Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Daniel Garbe, a State Department fellow, and Jeffrey Moulton, a military fellow, who are working in Senator Ted Kaufman's office, be granted the privileges of the floor for the duration of the Senate's consideration of H.R. 4899, the supplemental appropriations bill.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I wanted to discuss very briefly an amendment that I have filed with respect to the independence of compensation consultants.

As we all know, executive compensation has been a significant issue in this country. Much of executive compensation is set on the advice of compensation consultants. I had an interesting meeting earlier this year with the Obama administration's ``pay czar,'' he is called, and he said when he was in the process of trying to work out how he should try to restructure executive compensation, he tried to find an independent compensation consultant to advise him. He found he could not find a single compensation consultant in the country who met his standards for independence.

This amendment would ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to set standards for independence for compensation consultants, so that when, consistent with this legislation, the compensation committee of a board has to evaluate which compensation consultant to hire, they get an independent seal of approval from the SEC, and they can know they are doing the right thing; and, of course, we can assure that we have independent compensation consultants and not people who get paid in order to encourage higher salaries for CEOs in our country.

I had a brief discussion about this with the chairman. He expressed some interest in it. I understand we will be continuing to work together to try to get this language incorporated into the final bill. I expressed my appreciation to him for his consideration. I believe it matches the language on the House side, so maybe it is something we can do in conference. But, clearly, this question of compensation is an area where the chairman has been a leader, and I look forward to working with him.

Mr. President, I wanted to share with my colleagues an update on where we are with the bipartisan amendment on which I have been working so hard. I see Senator Sanders of Vermont is here, and he is one of my cosponsors, as is the Presiding Officer, Senator Udall of New Mexico.

The amendment, as you know, would allow States to protect their citizens from exorbitant interest rates that are charged by out-of- State banks. There is a trick to this. Years ago, the Supreme Court made a decision saying when a bank is in one State and a consumer in another, the transaction between them is governed by the laws--and here they had to pick one State or the other--the bank's State. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but it opened a loophole that crafty bank lawyers figured out, and that is that you could move and redomicile a bank's headquarters in the State with the worst consumer protection laws in the country. Then, from that State, you could market back to other States which have consumer protections, which have interest rate limits honoring the tradition of usury restriction that was at the founding of this country and that lasted for hundreds of years but goes back to all our ancient religions and which is a constant in human civilized

legal codes. This overruled all of that, allowing them to sneak right by it because they have either gone to or perhaps even cut a deal with their home State to have the worst consumer protection and be able to take advantage of people in other States. It is the proverbial race to the bottom. I am confident if you called up on the Senate floor as the government's policy proposal the way it is right now, you would not get a single vote. Who would vote for the notion that the consumer protection policy of the country is going to be set by the worst State and have that be a situation in which the worst State is usually getting rewarded by the industry for being the worst State?

It is a bad situation. This amendment has gotten a lot of attention. It has gotten a lot of support--it has bipartisan support. It is a very practical thing we can do for American consumers.

This is a pretty esoteric piece of legislation in a lot of ways, this Wall Street reform bill. This does things like trying to rebuild the Glass-Steagall firewall. Until I got in the middle of this debate, I couldn't tell what that was. This changes the leverage limits and puts restrictions on what banks can do. That is pretty esoteric stuff. This deals with the regulation of derivatives and collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps and things that nobody ever heard of until we were drilled into this legislation--esoteric, preventive stuff. But this piece of the bill, this amendment would enable all of us to go home and tell our constituents: You know those 30 percent penalty rates that your out-of-State credit card company drops you into if you make a mistake, if you are late in a payment, for no reason at all? We have done something to protect you against that--consistent with the traditions of our country, our laws, consistent with the doctrine of federalism and States rights, consistent with the Founding Fathers' delegation to the States, the ability to protect consumers in this way. We have restored the States rights. They are no longer trumped by an out-of-State corporation. Now they have the sovereign right they should to protect consumers.

I think it is a meritorious piece of legislation. I think it is an amendment that deserves consideration on the floor. It is beginning to appear that it may not actually even get a vote, notwithstanding that it is pending. We may be edged right out.

I want to explain why. People who have been watching this debate have seen long hours of nothing happening on this floor. There has been a lot of delay. There has been a lot of delay allowing us to get to amendments. Why is that? We are up against a time restriction on this bill. It is a practical time restriction. The leader needs to make sure we pass the supplemental Defense appropriations bill that funds our troops. What could be more important than, when we have troops in the field, overseas, serving our country, putting themselves in harm's way, that we provide them the resources they need to be successful? We have to do that.

We have to do something to increase the strength of our economy. In Rhode Island we are at 12.6 percent unemployment. We have been in the top three States for unemployment every single month of the Obama administration.

I think we are in the 28th month of severe recession. So we know how bad this economy is and how much more we need to do to try to bolster it. So we need to get to the next jobs bill, the jobs and tax extenders bill, to make sure we are providing the necessary support to our economy.

We have to get to those things. Because of all the delay that our friends on the other side have built into the process we are now getting into the end point where we are starting to be squeezed for time.

Now that we are squeezed for time, they are refusing to give time agreements to amendments like mine that would actually make a difference. They do not want to vote in favor of out-of-State corporations and against their home State's ability to protect their home State's fellow citizens. But they do want the out-of-State corporations to win. They don't want to vote in their favor, but they want them to win.

If that is your position, the perfect thing is to delay and delay until it gets to be here at the end, crunch time, then take the amendments that worry you, the amendments that will get after the big banks, the amendments that will be fair to consumers, and refuse to give time agreements and vote agreements on those and basically run out the clock.

That is the position we are in right now. It appears there is no willingness on the other side of the aisle to give this a vote--not just at a 50-vote margin, even at a 60-vote margin. They don't want to be on record supporting these out-of-State credit card companies that are gouging their own citizens. They just want them to win, and they figured out this way to do it.

The only alternative is to call up the bill, what is called postcloture, which means I have to be technically something called germane. Right now we are working with the Parliamentarian to argue as strongly as we can that we are indeed germane. It is an open question whether we are indeed germane, and I hope it gets resolved in our favor before the bill comes up in its regular order postcloture.

That is the situation. If people are wondering why this amendment does not appear to be on any list, is not going anywhere, it is because there is a blockade of it on the other side. They are taking advantage of the time crunch that they created with all the delays that led us to this time crunch to squeeze out the amendments where they do not want to vote for the big banks, they don't want to vote for the big credit card companies, but they do want the big banks and the big credit card companies to win. So it is the squeeze play at the end to try to drive these impactful amendments that will make a tangible, immediate difference in the lives of Rhode Islanders and the lives of their home State citizens, the ones paying that 30-plus percent interest rate that until very recently would be a matter to bring to the authorities of this country, not a matter that the Senate tried to defend. So that is where we are.

I will continue to work with the Parliamentarian to make sure we are germane postcloture, and I will continue to argue to try to get a vote. But forces are arrayed against us at this point, and I want to be perfectly candid about it.

I yield the floor.

I thank the chairman. I guess as the old song goes, what a long, strange trip it has been to get to this vote. But I appreciate very much the chairman's efforts and the ranking member's efforts that have allowed this vote.

I thank the cosponsors who have helped me work so hard on this legislation: Senators Cochran, Merkley, Durbin, Sanders, Levin, Burris, Franken, Brown of Ohio, Menendez, Chairman Leahy, Senators Webb, Casey, Wyden, my distinguished senior colleague from Rhode Island, Jack Reed, Senator Udall of New Mexico, and Senator Begich, who is now Presiding.

I am very proud of that support and very proud of the support of over 200 consumer groups for this legislation, including AARP, Consumers Union, National Consumer Law Center, Public Citizen, and Common Cause. That is a blue ribbon group of consumer supporters, and it is just the tip of the iceberg of a large organizational push to correct an inequity in American society that arises out of an inadvertent loophole that the Supreme Court created 30 years ago.

This vote presents all of my colleagues a clear, stark choice. Whose side you are on will be defined by your vote on this amendment. If you are on the side of the big out-of-State banks that are marketing into your home State and that are forcing your home State citizens to pay 30 percent and over interest rates even though those interest rates might be illegal under your home State laws, then you will cast your vote against this amendment and in favor of those big out-of-State banks charging that exorbitant interest. If you support it, you are taking the side of your home State citizens who are being gouged right now by banks over which they have no control because they are pitching their business into the home State from elsewhere and the home State laws, because of this peculiar Supreme Court loophole, have been held not to apply. If you vote in favor of this amendment, you are voting in favor of your home State's laws.

This is not a reach of Federal authority. This is traditional federalism and States rights to honor the laws of the States whose citizens sent us here and who wish to protect them from abusive interest rates.

If you vote in favor of this amendment, you are also voting in favor of your community banks, your local State-chartered banks, which don't take advantage of this loophole, which don't create their headquarters in a faraway State that gives them zero consumer protection restriction and allows them to target their marketing against the laws of the home State. The home State banks have to play by the laws of the home State, and this would level the field for your home State banks.

So it is a pretty clear and stark choice: Are you for your home State citizens, are you for your home State's laws, are you for your home State's banks or do you want to take your stand today with the big out- of-State banks whose interest rates are unregulated, whose behavior is in conflict with 200 years of American history and every civilized legal tradition dating back into the mists of time? Every major religion has limited usury. Every civilized legal code has restricted the ability of one individual to harm another by charging them exorbitant interest rates when they are in need.

This is the aberration we are facing right now. We have the chance to fix it. We have the chance to fix it in a way that is justified and proven by 202 years of history in the United States and thousands of years of tradition before that. I urge my colleagues to stand up for their fellow citizens against these out-of-State banks.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I wish to say a few words on the amendment I have pending and that we will be voting on in the next 2 days that will restore the historic power of States to control interest rates they charge to their citizens.

One of the things I hear most about when I am home in Rhode Island is from folks who can't understand why their credit card interest rate suddenly jumped to over 30 percent. For a long time, the tricks and the traps in those long credit card contracts pitched people into these penalty rates. I think a lot of people don't read all the fine print and aren't sure exactly what it means. We have individual consumers up against the craftiest lawyers the credit card industry can hire, and the result is when they trigger one of these traps and they get caught by one of these little tricks, they end up being kicked into a very high penalty rate.

Recently, after the credit card reform bill passed a year ago, we saw the credit card industry actually not even waiting for the tricks or traps to be triggered. They just began to spontaneously raise people's interest rates; again, very often over 30 percent. The Presiding Officer and I are both of an age where we can remember a time when interest rates of that level would have been a matter to refer to the authorities, not a commonplace business practice of our biggest industries. When we think of the pain and the suffering and the economic stress families get put under when they fall into these burdensome, exorbitant penalty rates--I think we should do something about it. My amendment would allow us to do just that.

It doesn't take any new risks. It doesn't create dramatic new policy. It does things that my friends on the other side of the aisle have been supportive of over the years. It honors the independent authority of States to make decisions to protect their citizens. It supports consumers--the little guy--against the huge corporations, and it puts our local banks on a level playing field with these big out-of-State banks.

We got here because of an unusual loophole that the Supreme Court opened 30 years ago. We did not have a debate on the Senate floor saying: What should our policy be? Should we take away the rights of States to protect their consumers, to protect their citizens from exorbitant out-of-State interest rates? We never had that discussion. This happened inadvertently.

It happened as a result of a Supreme Court decision back in 1978 that said when a bank in one State and a consumer in another State have a transaction, it will be the laws of the home State of the bank that govern. It didn't look like a very big deal at the time. It didn't take the crafty bank lawyers long to see that it opened a very tricky loophole, and they could move to the States in this country that had the worst consumer protection legislation, and from there--from those outposts of the worst consumer protection--they could market into other States. The fact that the other State they were marketing into had good consumer protections and protected those State's citizen didn't matter. It didn't help because of the Supreme Court decision.

I submit if, as a Senate, we were to have debated that proposition, there would not have been many votes for the outcome. The notion of the policy of the United States on protecting consumers from interest rates should be that the rules of the worst State in the country trump every other State is a rule that nobody in their right mind would vote for. But because of this inadvertent Supreme Court loophole and because of the crafty work of these big national banks and their lawyers, we are now in that exact situation--a situation that none of us would ever have voted for and that we shouldn't tolerate now.

So I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to vote for this amendment. I wish to thank Senator Cochran from the other side of the aisle for cosponsoring it, and I wish to ask his colleagues in the Republican caucus to join him in supporting it.

This bill we are looking at right now is very esoteric and technical. It is preventive medicine. It engages in things such as trying to rebuild the Glass-Steagall firewall, trying to promptly regulate collateralized debt obligations, trying to put appropriate leverage limitations on banks. That is all pretty arcane stuff.

The American people want this reform, and it should happen. But here is a deliverable they can take right home. They will see a difference as soon as their States respond. They can be protected from these outrageous 30-percent interest rates as a result of this bill. It is not a big Federal Government that is coming to do this; it is the State governments, State by State. Indeed, if a State wants to have no consumer protections and have its citizens vulnerable to these predatory and exorbitant credit card deals, fine. They can do that. There is nothing in my amendment that requires a State to do anything. It just empowers them with the same power they had at the founding, with the same power they had for 202 years, until 1978 came along and this peculiar Supreme Court decision.

So I think it will be a good argument to go home with, and as voters in this country look at what Congress has done leading up to the November elections, to be able to say: You know what. Those 30-percent rates we never saw when we were children and that our parents never had to pay, the rates that you as a head of a family are now having to deal with with these credit card companies from out of State that you can barely reach on the phone, and if you do, you get pushed from phone tree to phone tree, we have done something about that. We have helped you. We have put you in a position where the States are sovereign again over these big national corporations rather than vice versa.

Right now, we, the big credit card companies, are sovereign over our States. That is not the way things should be in America. That is not the way the Founding Fathers set it up. It is not right for consumers. It violates the principle of the States being laboratories of democracy, and it completely eviscerates consumer protection.

So I urge my colleagues to support it and to put themselves in a position to be able to go home to their voters and say: We did something tangible for you. We didn't create bigger government. We let your existing State government make the decisions that for two centuries they were capable of making to protect you from the worst practices of the out-of-State credit card companies. The alternative is to have to go back and explain why people are still paying 30 percent when you have the chance to do something about it; why you chose the big out-of-State corporations and exorbitant interest rates over your own home State's protection of your own home State's citizens.

I think the position my colleagues would want to be in on that one is with your home State, with the doctrine of federalism, with the traditions of the United States of America, and with your consumers, rather than on the other side with the big out-of-State banks that charge these exorbitant rates.

So I hope I will have support, and I look forward to working with anyone who has questions.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, may I ask for regular order with respect to my pending amendment, No. 3746.

Mr. President, I offer a modification.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 3884 to Amendment No. 3739

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 17, 2010, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Gulf Coast Catastrophe: Assessing the Nation's Response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate May 17, 2010, at 5:30 p.m.

Madam President, I congratulate Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley for their long effort to eliminate the secret holds in this body. They thought they had succeeded in 2007 with a mechanism that would scrub secret holds and make them public after 6 days. But it turns out that a number of our colleagues on the other side discovered a loophole in the rule. Whether it is called the old switcheroo or revolving holds or hold laundering, they found a way to defeat the purpose of a rule that was voted for by 84 Members of the Senate on a strong bipartisan basis. That is why we are back here today.

I want to also add to the role of honor on this subject Claire McCaskill, who has done the lion's share of the work of shepherding in some cases 100 stalled nominees blockaded on the Executive Calendar through those 2007 year procedures so that we could get to the point of proving that there were, in fact, secret holds and that despite the rule, hold laundering was taking place and the rule was not being put into effect and holds were being kept secret.

I suppose an asterisk on the role of honor should go to Senator Coburn, who is the one Senator on the Republican side who had the courage to stand up and disclose his actual holds. Everybody else went to some other Senator and said: I don't want my name on this. Would you please take my hold over so I can avoid the rule, keep my hold, and have no accountability.

Perhaps there once was a reason for a secret hold, for this kind of business to be done in the dark, in the shadows, and anonymously. I think history and common sense tell us that deeds that are done in the dark are not usually ones of which we are proud. Certainly, the experience of the last few months has shown that if there ever was a legitimate use for secret holds, that purpose has evaporated. It has evaporated under the pressure of blocked nominees numbering, in some cases, over 100--a systematic approach, a systematic attempt to disable this administration's ability to govern by systematically opposing nominees, irrespective of the merits; opposing nominees who came out of committee in a bipartisan fashion; opposing nominees who came out of committee with zero opposing votes; with Senators raising objections to nominees they voted for in committee. There is clearly something more going on than a sincere concern about an individual nominee.

Finally, this effort to what I call hold launder and to avoid the rule 84 Senators stood up and voted for that does nothing more than put your hold in the plain light of day shows that the 2007 rule, unfortunately, has been ineffective and that it is time for a change.

I have continuing gratitude for Senator Wyden, Senator Grassley, and for all those who have supported us on this issue and particularly for Senator McCaskill for her relentless presence on the floor, making this actually happen.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to join my colleagues in expressing our support for Senator Wyden's continued efforts to get this rule changed.

The circumstances in which these secret holds take place are quite remarkable. Over and over again we see a committee vote clearing a nominee for the floor, often unanimously, or by heavy, huge bipartisan majorities; clearly qualified candidates; clearly candidates who enjoy bipartisan support and, in many cases, candidates who are unanimously supported. Even in this contentious and cantankerous time in this body, they come through the committee with that kind of support.

Then they come through on the floor in some cases 98 to 0, 100 to 0. But between that unanimous committee vote and the unanimous floor vote is an endless, endless, endless delay. Many of them stack up and never get that floor vote. We have had as many as 100 stacked up, waiting for that floor vote on the Executive calendar.

What is happening between a unanimous committee vote and a unanimous floor vote that creates all this hassle and delay and leaves people in limbo for months and months, 100 at a time on the Executive calendar, all of whom are in responsible positions in our Federal Government that we need to have staffed? It is the secret hold. It is the secret hold where you don't have to disclose who you are so you don't have to disclose why you are holding. Because you don't have to disclose who you are or why you are holding, you don't have to have a good reason. You could have a downright nefarious reason and you could still use the hold. It is pretty widely known that deeds that are done in the dark are not the deeds we are proud of, and this is a deed that is by definition always done in the dark. Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley's long efforts to get rid of it are very commendable. We are going to work very hard to make sure we have their back on this rule.

In this particular circumstance, Senator Wyden has been here 14 years. He has never seen a stunt like this one. I have only been here 3 years; I can't say that. But 14 years of service in the Senate and he has never seen a stunt like this particular one.

The idea that this is on the merits, the idea that this is about trying to get a vote on that second-degree amendment, seems mighty improbable. Of all of the amendments on this bill, of all of the amendments we have voted on, of all the amendments that are pending, of all the amendments people are arguing for to get on the floor, which is the one amendment that somebody chose to drop this second-degree amendment on and jam up its passage through this body?

Which is the one? It is the secret hold. In kind of a perverse way, it is actually sort of appropriate that a procedural vehicle, the secret hold, that has such an odor of mischief around it--that the reform of that should itself be blockaded by a procedural trick that also has that same odor of mischief about it.

But what we want to do is get through that mischief so that the business of this body no longer wreaks of the odor of mischief and instead gives off the healthy air of open debate and public process and transparency. I thank Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley, who is not on the floor. We will continue to push on this.

Amendment No. 3746 to Amendment No. 3739

If I could change to a different piece of business, I will take this opportunity to call up amendment No. 3746. I thank Senator Dodd and I will say a few words about it.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

I don't want to speak long. I want to, first, join Senator Bennet's appreciation of Senator Dodd for the long and successful way in which he has managed this bill. It has not gone unnoticed by the American people how contentious and cantankerous the environment is around the Senate. Notwithstanding that inhospitable environment, he has done an extraordinary job of bringing this legislation forward and continuing through the deliberative process, where people are getting amendments and votes are being taken. There are no motions to table so far. Only one vote has required 60 votes. It has been going by the regular order of the Senate and not the usual procedures that often have been forced by the recent obstructionism we have seen. I commend him and thank him for allowing this amendment to be called up and to go forward.

I want to add a sponsor, Senator Tom Udall, of New Mexico. I ask unanimous consent that he be added as the amendment's 15th cosponsor.

I very much hope this can go with bipartisan support. Senator Cochran on the Republican side is a cosponsor as well. It is a bipartisan amendment. This is a situation that the Congress never voted on, the situation that is here to cure. We never made a decision that an out-of-State bank should be able to come into your State and violate your State's law about interest rates. We could have. That is within Congress's power to say. But we never did. We are in that circumstance, however, for an unusual reason--because many years ago, 30 years ago, the Supreme Court made a technical decision about the National Banking Act, determining that when you have a transaction between a bank in one State and a consumer in another, where is the transaction located for regulatory purposes? They decided to locate it where the bank is. They had to pick one or the other.

That didn't seem very systemically important at the time. But the big banks--the Wall Street banks--have very crafty lawyers. The very crafty lawyers saw the loophole that this innocent technical decision opened. So they started moving their credit card businesses, their divisions, into States that had the worst consumer protection laws--the ones where you could charge any interest rate you wanted, where there was the worst protection for the consumer. From that base of the worst consumer protection in the country, they could move out and sell their products and do business in all of the other States, whose laws were still on the books, whose laws still protected their citizens, whose laws had stood since the founding of the Republic, since the establishment of the

States, and they could get around those laws because of this loophole that the Supreme Court decision opened.

It is way past time that we close this loophole. In Illinois, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, over and over and over we hear from people who are suffering because they were late with a payment or they fell into one of the tricks and traps in the credit card contract or for no reason at all, just because they can do it, the credit card company jacked the interest rate up to or over 30 percent. Suddenly, boom, they are in what one expert called the ``sweat box.'' They cannot pay what they owe. It is all they can do to stay even all the time. The big company milked them and charged an interest rate that would be illegal under the laws of that State. Before 1978, the solicitation for that credit card that had the tricks and traps, and that hidden 30- percent penalty rate, would have been a matter for the authorities. Now it is the way they do business.

This amendment will put that back. For 202 years of this Republic, that was the way things were. States could protect their own citizens from unfair and excessive interest rates. That is the way it should be. That is what federalism is all about. That is what States rights are all about. So I hope that my amendment will go forward.

People believe in history--the more than two centuries of history of the States protecting their consumers, and a tradition of protection against abusive rates that goes back before the founding of our country, back to ancient Roman law, and all of the world's major religions. This is a longstanding tradition with a very strange little loophole that created a peculiar historic anomaly that allows these big corporations to take terrible advantage of ordinary Americans. Not only are Americans being taken advantage of, but local banks suffer as well because they have to play by the rules. If you haven't played that stunt of headquartering your bank in another State so you can work your way back and market in that same State, but under the nonexistent consumer protections of the home State, then you are stuck, and it is not fair.

I ask my colleagues to protect consumers in your home States and be true to history and States rights, protect your local banks have to follow local State laws. Let's put this brief moment in history into the ash heap of history, where it belongs as an anomaly where Americans, for the first time, had no protection from giant corporations gouging them with 30 percent and higher interest rates. That is not the way America was founded. That is not what we stood for for centuries. It is only because of this peculiar loophole that we have this situation. We have it within our power to change that. We have it within our power to go back to our home States and say to the people in our home States: We have done you a real good deed. We have allowed your State government, your Governor and legislature in the home State, to protect its own citizens against abusive out-of-State interest rates.

A lot of this bill is very technical. It is preventive medicine to rebuild the Glass-Steagall firewall, to regulate collateralized debt obligations, to enhance leverage requirements--things that are hard for people to grasp if they have not been steeped in these technicalities for these many weeks. It is important stuff, but if you want a clear, deliverable way to explain about this bill when you go back to your home State--when Senator Cochran, my cosponsor, goes back to Mississippi, if this amendment passes, he will be able to say to his fellow Mississippians: Ladies and gentlemen, the State of Mississippi is empowered to protect you now. An out-of-State company can no longer take your interest rates, and for a lousy reason, or for no reason at all, suddenly jack them up to 30 percent or more. It is simply wrong to leave ordinary Americans subject to that kind of abuse, to all the crafty, heavily lawyered, carefully designed, socially engineered tricks and traps they have built into these complicated, complex, tricky credit card agreements.

Now 50 States can stand against it. Attorneys general can proceed to defend these laws. It puts the government of this country back where it should be--in the hands of the people. Some people here would rather have the big corporations rule over the States. I believe that the States should trump even the big corporations when it comes to matters of protecting their citizens. That is the way it should be. That is the way the country was founded and, if this amendment passes, that is the way it will be again.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if I may reply. As a new Senator in this body, who had not had legislative experience--I came out of an executive and law enforcement background--I have enjoyed the privilege of serving on that committee under the Senator's leadership. And now to have had the privilege of seeing him work this bill on the floor, for a new Senator, it has been a master class in leadership and legislation. I will never forget it. I feel very privileged to have had that experience. I thank the chairman.

May I interject myself in this debate for 1 minute to ask unanimous consent with respect to the Whitehouse amendment that restores States rights to protect against exorbitant, out-of-State lenders doing business in one's own State.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Cochran of Mississippi be added as a cosponsor. I want to take a moment to let him know how much I appreciate his cosponsorship of what is now a bipartisan amendment, and I look forward to continuing to secure additional sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

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

Mr. President, I wish to speak on a couple of subjects. The first is to express my regret that the supplemental funding to help Rhode Island in the wake of its unprecedented, historic flooding was stopped on the floor today by a Republican objection. I would have hoped that when a true emergency happened in somebody's home State, with a Presidential disaster declaration, and Senators were working to remedy that, the traditional deference for emergency spending would be appropriate.

Senator Reed, as the senior Senator and a member of the Appropriations Committee, is the leader on this issue. He and I will continue to work to get this done for Rhode Island. It is regrettable that conditions on the Senate floor are such that emergency spending-- while we still have people out of their homes, flood damage, unprecedented in Rhode Island's history--is not something on which we simply could have agreed.

There are floods in other States, and I assume similar rules will apply when they come forward.

Exorbitant Interest Rates

The second issue I wish to mention, since I see the distinguished chairman of the Banking Committee, is I continue to hope for and argue for the amendment I have proposed that will do something very helpful for something that bedevils constituents in every single one of our States, which is exorbitant, ridiculous interest rates.

Every day in the mail in every one of our States people are opening offerings from the big credit card companies;

proposals that, particularly when certain tricks or traps are triggered, kick them into 30 percent or higher interest rates.

It was not too long ago in all of our lifetimes that a solicitation such as that would have been a matter to bring to the attention of the authorities in our States because it would have been illegal under State law to charge that kind of reprehensible interest rate.

We as a Congress never decided we were going to overrule all those State laws; State laws that have existed since the founding of the Republic, a tradition of interest rate regulation that in our culture goes back to the Code of Hammurabi, goes back to Roman law. We never decided as a Congress: Oh, we are not going to allow States to protect their consumers any longer, protect their citizens any longer against exorbitant interest rates.

It happened in a strange, backhanded, almost inadvertent way. It began with a statute in 1863 that said a transaction was governed by law based on where it was located. In 1863, there was not a lot of interstate banking. So there did not need to be a lot of discussion about what ``located'' meant. But by 1978, interstate banking was fairly common. The question came to the Supreme Court, what that word ``located'' in that Civil War statute meant.

In a very unheralded decision at the time, a decision that did not appear to be of any significant consequence, the U.S. Supreme Court said: If you have a bank located in one State and a consumer located in another State, the law is going to be the State of the bank. It had to be one or the other. They chose the State of the bank. The Marquette decision it was called. It involved the Presiding Officer's State, Minnesota. The decision said it is going to be the bank.

It did not seem very controversial. Why not? The problem was that the banking industry began to figure out that there was a loophole. They began to figure out if they could go to the States with the worst consumer protection laws in the country or if they could go to a friendly Governor and say: Hey, I will make you a deal; you clear out your consumer protection laws, and we will come and we will locate a big, high-rise business full of call center people in your State--from that State, they could operate nationally.

Because of this funny 1978 decision from an 1863 law, bit by bit all of the constitutional Federalist States rights protections, where sovereign States have the right to protect their own citizens against outrageous and exorbitant interest rates, became ineffectual. We never decided that as a Congress. If we had that debate, I will venture that it would have gone the other way. It would be preposterous for us as a Congress to look out across America and say: OK, we are going to pass a law that says that the worst State for consumer protection regulation is going to be the State that governs. Obviously, it would create a race to the bottom. Obviously, it would completely disenfranchise home States trying to protect their own citizens from States a country away that, frankly, couldn't care less.

A Rhode Island consumer being victimized is not the problem of the State of South Dakota. It just is not. We would never have passed that law. It would have been an outrageous law to have passed. Yet because of this funny, quirky Supreme Court decision, that is the way the law in practice developed because smart bank lawyers figured out this trick and have taken advantage of it.

It is not just consumers who are getting clobbered as a result. It is also unfair to local banks. A Rhode Island bank is under Rhode Island interest rate laws. But an out-of-State bank, the big Wall Street banks with their big credit card subsidiaries, can play by their own rules, by the worst rules in the country. A Rhode Island bank, a Connecticut bank, a Minnesota bank--they have to play by local rules. It is not fair to local lenders to have this discrepancy, because it is bad for consumers, because consumers all across this country are paying interest rates now that would have been illegal just two or three decades ago, because it is anticompetitive, because it allows the biggest banks to compete unfairly against local community banks, Main Street banks, disadvantaged against these big Wall Street monsters because nobody in Congress ever made a decision nor would we have made a decision that this was OK. It is time we closed this loophole.

I look forward to when we return to have the chance to get a vote on that amendment. I very much hope it will be a bipartisan vote because the principles that the Republican Party has espoused about local control, States rights, protecting local institutions against big, out- of-State national entities, federalism, and our common interests across this floor in consumer protection all suggest that it is the kind of thing that should not divide us Republican against Democrat. This is closing a loophole that never should have existed, that we never would have voted for if we had the chance to vote for it, and that has resulted in immense harm to the public of all of our States as a result of these exorbitant interest rates.

As I said, the interest rate solicitation that is landing in Minnesota today, that is landing in Connecticut today, and that is landing in Rhode Island today would have been a matter to bring to the authorities but for this loophole.

Nominations

The final issue I wish to talk about--I guess every Member on the other side of the aisle has left town, so there is no Republican in Washington, DC, to come and object to the unanimous consent request I would like to offer for the stalled nominees.

There are now over 100 names on the Executive Calendar, which is the list of everybody who is pending awaiting confirmation by the Senate. At a similar time in President Bush's administration, the number was 20. Those numbers do go up and down, as our Republican friends have said. But just a few days ago, the number was over 80, and the number at the equivalent time in President Bush's administration was 8.

There is a clear, systemic attack on the Obama administration's ability to staff its administration and, thus, govern. What is enabling it is the fact that you do not have to have a reason to oppose a nominee. Why don't you have to have a reason? You don't have to have a reason because you can do it secretly. Nobody even knows that it is you opposing the nominee. If you want to have a systemic attack on a President's ability to govern, what a good thing a secret hold on the President's nominees is.

It has always been around, but it has been abused to a point where we need to be rid of it. We need to be rid of it. The right of a Senator to hold a nominee should be protected, but that Senator should have to stand and say that they are doing it. If they do not have a good enough reason to hold a nominee that they are willing to stand up and disclose it, then that is, frankly, not a legitimate hold. The secret holds have to end.

The situation we are in right now, because there is a Senate rule on point, is that the list of nominees has been read through. Great credit is due Senator McCaskill who has read through the bulk of these--76 of them I think she has been through in the first round. We asked for unanimous consent on all those nominees. We received objections. I received an objection on a nominee that I asked for from a Senator who had voted for that nominee in committee. He voted for the nominee in committee but came to the floor and objected. The nominee had cleared the Judiciary Committee with zero opposition, and yet on the floor, held and held and held, anonymously--secretly.

Under the Senate rules, when you have asked for unanimous consent and you have had that objection, you have 6 days to come clean on your hold. Do you know how many Republican Senators followed that rule? One did. One did. Senator Coburn of Oklahoma disclosed he had been holding six or seven appointees. That still leaves 100 on the Senate floor right now on the Executive Calendar.

We began early this morning calling them up to see if those holds were still there because after 6 days, you are either supposed to have disclosed it or relinquished it. Sure enough, we kept on getting objection and objection and objection.

So only two things can be true: Either they are just flagrantly violating the rule--what are we going to do?

There is no enforcement mechanism built into the rule. They are just saying: Make us follow the rule. You can't make us, so we are not going to follow it. We know it is a rule--we voted for it, and it passed with enormous bipartisan support. It is a rule of the Senate, but we just choose not to follow it because we get too much advantage out of secret holds. Senate rules don't really apply to us unless you can make us follow them.

That is a sad place for the Senate to be, if that is where we are on this issue. But there are only two alternatives. The other one is that they still have holds, but it is not a hold by the same Senator who had the hold when the unanimous consent was asked for and, therefore, he has, under the rule, relinquished his hold. But what he has done is gone and found another Senator and gotten that other Senator to take up the hold for him. That has been called a couple of things on the Senate floor. It has been called the hold switcheroo.

For those of us who are prosecutors, it looks a lot like money laundering. It is hold laundering. The person who has the real principal and interest with the hold has gotten someone else to aid and abet their scheme to interrupt the process of nominations and to violate the rules by taking on the hold for them and allowing them to dodge the rule. That is not a great way of doing business either.

So whether we have a direct and outright willful violation of the Senate rules--massive violation of the Senate rules--or a scheme to hold-launder--to get people to aid and abet you in your secret hold and dodge the rule that way--neither is a great situation. So we need to fix the rules so this cannot continue. But it is a sad reflection on the use of the secret hold that we are in a circumstance now where the only two possible sets of facts are those two. It just plain isn't right.

If you are here as a Senator, you should follow the rules of the Senate. If you are not prepared to do that, find something else to do. There are plenty of people who would love to serve here. To find another Senator to put a sham hold in to protect your hold so that you can dodge this rule is, frankly, unscrupulous. That is something that, if you could figure out who it was and you could get them in front of a jury and make that case, oh boy. But we don't have the enforcement mechanism. So we have to continue.

But let me tell you who I was going to be asking for. There are two judges for the Fourth Circuit, Albert Diaz and James Wynn. They are a Republican and a Democrat. They are paired for appointment. They cleared the Judiciary Committee with only one opposing vote. One was unanimous and the other was everybody but one. They have been on the calendar now for weeks, and I would like to ask unanimous consent, but I am informed that because there are no Senate Republicans in Washington I am unable to do that right now. But they have been on the calendar for many weeks and there is no reason for them not to be confirmed.

The following judicial candidates, or nominees for a judgeship, are also pending: Jon E. DeGuilo to be a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Indiana; Audrey Goldstein Fleissig to be a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Missouri; Lucy Haeran Koh to be a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of California; Tanya Walton Pratt to be a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Indiana; Jane E. Magnus-Stinson to be a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Indiana; Brian Anthony Jackson to be a U.S. district judge for the Middle District of Louisiana; Elizabeth Erny Foote to be a U.S. district judge for the Western District of Louisiana; Mark A. Goldsmith to be a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Michigan; Marc T. Treadwill to be a U.S. district judge for the Middle District of Georgia; Josephine Staton Tucker to be a U.S. district judge for the Central District of California; Gary Scott Feinerman to be a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Illinois; and Sharon Johnson Coleman to be a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Illinois.

All of these candidates are waiting. They are on the calendar, all pending, all cleared with either unanimous or very strong votes out of the Judiciary Committee, and all blocked. Yet I believe all are supported by Republican Senators from their home States. These are all district judges.

This is a judge who sits in a local district within a State. These are not people who are setting national policy. These are people who are handling local trials, local motions practice, local Federal court litigation.

If you have the support of your two home Senators, and if you have cleared the Judiciary Committee, that ought to be pretty simple. That ought to be pretty simple. But they are being held, and they are being held for a reason. They are being held because, if the Republicans can force the Democrats to burn floor time, it takes floor time away from the work we need to do to rebuild our economy. It takes floor time away from the work we need to do to clean up Wall Street. It takes floor time away from the bills we need to pass to fund our troops overseas. It takes floor time away from our ability to do the work of governing. It is obstruction, pure and simple.

Because there are only so many hours in a day, there are only so many days in a week, and only so many weeks in a month, it is a zero sum game. You take time and make us spend it on these judges, and it is time we can't spend on floor work on the necessary legislation we have to get through. That is why we see these strange votes where we have cloture demanded and all that procedure; and then when the vote is finally taken we have 98 to 0 or where we have had 100 to 0. Why go through all that trouble when we end on a vote of 98 to 0 or 100 to 0? It is because there are ulterior motives. It is to burn the floor time of the Senate and to give the leader less and less time to accomplish the things that we need to accomplish.

So I can go through many other names, but I will not do that now. I will await the return of a Republican Member of the Senate to Washington so that somebody can be on the floor of the Senate to either object or not object to these nominees. I would hope at this point that we will find they do not object. That would be consistent with the rule.

If they have been on the calendar this long, if they have had their unanimous consent objected to, if the 6 days have run and if nobody has come up and actually said they have a hold on that person, then a unanimous consent ought to pass. Under the rule, a unanimous consent ought to pass. If it doesn't, it is a sign that they are either flatout violating the rule or that they have done this hold laundering scheme with a colleague to dodge out from under the rule. I think neither is credible and we need to work our way through this process. So on the next possible occasion, I will be doing that.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his courtesy and his time. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 195, H.R. 3619.

Mr. Chairman, I share the sentiments of the senior Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Reed.

Rhode Islanders are strongly opposed to this project. Furthermore, the process for siting the LNG facility has afforded us too few opportunities to address the impacts it will have on our state's economy, safety, and environment.

The Coast Guard is charged with the narrow task of determining whether LNG tankers can safely transit Rhode Island waters on their way to an offshore berthing station just on the other side of the state line in Massachusetts. However, the safe transit of these tankers is only one of the many important considerations that can, and should, be taken into account in determining the suitability of such a project. Narragansett Bay is the backbone of the Rhode Island economy, as it sustains our fishing, recreation, and tourism sectors. The proposed LNG facility in Fall River threatens to undermine these pillars of our economy.

I am not opposed to LNG as a fuel source. However, I have serious concerns with the proposal under consideration. The LNG tankers transiting Rhode Island waters must pass through heavily populated communities, under the presence of heavy security. The Coast Guard admits that this will likely displace other users of the bay and disrupt traffic on the bridges the tankers must travel beneath. This is too high a burden for Rhode Island to carry for a facility that is located in a neighboring state--and I am not convinced this burden is worth the marginal benefits of the proposed LNG facility.

I thank the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Rockefeller, for his willingness to work with us on an issue critical to the State of Rhode Island.

I ask unanimous consent that the Cantwell substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements be printed in the Record without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 480.

I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be agreed to; the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 247 which was received from the House and is at the desk.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 263, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table without any intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.