negotiate for better pay, better wages, and better working conditions. The Illinois Policy Institute, a State Policy Network affiliate, works closely with the groups pushing the Court to cut off unions' funding and force them to represent workers who do not pay dues.

The State Policy Network's attack on the workers is just one prong of a much larger campaign to hand government over to the rich and powerful. As one of the many tentacles of the Koch network, the State Policy Network also works to gut environmental protections that prevent big corporations from poisoning our water, our food, and our air. It works to dismantle Medicaid and other healthcare protections that provide vulnerable, low-income individuals with basic healthcare. It works to slash income and other State taxes that provide critical funds for basic government services. It works to weaken public pensions that provide government workers with financial security and retirement.

Billionaires and special interests are conspiring to buy our political system. We cannot allow this to happen. That is why I am proud to join my colleagues in support of bills like the DISCLOSE Act to shine a light on the dark web of billionaires who have their hands tightly gripped around the neck of our democracy. Our government should belong to the people, not to wealthy special interests.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, just weeks after making it harder to stop discrimination in mortgage lending, the Senate is now on the verge of voting to make it harder to stop discrimination in auto lending.

About 40 years ago, Congress passed the important civil rights law called the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. That law said companies couldn't discriminate when offering a loan. It was a simple idea: Loan terms should be based on creditworthiness, not on the color of someone's skin.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the Federal agencies responsible for enforcing that 40-year-old law. The CFPB found out that when auto dealers were helping customers get financing for a car loan, minority customers were often given worse loans than their White counterparts. The underlying reason was something called a dealer reserve, where the lenders providing the financing for a car loan gave the dealer discretion to mark up the interest rate on the loan and the dealer could keep some of the additional profit from the markup. The problem was the growing evidence that dealers marked up loans higher for minorities than for Whites with similar credit profiles.

In 2013, the CFPB issued guidance to these lenders about how they could make sure they were complying with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. They could institute more rigorous oversight of their auto financing process to get rid of these discriminatory practices or they could stop using the dealer reserves that facilitated these discriminatory practices and just pay dealers a flat fee per loan instead.

After issuing the guidance, the CFPB found that a few auto lenders were not following the guidance. It entered into settlements with Fifth Third and the financing arms of both Honda and Toyota. These settlements returned millions of dollars to people who had been charged more for car loans simply based on the color of their skin.

A lot of auto dealers and auto lenders don't like the CFPB's guidance, which brings us to today, when the Senate is about to vote on reversing this guidance and prohibiting the CFPB from ever issuing similar guidance again.

This is part of the broader Republican attack on the efforts to fight economic discrimination. House Republicans have passed multiple bills that would make it harder to enforce fair lending laws. Since assuming control of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney has taken steps to undermine the agency's Office of Fair Lending.

The vote today is also a troubling followup to the recent bank deregulation bill that just passed the Senate. That bill reduced data reporting requirements for 85 percent of the banks in this country, making it harder for Federal agencies to monitor mortgage lending, uncover discrimination, and enforce the law. Now the Senate is considering rolling back guidance that explains how lenders can avoid discrimination when providing auto loans.

Let's be clear. Discrimination in auto lending is alive and well. The National Fair Housing Alliance recently sent two people--one White, one non-White--to eight car dealerships in Virginia. Even though the non- White person had better credit than the White person in each instance, the non-White person ended up with a more expensive loan half of the time. Think about that--better credit and paid more for the loan. In fact, in those cases, the non-White person would have paid $2,500 more over the life of their loan than the White person with worse credit.

The last thing we should be doing is making it harder to crack down on that kind of discrimination. As a wide array of civil rights and consumer groups recently wrote, ``Discrimination in auto lending continues to extract billions of dollars a year in extra loan payments from borrowers of color; Congress should be taking action to end this injustice, not interfering with efforts to enforce fair lending laws.''

A vote in favor of the resolution today is a vote to support the Trump administration's systemic dismantling of fair lending laws in this country. It is a vote in favor of Mick Mulvaney's efforts to leash up the CFPB's Office of Fair Lending. It is a vote in favor of allowing some auto lenders and dealers to continue to charge African Americans and Latinos hundreds and thousands more just because of their race.

I urge all of my colleagues to oppose this resolution.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am here today to urge my colleagues to oppose the confirmation of two Trump nominees--John Ring, who has been nominated to the National Labor Relations Board, and Patrick Pizzella, who has been nominated Deputy Secretary of Labor. These two nominees have been selected to hold critical jobs to protect workers. That is what these jobs are about.

I will be blunt. I start with a pretty high bar here since, despite his campaign rhetoric from 2 years ago, the President's track record on standing up for workers has been absolutely miserable. From the day he nominated Andrew Puzder--an executive who delighted in mocking and belittling his own low-wage workers--to run the Department of Labor, this administration has delivered one gut punch after another to America's working people.

The National Labor Relations Board is responsible for protecting the rights of workers to organize and bargain for better wages and benefits, so as we consider President Trump's latest nominee for the Board, it makes sense to look at what his nominees so far have already done.

Look at the new Republican majority's very first week back on the job back in December. In just 5 days, the Board mowed its way through a giant wish list of areas where giant companies were begging to be let off the hook for violating workers' rights.

Allowing employers to shirk their collective bargaining obligations by contracting out workers? Check.

Making it easier for employers to control the outcome of union elections. Check.

Opening the door for workplace rules that chill workers' ability to join together on the job. Check.

Allowing cases to be ``settled'' without input from the workers whose rights are affected by the settlement. Check.

Just as troubling as these anti-worker decisions themselves are the egregious conflicts of interest behind them.

From the moment he was nominated by President Trump, I have repeatedly raised concerns about Board Member William Emanuel's history of representing big corporations that have abused their workers and about his mile-long list of potential conflicts of interest. Sure enough, after just a few months on the Board, NLRB's inspector general determined that Mr. Emanuel participated in not one but two important decisions involving his former law firm, which directly violated his ethics pledge. In response, the Board vacated one of its most consequential decisions of the last year, and Member Emanuel lost any remaining credibility that he could be an impartial Board member. So I called on him to resign.

Now the President wants us to put John Ring on the Board. I have asked Mr. Ring to provide a list of clients and cases that might require his recusal. To his credit, he has done so. But Mr. Ring's long list of clients is a huge red flag. Either he will ignore the ethics rules when they are inconvenient--like Mr. Emanuel did--or he will likely have to recuse himself from important cases.

A large number of potential conflicts of interest isn't the only thing Mr. Ring has in common with Mr. Emanuel. Like Emanuel, Mr. Ring has also spent his career representing large employers against workers, and his few public statements on the NLRB express a belief that the Board has been too friendly to workers and that corporations have gotten the short end of the stick.

After decades of stagnant wages and skyrocketing corporate profits, does

anyone other than insider lobbyists and lawyers think that Washington is working for middle-class families and that big corporations are the ones under attack? I don't think so. That is exactly why an NLRB that looks out for workers is more important than ever. President Trump's NLRB is failing miserably at that mission.

Working Americans deserve Board members with a demonstrated record of fighting for workers, not against them. They deserve Board members who aren't ethically and legally constrained from doing the job. Mr. Ring does not meet those qualifications.

Workers need an NLRB that works for them, and they need leaders at the Department of Labor who are going to be on their side, not on the side of giant employers and extreme, rightwing donors. Patrick Pizzella has been nominated to the No. 2 job at the Department of Labor, and nothing in Mr. Pizzella's resume tells us that he meets the description of being on the side of workers.

In the 1990s, Mr. Pizzella lobbied with Jack Abramoff to exempt the Northern Mariana Islands from Federal labor laws. Do you know what that did? That allowed companies to run sweatshops while slapping ``Made in America'' labels on their products.

Later, when Mr. Pizzella was in charge of data management and other operations at the Labor Department, the Government Accountability Office found that the Wage and Hour Division was egregiously mishandling wage theft complaints, consistently leaving vulnerable low- wage workers out to dry, because of faulty data systems and other operational failures.

After leaving the Department, Mr. Pizzella went to work for secretive, far-right donor groups, such as the Conservative Action Project, which secretly planned out the 2013 government shutdown to sabotage the Affordable Care Act and undermine many workers' access to healthcare, all while Mr. Pizzella was its highest paid employee.

The Deputy Secretary position should be filled by someone who has defended worker rights, not undermined them, someone who will make government work for the American people, not hamstring it for political purposes. Mr. Pizzella is the wrong man for this job.

President Trump talked a big game during his campaign about fighting for workers, but after a year of corporate tax cuts and rolling back commonsense protections for workplace safety, retirement security, and more, we know that those promises have turned out not to be worth much of anything.

The Senate should send a clear message to this administration that we expect agencies like the NLRB and the Labor Department to stand up for working people, not to suck up to corporate lobbyists. Rejecting these two nominees would be a good first step.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's monumental campaign for President. Kennedy's brief, tragic run at the Presidency has had an enduring impact on so many generations of Americans. The reason, I think, is because Robert Kennedy had the courage to challenge a divided nation to face up to its failings, to challenge a divided people to acknowledge their own contributions to our Nation's ills, to challenge us to step back from the stale, cheap politics of the moment, to challenge us to do better by each other.

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. Conditions are different now, but a lot of the anxiety that swept through the country in 1968 echoes the anxiety of today, especially the economic anxiety felt by millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but feel opportunity slipping away from themselves and from their children.

Too often, our political and business leaders refuse to see this. Instead they hide behind macroeconomic statistics, using them as a shield to dismiss the concerns of the American people as faulty, wrongheaded, or even as nonexistent.

Robert Kennedy understood that America's national economy is not the same as the economic well-being of its people. In 1968, in a speech at the University of Kansas, he spoke eloquently about the differences between them, and here is what he said:

[Our] Gross National Product counts air pollution and

cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways

of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the

jails for the people who break them. It counts the

destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder

in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear

warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots

in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife,

and the television programs which glorify violence in order

to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the

health of our children, the quality of their education or the

joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our

poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of

our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our

wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our

devotion to our country.

It measures everything, in short, except that which makes

life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America

except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Consider three stats: corporate profits, the stock market, and unemployment.

Today, corporate profits are up--corporate profits that count gun sales for manufacturers whose weapons are used to massacre children in our schools and our streets. Corporate profits that count revenues from drug companies when they quadruple prices for the sick and the desperate. Corporate profits that count revenues of banks like Wells Fargo as they rip off millions of American consumers.

The stock market is up as giant companies pocket trillions in taxpayer money stolen from middle-class families. The market is up as CEOs shut down plants and factories in the United States and move them overseas. The market is up as business leaders, flush with cash, turn their backs on workers while they plow millions and even billions into stock buybacks to goose investors' returns and CEOs' bonuses.

Unemployment is down, but wages have barely budged in a generation. Unemployment is down, but for millions of people, the exploding costs for housing, healthcare, and childcare mean it now takes two jobs to do what one job covered a generation ago. Unemployment is down, but the numbers fail to represent the millions living in rural and urban American communities alike that have given up on the search for a job.

These statistics on corporate profits, the stock market, and unemployment tell us everything about the American economy, but they tell us very little about the lived experience of today's Americans. They do not speak to the citizen who fears police violence or the police officer who fears gang violence or the immigrant who cannot speak out about sexual assault at the hands of her boss or the toxic rhetoric flowing through our politics seeking to turn neighbor against neighbor. They do not account for our devotion to our communities, to our churches, and to our children. They tell us virtually nothing about our trials, our challenges, our hopes, or our principles.

Robert Kennedy understood this. He knew we cannot simply run an economy for those at the top and assume it will solve America's problems. In the intervening 50 years since his speech, America ran that experiment anyway and watched it fail miserably.

It is time to try something different. It is time to challenge each of us to do better by each other, to see the dignity in one another, and to put our values first. I believe we can make Robert Kennedy's legacy a reality, and I am proud to fight for it.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, Congress does not have the courage to act on gun violence, but young people across this country are showing the way. They are speaking up, and they are demanding action. I honor them, and I commit to fight alongside them.

I am going to read the names of some of those lost from Massachusetts. They didn't get a chance to join this fight before they died from gun violence, so I take this opportunity to join them to the young people who are fighting today for sensible gun reforms.

Gerrod Brown, 16 years old; Anthony Scaccia, 6 years old; Angel Suazo, 16 years old; Alejandro Lorente, 11 years old; Tenzin Kunkhyen, 16 years old; Janmarcos Pena, 9 years old; Chantal Matiyosus, 16 years old; Latoya Graham, 15 years old; Brian Crowell, 12 years old; Ross Mathieu, 12 years old; Liquarry Jefferson, 8 years old.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on Friday I held a townhall in Springfield, MA. On Saturday we had another townhall, this time in Weymouth, MA. I met with kids at Weymouth High School who are forming a ``Never Again'' group and who want to pass some sensible gun regulations. I met with Dreamers who want to pass DACA. I met with people who fled the hurricanes in Puerto Rico and who want to get a comprehensive plan for rebuilding the island. I met with people who live along the South Shore and are deeply worried about rising oceans and the need for building resilience into our coastline housing and infrastructure. I met with people alarmed by the rising cost of healthcare and about Republican efforts to roll back ObamaCare, Medicaid, and Medicare. I met someone who wants to see us focus more on criminal justice reform.

There is so much Congress could do. There are so many problems the American people are asking us to solve, but not one single person at any of my townhalls, meetings, press interviews, or picking up pizza at Armando's asked for Congress to work on rolling back the rules on some of the biggest banks in the country so they will have a chance to crash the economy again, and that is what the bill on the floor of the Senate does--really. Don't just take my word for it.

The Congressional Budget Office experts say the bill will increase the chances that taxpayers will have to bail out the big banks again. CBO also says the bill could allow Wall Street banks, like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, to significantly reduce their capital requirements. Professor Jeffrey Gordon, an expert in financial regulation at Columbia Law School, says the bill ``will produce a race-to-the-bottom dynamic that will dramatically increase the chance of another financial crisis.'' The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both editorialized that the bill includes dangerous giveaways to big banks. Nobody back in Massachusetts asked for that.

Buried down in the details of the bill are even more landmines for American families. The bill guts protections for families who buy traditional and mobile homes, and it undermines our ability to enforce civil rights laws--and for what? So banks that are already making record profits can tack on a little more to their bottom line?

If the Senate is going to spend 2 weeks dealing with the big banks, we should be making the rules tougher, not easier. Today, I introduced the Ending Too Big to Jail Act, which would help make sure that big bank executives are hauled out of their corner offices in handcuffs the next time they break the law. That would do more for America's working families than anything in this bill, and I am going to fight to help make it law.

What does it say about Washington Republicans and Democrats who can't come together to support commonsense gun reforms or solutions for working families but can come together to deregulate big banks on the 10th anniversary of the start of the 2008 financial crisis?

Here is what I think it says: Washington has become completely disconnected from the real problems in people's lives. This place works great for people who can hire armies of fancy lobbyists and write big checks, but it doesn't work for anyone else.

This is personal for me. I grew up in Oklahoma on the ragged edge of the middle class. My family struggled, and when it looked like things were getting a little bit better, my daddy had a heart attack and he lost his job and we nearly lost our home. I was 12 years old, and I know what it feels like to hear your mother cry every night. I know what it feels like to wonder if you will have to change schools or move to another town because the bank is going to take your house away. I know it because I lived it.

When the economy collapsed 10 years ago, I would go to bed at night thinking about the millions of people across this country who worked hard, who played by the rules, and then had their dignity stripped away because somebody they never met gambled with their family's future and lost. I wondered back then about the kids. I wondered about their mothers. I wondered about their daddies. A foreclosure isn't just some dry financial transaction; it is the kind of event that can tear a family apart.

The American people aren't going to stand by while big banks and other giant corporations run this economy and this Congress for their own benefit. Soon--maybe not today, maybe not next week, maybe not even in the next election, but soon they will demand a government that works for the people.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Thank you, Mr. President.

I have come to the floor of the Senate five times over the past week to talk about how the bank lobbyist act puts American families in danger of getting punched in the gut in another financial crisis. I have talked about how it rolls back consumer protections and how, if it passes, 25 of the 40 largest banks in this country--banks that sucked down, collectively, almost $50 billion in bailout money during the crisis, and nobody went to jail--can be regulated like tiny, little community banks.

I talked about how the bill will roll back the rules on the very biggest banks in this country--JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the rest of them--banks that broke our economy in 2008, banks where no one went to jail, banks where taxpayers coughed up $180 billion to bail them out. I talked about how Washington is poised to make the same mistake it has made many times before deregulating giant banks while the economy is cruising, only to set the stage for another financial crisis.

Now, I am not the only one who has talked about problems with this bill. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the FDIC, the Congressional Budget Office, the NAACP, the Urban League have all talked about parts of this bill that cause problems and would cause problems in our economy.

Today, I want to talk about another part of the bill that keeps me awake at night--the part that guts our ability to find and go after mortgage discrimination by exempting 85 percent of banks from reporting data about the loans they make under a law called the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act or HMDA.

There is a long and shameful history in this country of discriminating against communities of color when they try to buy homes. From 1934 to 1968, the Federal Housing Administration led the charge, actively discriminating by refusing to insure loans to qualified buyers while helping White families finance their plans to achieve the American dream. This policy was not a secret. Nope. It was not the product of a handful of racist government officials. Nope. It was the official policy of the U.S. Government until 1968--in my lifetime and the lifetime of 90 Senators who serve today. The official policy of this government was to help White people buy homes and to deny that help to Black people. Because the Federal Government had set this standard, private lenders enthusiastically followed Washington's lead.

Homes are the way that millions of working families built some economic security. They pay down a mortgage and own an asset that over time often appreciates. A home serves as security to fund other ventures--to start a small business or to send a youngster to college. If Grandma and Grandpa could hang on to the home and get it paid off, they can often pass along an asset that boosts the finances of the next generation and the one after that.

That is exactly what White people have done for generations--but not Black people. Systematically, over many decades, government policies that encouraged mortgage companies to lend only to White borrowers cut the legs out from under minority families trying to build some family wealth, and the result has been exactly what you would predict. It has contributed to a staggering gap of wealth between White communities and communities of color today. One statistic from Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe, states that the median net worth of White families living in Boston is $247,500, and the median net worth for a Black family is $8. That is something all Americans, regardless of race, should be ashamed of.

When I was traveling around the country in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it became clear to me that the crash had made the problem worse. Subprime lenders that had peddled mortgages full of tricks and traps had specifically targeted minority borrowers. That meant that during the great recession, a huge number of minority borrowers lost their homes. When rising home prices helped White Americans regain some financial security, communities of color, with their lower homeownership rates and their higher foreclosure rates, were often left behind.

Again, this is just one example. According to Pew, between 2010 and 2013, the median wealth of White households grew by 2.4 percent, but the wealth of Hispanic households in that same time fell by 14.3 percent, and the wealth of African-American households fell by 33.7 percent.

Mortgage discrimination didn't end in the 1960s when formal redlining policies were abolished. It didn't end with the tightening of mortgage rules following the financial crisis. Lending discrimination is still alive and well in America in 2018.

According to a new report that just came out from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal, in 2015 and 2016, nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders denied loans for people of color

at higher rates than for White people. This problem affects both big and small lenders, and it is nationwide. Minority borrowers were more likely to be denied a mortgage than White borrowers with the same income in 61 different cities across America.

How do we know that? Because of HMDA data. That is how we can see how much Black families were charged for a mortgage or how often Latino families were denied a chance to take out a mortgage--and we can compare those numbers with White borrowers who have the same income and same credit scores, but we can't do that if the data is missing. It is impossible to detect and fight mortgage discrimination without HMDA data.

The banking bill on the floor of the Senate says that 85 percent of the banks will no longer be required to report HMDA data, including the borrower's credit score and age; the loan's points, fees, and interest rates, and the property value. Eighty-five percent. This data is essential to figuring out whether the borrower got a fair deal.

If this bill passes, there will be entire communities where there will not be enough data to figure out whether borrowers are getting ripped off, entire communities where it will be impossible to monitor whether people are getting cheated because of their race or gender, entire communities where Federal and State regulators will not be able to bring cases, and independent groups like Reveal will not be able to hold these groups accountable.

Sure, banks will save a little money by not having to fill out the HMDA data, but when communities of color are once again left behind, there will be no way to prove it. That is why civil rights groups around the country have spoken up against this bill. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said ``[e]xempting the overwhelming majority of our Nation's banks and credit unions from an expanded HMDA requirement that would better enable Federal regulators, State attorneys general, fair housing advocates, and others to identify and address discriminatory and predatory mortgage practices is unwise.''

The Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition wrote in a newspaper column that the bill ``would be a giant step backwards for the public and national groups who use this data to ensure banks treat all borrowers equally.'' According to the NAACP, the bill ``would devastate our attempts to determine--and potentially rectify--racially discriminatory lending or loan approval patterns at play.''

This is about basic fairness. HMDA data is an investment we should be making to make sure that all qualified Americans have the same chance to buy a home. Throughout our history, Washington has always fallen short of that goal. Gutting HMDA allows our country and our government to ignore discrimination, letting history repeat itself.

Communities of color will pay the price if this Congress makes this same mistake again. It isn't too late. We can stop this bill from becoming law.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to join the citizens of Massachusetts who are making their voices heard and sending a clear message to President Trump: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts stands strong in opposition to his reckless proposal to expand offshore drilling. We stand strong in opposition to yet another handout to Big Oil executives who are willing to put corporate profits ahead of the health of our coastal families. We stand strong in opposition to this administration's willful ignorance of climate change and the world's ongoing clean energy revolution.

President Trump may say that his drilling plan is about growing jobs, but the truth is that this offshore drilling proposal is a slap in the face to every hard-working coastal family. President Trump is willing to put corporate profits for his Big Oil buddies ahead of shipping crews in Boston, ahead of the fishermen from Gloucester to New Bedford, ahead of the mom-and-pop diners all along the Cape, ahead of every tourism industry worker, and ahead of the families of all of these workers. President Trump is willing to gamble with the livelihoods of over 600,000 North Atlantic coastal and ocean workers. The people of Massachusetts and the people who depend on a clean coast are not willing to take that gamble.

Our coastal communities remember when the BP Deepwater Horizon oilspill happened in 2010. One offshore oil well blew and caused Deepwater Horizon's drilling rig to explode. It killed 11 workers, injured 17 others, and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the ocean, contaminating more than 1,300 miles of coastline and nearly 70,000 square miles of surface water. Millions of birds and marine animals died, suffocated by thick coatings of oil and poisoned by other toxic chemicals. The gulf fishing industry lost thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The spill devastated the gulf's coastal tourism economy. The environmental and economic devastation hit working families and small businesses across the region.

But the Trump administration insists on padding the pockets of Big Oil while small coastal towns bear all the risks that something will go wrong. The local towns bear the risk of a devastating oilspill. The local towns bear the risk of climate change impact, including increased coastal habitat destruction, fisheries threatened by ocean acidification, and rising sea levels. President Trump and this Republican Congress want to bury their heads in the sand or bury their heads in the big pile of Big Oil money, but the reality is this: Climate change has happened, and the evidence is all around us. The consequences are worsening with every single day of inaction.

Make no mistake. We are in the most critical fight of our generation and we are running out of time. We are in a fight to save our coastal towns, a fight to save our farmers, a fight to save our fishermen, a fight to save good-paying clean energy jobs, and a fight for our children's future.

Will winning the fight against climate change be tough? You bet it will. We will need to retool to install offshore wind turbines instead of offshore drilling rigs. We will need to invest in faster clean energy deployment, modernize the electric grid, build sea walls to protect our coastal towns, and much, much more. It is a big job ahead, but there is no country and no workforce in the world that is more willing and more able to tackle the challenges of climate change head- on than the United States of America. Yes, it is hard, but it is what we do. It is who we are.

We are a nation of unrelenting workers who clawed our way out of the Great Depression, who fought two world wars, who put a man on the moon, and who electrified the Nation with 20th century fuels. With a level playing field, we are a nation of workers who can electrify the world all over again with the 21st century fuels of wind, solar, and other clean energy sources.

The American people deserve leadership that understands just how innovative and persistent we are--leadership that knows the fearless strength of the American people; leadership that believes in the innovative, get-it-done attitude of the American worker; leadership that will stand up to Big Oil executives hell-bent on protecting their profits at our expense; and leadership that knows that our best days are ahead of us. But we have to fight for them. They deserve leadership that will not ignore the challenges of climate change; leadership that will not chain our economy to the fossil fuels of yesterday and, instead, will support the good-paying, clean energy jobs of tomorrow; and leadership that refuses to put our coastal families at risk of another devastating oil spill.

The American people deserve leadership that doesn't work for Big Oil. The American people deserve leadership that works for them.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Thank you, Madam President.

Ten years ago today, at breakfast tables all around the country, Americans read a shocking headline: ``Fed assumes the role of lender of last resort.'' The biggest investment banks on Wall Street were getting their first taxpayer bailout, but some of the banks were so addicted to poisonous scam mortgages that even that bailout wasn't enough. Within a week, Bear Stearns--an 85-year-old fixture on Wall Street--would fall, and the financial crisis would begin.

Within a year, American workers' retirement accounts had lost $2.7 trillion, almost one-third of their value. No one bailed them out. Within 2 years, 8.8 million Americans had lost their jobs. No one bailed them out. Within 3 years, more than 4 million homes had been lost to foreclosures, and millions more were in danger. No one bailed the homeowners out. Now, to mark the 10th anniversary of that devastating crisis, the Senate is on the verge of rolling back the rules on the big banks again.

Last week I talked about how this bill guts important consumer protections, how it weakens the oversight of banks with up to a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets, and how it could set the stage for another financial crisis, just like past bipartisan bills to roll back the financial rules. But the bill will also roll back the rules on the very biggest banks in the country, the true Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the rest--banks that taxpayers spent $180 billion bailing out in 2008. And no matter what the supporters of this bill say, there are three glaring parts of this bill that without question help the very biggest Wall Street banks.

First, this bill opens the door to easing up on big banks' stress tests. Right now, about 40 of the biggest banks go through stress tests every year, simulating a financial crisis and making sure that if it happened, they could survive. This bill says that 25 of them can just skip the hard test from now on, and the remaining 15 or so--well, they don't necessarily have to do those tests every single year. For the banks that are still going to be doing stress tests, they can now be done, under this bill, ``periodically.'' Who decides what ``periodically'' means--the former investment bankers Donald Trump has nominated to lead the Fed and to head up the Fed's supervisory work? Does that make you feel safe?

Second, the bill gives the biggest banks a new legal tool to fight for weaker rules. Right now, the law says that the Fed ``may'' tailor capital and other rules for the biggest banks. This bill says the Fed ``shall'' tailor the rules for the banks with more than $250 billion in assets--the very biggest banks in this country. That one word--the switch from ``may'' to ``shall''--may not seem like much, but it means everything to the high-priced lawyers who represent these banks.

Here is what Jeffrey Gordon, a professor at Columbia Law School, had to say about that one-word change:

This apparently minor change is likely to produce

significant degradation of financial stability, especially

over the long run. The change would expose the Fed to

litigation challenges to its enhanced standards, in

particular whether they are already adequately tailored. . .

. The statute thus empowers the largest firms which pose the

biggest risks to bargain with the Fed for laxer standards

with the threat of a well-resourced litigation challenge in

the background. Over time this bargaining for laxity will

produce a race-to-the-bottom dynamic that will dramatically

increase the chance of another financial crisis.

Professor Gordon of Columbia Law School says that will dramatically increase the chance of another financial crisis.

If you think the one-word change from ``may'' to ``shall'' won't change much, consider this: Opponents to the bill have been pointing out this problem loudly and publicly, but the bill's sponsors won't change it. They won't change that one word. Why? Because the giant banks want the change.

The third bank giveaway in this bill undercuts capital requirements for the biggest banks. The best way to stop another taxpayer bailout of the big banks is to make sure they have enough capital on hand to withstand a crisis. That is why Congress and the regulators established tougher capital requirements for the big banks after the last financial crisis. This bill reverses direction, opening the door to big banks like JPMorgan and Citigroup facing much lower capital requirements than they do now. In fact, the independent Congressional Budget Office says there is a 50-percent chance that JPMorgan and Citigroup can take advantage of a provision in the bill to reduce their capital requirements.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board--no fan of tough regulation-- wrote that the change proposed in the banking bill is dangerous and ``will make the financial system more vulnerable in a panic.'' The Bloomberg editorial board says the bill ``chip[s] away at the bedrock of financial resilience--the equity capital that allows

banks to absorb losses and keep on lending in bad times.'' And the consequences could be huge. According to the FDIC, this provision could lower capital requirements for JPMorgan by $21.4 billion and for Citigroup by $8.6 billion.

At the end of last week, the supporters of the bill introduced a new amendment that they claimed would address the problems in this bill, but that amendment did nothing to address these three glaring big-bank giveaways: The stress test provision is unchanged, the litigation provision is unchanged, and the capital requirements provision is unchanged. Victories for the big banks have been preserved 100 percent.

But it is not just the big-bank giveaways that remain unaddressed in this new amendment. Over the last week, we have heard a lot of criticism about this bill from experts and from civil rights groups and from consumer advocates and from former regulators, and, most importantly, from our constituents back home. They don't like it. This banking bill undermines civil rights laws. It weakens consumers protections on mortgages and mobile home purchases. It rolls back rules on 25 of the 40 largest banks in the country. It does almost nothing to protect consumers. Let me be perfectly clear about this. The new amendment does not address a single one of these legitimate criticisms. It is a bunch of fig leaves designed to let supporters of the bill pretend that they have addressed those criticisms without actually addressing them. In some cases, these little fig leaves actually make things worse.

Let's start with the fake fixes--first, mortgage discrimination. Mortgage discrimination is real in America. Some banks charge African Americans more for loans than they charge Whites with similar credit. Some deny loans to Latinos or to single women. How do we know that? Because banks have to disclose information about the loans they provide under something called the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, or HMDA. Using HMDA data, a new report shows that in 61 different cities around the country, minority borrowers were more likely to be denied a mortgage than White borrowers with the same income. But this bill--the bill that is pending on the floor of the Senate--now exempts 85 percent of banks from reporting any HMDA data, making it much harder to discover and stamp out discrimination.

Senator Cortez Masto had a great idea for fixing this: Take the HMDA provision out of the pending bill. Leave HMDA alone. If the authors of this bill really wanted to fix this problem, they would support her amendment and insist that without that amendment, they would withdraw their support for the bill. But now the bill's supporters have a fig leaf. They say that of the 85 percent of banks that no longer will have to report information about discrimination, if one of those banks flunks two consecutive examinations under the Community Reinvestment Act, those banks will have to start reporting discrimination data. If that looks like a tiny little fig leaf, consider this: Banks get tested at most every 3 years, which means it would take 6 years of discrimination to flunk twice. This fig leaf is so small, it is basically invisible.

Now, for some of these so-called consumer protection fig leaves--the problems are real; it is just the solutions that are fake. For example, there is a provision to deal with private student loans from banks. It says that if a student loan borrower dies, then the bank can't go after the cosigner of the loan for the full balance. That sounds really good--at least until you read the fine print. It turns out that spouses don't count. So the bank will still be free to hound widows and widowers for the balances of their deceased spouses. And the loan isn't actually forgiven. That means the bank can still go after the dead borrower's estate for the loan, maybe take half of the house or take whatever is in the checking account or savings account. It is a nightmare for a grieving family--and it is also perfectly OK under this fig leaf amendment.

In some places, it isn't even a fig leaf that pretends to address problems with the bill; it is just new provisions to create new problems--like a section that blows a hole in regulators' ability to require banks to hold capital for commercial real estate. Does anyone remember that risky commercial real estate investments were a factor in Bear Stearns' failure 10 years ago this week? Does anyone remember that 6 months later, commercial real estate losses would help blow up Lehman Brothers? I guess not--at least not right here in Congress, because 10 years later--right now, this week--Congress wants to let banks take one more commercial real estate fix with less oversight.

Banks of all sizes are making record profits. Only in Washington would people think it is time to scrap the protections that have kept us safe for a decade, all so that these same profitable banks can make even more money. It is the same mindset that set the stage for the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and the financial crisis of 2008.

America's working families will pay the price if we make the same mistakes again. It isn't too late. We should stop this bill from becoming law.

Thank you, Madam President.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, 10 years ago, millions of American families were on the verge of devastation. The failure of Bear Stearns in March of 2008 was the first major signal of a coming financial crisis that would cost 9 million people their jobs and millions more people their homes or their savings. Lives and plans and dreams would be crushed--and even after the economy began to recover its footing, millions of American families would have to spend years just to get back to where they started before 2008. A lot of those families have given up the dream of home ownership forever, and many are still struggling today.

But in the next few days, with broad support among Republicans and far too much support among Democrats, the Senate is on the verge of passing a bill that puts American families in danger of that same devastation all over again.

Over the last few days, I have talked about what this bill will do. I have explained how it strips consumer protections for American families who are trying to buy a home, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color. I have talked about how this bill will peel away vital safeguards we put on large banks after the financial crisis to make sure they can't crash the economy all over again.

Now, as the bill is on the verge of passing the Senate, I want to stop and just ask a basic question: Why? Who exactly is asking us to do this?

Our constituents hate it. A recent poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose this bill. So why is it that the only thing Washington can agree to do on a bipartisan basis in this Congress is to help out giant banks?

I will tell you why. Washington's amnesia is legendary. We go through the same cycle like clockwork. When the economy is looking good, lobbyists flood Congress and tell politicians it is perfectly safe to roll back the rules on the big banks. It is always the same set of arguments: America needs more lending for more economic growth. Our country is losing ground to its competitors. Banks have learned their lesson and don't need rules to behave responsibly. And here is the kicker question: What could possibly go wrong? Every time, it works.

It works even though the lessons of history are clear. Strong financial rules help create a strong economy that works for everyone, and when we weaken the rules, it sets the stage for another financial crisis--a crisis that, every time, hits America's working families the hardest.

Let's go back to the beginning of the 20th century. A lot of our financial regulations in the United States come from the Great Depression. Before then, Washington ignored the booms and busts that rocked the country every few years. But after the unemployment rate topped 20 percent in the 1930s and the U.S. economy shrunk by about 30 percent, Washington--this Congress--finally got its act together to pass some laws.

Here is what they did. First, they looked at all of the places where people put their money--banks, home, markets--and then they built regulators for all of those different kinds of investments. Congress did something really smart. It put a law in place called the Glass- Steagall Act. It broke up the biggest banks, and it separated the banks that take deposits and make mortgages from high-risk institutions like investment banks.

This worked reasonably well for about half a century. There wasn't a single major financial crisis. But then, starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, bankers, looking for higher profits and bigger paychecks, set their sights on government rules. They wanted less regulation and more freedom to trick their customers, to trap their customers, and to cheat their customers.

It started in the savings and loan industry. These institutions, which specialized in home mortgages, started to become insolvent because of the rising inflation and flaws in their business model. So the bank lobbyists had a solution: Deregulate them. They said: Instead of just safe mortgages, why don't we let these institutions put out some riskier stuff in hopes that some of these gambles will pay off big. The Reagan administration agreed, but the plan failed. Over the next decade, taxpayers spent $132 billion to bail out these institutions. That was in the 1980s.

But why stop there? Deregulating the thrifts, as disastrous as it was, was just small ball. Thrifts were allowed to gamble only with a chunk of their own money. The lobbyists wanted to tear down all of the barriers, throwing savings accounts and risky, complicated securities into one big institution and then letting that bank gamble with all of it.

They dreamt of a Wall Street where banks could take the money in grandma's checking account and use it to gamble in the markets. They wanted to tear down the wall Glass-Steagall had created between boring banking and high-risk trading.

In 1999, the conditions were perfect to rip up the rules. Why? The economy was cruising. Unemployment was down to 4.2 percent. The markets were on fire. The Dow, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ smashed every record in their paths. In fact, the NASDAQ grew at 85.6 percent in 1999, the biggest annual jump for a major index in U.S. history. One respected finance professor gushed:

It's amazing. Every year we say it can't be another year of

20 percent-plus (gain)--and then every year it's a 20

percent-plus gain.

It was the prime time for the bank lobbyists to strike. They swarmed Capitol Hill pushing, pulling, cajoling, running from the House to the Senate and back again, and most of this was happening behind closed doors. But on a clear, cold day in February of 1999, eight bankers and two lobbyists testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee, and the knives were out for Glass-Steagall. The euphemism people used then was ``modernization.'' When lobbyists start talking about modernization and clarification, it is time to buy a parachute.

Let me tell you about KeyCorp, one of the banks that would be taken off the watch list in the bill we are going to be voting on in the coming days. Back in 1999, the CEO of that company testified that the ``financial law modernization that strengthens our financial institutions in and of itself will enhance safety and soundness.'' Think about what that means. Behind the buzzwords, that CEO was making the amazing claim that if banks were just allowed to take more risks and make more short-term profits, it would actually make the financial system safer. In other words, if we just deregulate the banks, they will become safer.

He wasn't the only one to make a claim like that. The vice chairman of JPMorgan said: ``There is a consensus shared by most financial firms and their customers, as well as policymakers, that these rules restrict competition, reduce consumer choice, and are not necessary to protect consumers or insured financial institutions.'' In other words, rules are the problem--if banks could just do whatever they wanted, everything would be great.

Guess what. The pitch worked. Nine months later, in late 1999, a bill to repeal key parts of Glass-Steagall and roll back other financial rules passed both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly. Ninety Senators voted yes. Senator after Senator, including quite a few who are still here today, came to the Senate floor and praised the bill for modernizing our financial rules and getting rid of unnecessary and outdated requirements.

But not everyone was fooled. Some Senators knew better. Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota warned that Congress ``seem[s] determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes . . . [and] is about to repeal [Glass-Steagall] without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota was especially prescient. He said:

I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we

should not have done this but we did because we forgot the

lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the

1930's is true in 2010. . . . We now have decided in the name

of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety

and of soundness.

But Congress ignored their warnings. For the bargain price of $300 million in lobbyist bills, the big banks saw their wildest dreams come true. With the repeal of Glass-Steagall, too-big-to-fail megabanks were born. Citibank became Citigroup. J.P. Morgan became

JPMorgan Chase. The banks got bigger and bigger and bigger.

But the lobbyists weren't done yet. Over the next decade, they tried over and over to expand the loopholes that they had punched until both the regulators and the regulations gave way. By the middle of the decade, the conditions were right. Markets broke records. The unemployment rate was below 5 percent. It was time for the lobbyists to go at it again. Hand-tailored suits and Gucci loafers swarmed Capitol Hill. Meetings were scheduled. So were fundraisers. Their efforts again occasionally spilled out into the public hearing rooms.

This pitch might sound familiar. In 2006, the head of risk at Citigroup, on behalf of the Financial Services Roundtable, told the House Financial Services Committee: ``The U.S. needs to modernize its capital regulations, and there are a variety of new approaches that all represent a significant improvement over the current system.'' In other words, the regulations are outdated.

Steve Bartlett, a former Congressman who was a lobbyist for the 50 biggest banks, told the Senate Banking Committee in 2005: ``Outdated laws and regulations impose significant, and unnecessary, burdens on financial services firms, and these burdens not only make our firms less efficient, but also increase the cost of financial products and services to consumers.'' In other words, set the banks free, and let them do whatever they want. What could possibly go wrong?

In 2005, the head of the American Bankers Association told the committee: ``The cost of unnecessary paperwork and red tape is a serious long-term problem that will continue to erode the ability of banks to serve our customers and support the economic growth of our communities.'' In other words, in the end, these rules hurt consumers. Let the banks do whatever they want to consumers.

Then, just as the lobbyists were gaining momentum, the economy they created crashed. It was 2008, and millions of families lost their homes, millions lost their savings, and millions lost their jobs. But the lobbyists didn't lose their jobs. They peddled myths about the economy and the financial system, and they kept right on working for the big banks. All during the efforts to pass financial regulations to get our economy out of the ditch, the bank lobbyists were there. They pulled in more than $1 million a day lobbying against financial reform.

When the American people started to demand action in the wake of the 2008 crash, the reforms passed anyway. But the lobbyists didn't give up. They didn't go away. Before the ink was dry on Dodd-Frank, they jumped right back in and started lobbying to roll back the new rules.

So here we are again. It took years, but the economy is humming again. In 2016, the unemployment rate dipped below 5 percent for the first time since before the 2008 crisis. In 2017, the Dow jumped 25 percent, and the NASDAQ grew by 28 percent. And you know what that means--it means the bank lobbyists have once again taken center stage, insisting that it is safe to deregulate their clients again, all in the name of economic growth and empowering consumers. It is the same argument as before.

Last spring, bank lobbyist Greg Baer said:

After nearly a decade of fundamental and continuing changes

to financial regulation, now is an opportune time to review

the efficacy of our current bank regulatory framework. My

testimony will focus on reforms that could directly and

immediately enhance economic growth.

In other words, turn the big banks loose, and let's see what they can do.

Harris Simmons, the CEO of Zions Bank, which will be kicked off the watch list under the bill that is now under consideration, recently testified that ``the uncertainty surrounding [Dodd-Frank reforms] can cause banks to withdraw or limit certain kinds of lending.'' To put it another way: Get out of the way and let the big banks cheat their customers again. It is good for bank profits.

Here we go again. I get it. Our financial regulations need work. There are things we could do to reduce the load on community banks, and there are still big dangers to consumers that we should take up. But this bill isn't about the unfinished business of the last financial crisis; this bill is about laying the groundwork for the next financial crisis.

I will make a prediction. This bill will pass, and if the banks get their way, in the next 10 years or so, there will be another financial crisis. Of course, when the crash comes, the big banks will throw up their hands and say that it is not their fault, that nobody could have seen it coming. Then they will run to Congress and beg for bailout money, and--let's be blunt--they will probably get it. But just like in 2008, there will be no bailout for working families. Jobs will be lost, and lives will be destroyed. The American people, not the banks, will once again bear the burden.

Then, caught in a fog of amnesia, the lobbyists and regulators and elected officials in Washington will scratch their heads and wonder how in the world it could have possibly happened again. But the American people won't be confused about it at all. They never are. They are much smarter than the people around here give them credit for. They won't wonder why it happened; they will know why it happened. They will know it was because the people in Washington ignored working people in order to do the bidding of the guys in fancy suits and the handmade shoes who write the fat campaign checks. Look at the numbers. Seventy-eight percent of Americans think big banks have too much control over Members of Congress. That includes 68 percent of people who voted for Donald Trump. Everyone knows that Congress sold them out last time, and everyone expects it to happen again this time.

As we prepare to vote on this bill, I ask my colleagues one more time, do the job you were sent here to do. Stand up for the people who sent us here. Stop doing the bidding of big bank lobbyists, and start working on the things that can make a difference in the lives of working people around this country. The American people need it. The American people deserve it. The American people will demand it. If you refuse to do it, don't be surprised when they hold you responsible.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.