Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

I thank the senior Senator from Minnesota for her words and especially work on this bill and the consumer issues. She has made a real name in this body for her work.

I rise today to discuss the most significant reform of our Nation's health policy in decades. The Affordable Care Act is a result of extensive policy discussions, late-night deliberations, 400 amendments that we considered in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, more than 100 of those amendments that we adopted coming from Republican ideas and Republican Senators. There is a reason that people across the country, mothers and fathers and students and faith leaders and business owners and workers, are paying attention. It is because the law benefits all Americans, a wide range of Americans and especially in my home State, which I will discuss.

More than 900,000 people in Ohio will be eligible for financial assistance to buy insurance that provides good coverage at a price they can afford. Ohioans suffering from preexisting conditions will no longer be denied coverage or charged higher premiums. Young Ohioans stay on their parents' plan until the age of 26, giving them a chance to finish school and secure a job that provides coverage.

Those with the greatest need will get the greatest help. For years we have heard countless stories, story after story of Americans frustrated by and failed by our health system. Last fall my wife Connie was waiting in line at the local drugstore in an affluent community outside of Cleveland. The woman in front of her was, for all intents and purposes, negotiating price with the pharmacist to save money. ``What if I cut my pill in half and then take it twice a day,'' she asked. The very understanding pharmacist wanted her to take her full medication twice a day.

``But isn't it better, since I can't afford this, to take half a pill twice a day than the whole pill just once,'' she asked.

After the woman left my wife asked how often does this happen? The pharmacist answered, ``Every day, every day all day.''

The tide is turning. I hear from constituents at roundtables, in restaurants, in letters and tweets and e-mails about their concerns for their family's health. A woman in Cuyahoga Falls, a community near Akron, explained to me she recently graduated law school. She is a type 1 diabetic. Without the health care law she would have been paying out of pocket for extremely costly lifesaving medication because she could not afford it on her own.

I can imagine, she said, there are many Ohioans like me, working hard for my future but finding myself in a tough demanding spot while still needing to care for my health needs. Health care enrollment marks a milestone for millions of Ohioans, including myself. Twenty years ago I was running for Congress and made a promise in 1992 that I would not accept congressional health care; I would pay my own health insurance, until similar coverage was available to all Americans. I did that for well over a decade. I can now say I will be enrolling in the health care marketplace, alongside hundreds of thousands of people from Ohio. While millions will be able to enroll in benefits beginning in less than 2 weeks, the health care law has already provided measurable benefits.

I wish to share how Ohioans are already helped by provisions in this law signed by the President 3 years ago. There are 97,000 young adults who are now able to stay on their parents' health insurance until their 26th birthday. We are closing the doughnut hole. The Senator from Pennsylvania mentioned what that means for his State. There are similar numbers in Ohio. Closing the doughnut hole for seniors' prescription drugs saves Ohioans an average of $774 a year on medication benefits.

There are 6,300 Ohioans who receive rebates from their insurance companies because those companies failed to follow the new Federal law that required them to spend at least 80 to 85 percent--depending on the kind of insurance--of their premium dollars on health care. In other words, if these companies spend more than 15 percent of your dollar that you pay to these insurance companies on marketing, executive salaries, and various kinds of administrative expenses, they owe you money back because not a high enough percent--85 percent--of your health care dollar was spent on health care itself.

There are 900,000 Ohioans who have received free preventive care, with no copays and no deductibles. Seniors have been tested for osteoporosis, diabetes, and all the other kinds of screenings that seniors should get.

Children are no longer denied coverage for preexisting conditions. My wife was diagnosed with asthma at a young age--way before I knew her. She might have been denied coverage today. She, and young people like her at that stage in their life, cannot be denied coverage for preexisting conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cancer or whatever they might have.

Soon all Ohioans will have access to quality, affordable health care. In 2014, we will see all aspects of this health care law fully implemented, which will make a huge difference for business--especially small businesses--families, and communities.

From Ashtabula to Athens, from Bryan to Bellaire, from Mansfield to Middletown, middle-class families across Ohio have been in the horrible position of paying monthly premiums only to find they were stripped of coverage or that the coverage was so minimal as to be useless when they became sick. That worry will no longer exist.

For students at Ohio State or Wooster, Youngstown State or Xavier, the choice between paying for another semester at school or health insurance will not be the concern it has been for so many years. For Ohioans from Cleveland to Cincinnati already covered, they can keep their current plan without lifting a finger. The only change they will see are new benefits, better protections, and more bang for their buck. For millions in my State, the new law will mean less worry, less anxiety, and more money in their wallets.

For some Americans, the health insurance marketplace will lower premiums at least 10 percent more than previously expected. Work needs to be done. The system is not perfect, but this law is already bringing our health care into the future. It is a forward-looking law. I have been proud to support it.

On October 1, frustrations, worry, and failed health care protections will soon become a thing of the past for millions in my State and tens of millions around the country.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise to honor the memory of Jesse Owens, an Olympic recordbreaker and pioneer on the track and off the track, who was born 100 years ago tomorrow.

Born in Alabama as the youngest of 10 children, James Cleveland Owens moved with his family to Cleveland, OH, at the age of 9. Leaving the South during the great migration of those several decades between 1910 and 1970, Jesse's family came north seeking economic opportunity and greater personal freedom. His father left his work as a sharecropper in the South--something difficult to do because so often the landowner held those sharecroppers by holding real or imagined debt over their heads--and found a job in the steel industry in Cleveland, OH.

James Cleveland Owens enrolled in Bolton Elementary School on the east side of Cleveland. Because of his strong southern accent, when the teacher asked his name and he said J.C., the teacher misheard it and started calling him Jesse--a name that stuck.

While in junior high, he met Charles Riley, who taught physical education and coached the track team. Charles Riley nurtured Jesse's obvious talent, helping him to grow stronger athletically and to set long-term goals that served him well as he went on to Cleveland East Technical School.

In 1927, my hometown of Mansfield, OH started hosting the storied Mansfield Relays--maybe the biggest in the country--a sporting event that drew athletes from six States and Canada. I remember in the 1960s my family hosting many of the athletes who came to our town to compete.

Obviously prior to my parents doing that, among these many promising athletes none shone brighter than the sprinter from an hour up north. At the Mansfield Relays, Jesse Owens sharpened his focus and won the 1932 and 1933 relays for East Tech, setting records that lasted into my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s.

He later went on to attend the Ohio State University, where he was known as the Buckeye Bullet, winning a record eight individual NCAA championships. The story goes that at the Big 10 track meet 1 year in Ann Arbor, MI, while competing in a 45-minute period, Jesse Owens set 3 world records.

We are used to seeing college athletes who are revered today. But in his day, Owens could not live on campus due to a lack of housing for Black students, and he could not stay at the same hotels when his track team traveled or eat at the same restaurants as the White players on the team who traveled with him. But he achieved global fame and heroism status because of what he did in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

While a hateful regime in Germany hoped to use the Olympics to promote the Aryan race and promulgate a wrongheaded, dangerous, and inherently racist belief in the superiority of that race, Jesse Owens turned this theory on its head. He won four gold medals in Berlin, and he set world records in three events while tying for a world record in a fourth event. He showed that talent and sportsmanship transcend race, and he embarrassed an evil dictator who hoped to manipulate the Olympic Games to further his political agenda.

Interestingly, Adolph Hitler refused to shake hands with Jesse Owens when he won one of those events. The International Olympic Committee told the German Government that Hitler must either shake hands with all the winners or none of the winners. The story goes that Hitler refused to come back and observe the Olympics--again, a testament to the heroism, courage, and discipline of James Cleveland ``Jesse'' Owens.

Despite these achievements--and the Rose Garden and Oval Office greetings that today's Olympians are accustomed to--Jesse Owens never received congratulations or recognition by President Roosevelt or President Truman. It was only during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, beginning to be a different time in race relations in this country, that a President of the United States actually recognized Jesse Owens' achievements.

He was, by most measures, the best athlete in the world, but he returned to the United States of America a Black man in the 1930s to face economic challenges and racial discrimination that are far too familiar to far too many Americans. But he continued to travel and inspire athletes and fans across the globe. I had the honor of meeting Jesse Owens when he was the speaker at my brother Bob's high school graduation in 1965, when I was 12 years old.

Jesse Owens worked alongside the State Department to promote good will in Asia, and worked in 1950 to promote democracy abroad as part of a Cold War effort.

Think about that. A Black man who is the best athlete in the world, was a hero to large numbers of Americans--Black and White--in 1936, standing up in many ways against the Fascist machine of Adolph Hitler, not being recognized by a President of the United States who was winning a war against Hitler ultimately. Yet he went out 5 years later after that war to promote democracy abroad as part of a Cold War effort, still proud of his country, still knowing our country had work to do.

In 1973 he was appointed to the board of directors of the U.S. Olympic Committee, where he worked to ensure the best training and conditions for U.S. athletes. He lent his skill and his talents to various charitable groups, notably the Boys Club of America.

In 1976 Jesse Owens finally received the Presidential recognition he deserved. He was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ford.

Jesse Owens was a pioneer. Despite facing adversity, he had the strength of mind and the discipline, common to almost all great athletes, to become the most elite of athletes. Despite being treated differently and shamefully from other athletes of his stature, he went on to shatter records. Despite the darkest of days globally, he did his part, standing up to fascism, dispelling racism, and promoting unity.

Tomorrow we celebrate the 100th birthday of a hero to all Americans, James Cleveland ``Jesse'' Owens.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business for up to 15 minutes. After I conclude my remarks, I ask that Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma and Senator Casey of Pennsylvania be recognized.

Mr. President, most of us were in our States over Labor Day. I usually come to the floor a few days after Labor Day to talk about the importance of Labor Day and what it means to working Americans, what it has meant to our country, and what it has meant to building a strong middle class.

I would like to read a letter sent to me by Bill Ross, who is an Ohio business leader. Mr. Ross writes:

I grew up in a first generation immigrant family in a small

Ohio town.

My father, who obtained only an 8th grade education (not

uncommon for his generation), worked hard in an industrial

job.

My mother worked at home to care for our family of 5

children. When able to do so, she went to work outside the

household too.

We rented a home for $25 a month, ate nutritious meals at

home, and all walked to school with clean clothes each day.

All five children went to college, obtained post-graduate

professional degrees, and pursued rewarding professional

careers in law, education and business.

How did that happen?

Because, first and foremost, my father had a job with a

living wage and health care for his family that his union

protected. Because we had access to good quality public

education. Because we had access to affordable state

universities and student loan programs that we could later

afford to repay. Because blue collar working people had a

chance.

I hope we can restore all that in America again.

Bill Ross's story is very much like my wife Connie's story. Bill Ross was born in Ashtabula a bit before my wife who was also born there. Bill Ross's dad carried a union card and his mother went to work when she could. My wife's father carried a utility worker's union card for more than 30 years in Ashtabula, OH. Her mother was a home care worker who worked, when she could, after the children were a little older.

My wife, as did Bill Ross, was able to go to school with minimal debt. She graduated from Kent State University in the 1970s with not much more than $1,200 in student debt.

The ability of a living wage and carrying a union card gave them a reason to celebrate Labor Day because it gave so many working families a chance.

The Presiding Officer comes from a State much like mine. He understands the importance of carrying a union card and getting a living wage gives people the kind of opportunity that people in this country deserve.

For generations hard-working Americans left their homes every morning, and some at night, to earn an honest living. They bent with swollen knees to put on steel-toed work boots to provide for loved ones. They put up with calloused hands to build a better life for their children.

Middle-class Americans and people struggling to enter the middle class labored to ensure that children have enough food and clean clothes and an adequate education to thrive.

We know steelworkers, nurses, mechanics, teachers, and plumbers are not always treated with the dignity they deserve--especially, far too often, from our elected officials.

American history is a history of struggle for working people-- fighting for representation and fair wages, for access to good-paying jobs, and for the dignity every human being deserves. It is about fighting for democracy and civil rights--as we were reminded a few days ago when we marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for jobs and freedom.

More than a century ago, when John Patterson Green, an Ohioan, and Cedarville native John Henderson Kyle introduced a bill to establish Labor Day as a State holiday in Ohio, they were not thinking of any one segment of the population. They were focused on the rights of all Americans who work hard and play by the rules.

Since then, we have seen how the middle class grew when we ensured that hard work is rewarded with fair pay and decent benefits.

Seventy-five years ago, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which ultimately ensured that American workers would receive a minimum wage, reasonable work hours, and an end to child labor.

One of the authors of that bill, Senator Hugo Black, sat at this specific desk in the Senate and supported Social Security, minimum wage, and paying for overtime. He initially introduced that legislation in 1932.

President Roosevelt led us to decades of prosperity by ensuring that hard work is met with fair wages and decent working conditions. A minimum wage helped to lift millions of Americans from poverty and allowed them to join the middle class.

Today workers face new challenges. While corporate executives and Wall Street banks are earning record profits, too many families in Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, and across the country are still struggling. Some politicians have used the recession and the budget crisis it created as grounds for attacking worker's rights. We have seen vicious attacks on workers' rights across the country. We have seen it in North Carolina. We saw it last year in Indiana and Michigan. We have seen it over the last 3 years in Ohio.

Ohio passed one of the worst attacks on collective bargaining rights in Ohio's history, trying to convince people that public employees caused the financial crisis, not Wall Street. Workers fought back and shattered a record for signatures needed to establish a ballot initiative and energized 2 million voters who came out to overturn that wrong-headed law.

Today, because the unity of not just labor union members but the huge majority of voters in Ohio, police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, teachers, and other public sector workers continue to have the right to bargain and work with management through collective bargaining to ensure safety and fairness on the job.

In Akron, OH, UAW workers at Meggitt do high-quality and efficient work which allows them to be competitive with workers in Mexico and has prevented operations from being outsourced and helped to attract new investment in Ohio.

In Toledo, Youngstown, Cleveland, and beyond, union autoworkers helped bring back the American auto industry. They are building the cars of the future that people want to drive. I met with business owners across Ohio over this August and the month before and the month before and the month before

that--during my 7 years in the Senate--Ohio business owners who want to pay their workers a fair wage and have joined in efforts to raise the minimum wage. They know increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour will increase domestic production by nearly $33 billion over 3 years as workers spend their raises in their local businesses and communities. This economic activity would generate 140,000 new jobs over the course of 3 years.

It is no surprise that the American public is anxious about our place in an increasingly multipolar, complicated, dynamic global economy. People know that after NAFTA and CAFTA and permanent China trade relations were passed, plants closed and we lost 5 million good manufacturing jobs. Never in history has company after company implemented a business plan where they close down production in Stuebenville or Toledo or Dayton, OH, to move overseas to Wuhan or Shanghai, China, and sell the products back to the United States. That business plan led us to this.

In 1977 manufacturing was 20 percent of our GDP and financial services represented significantly less. That flipped by 2010, where manufacturing is now only about 11 percent of GDP. Between 2000 and 2010, because of wrongheaded trade agreements, because of tax policy that has given incentives to move offshore, our country lost 5 million manufacturing jobs and 60,000 plants closed down.

Since 2010 we have seen manufacturing jobs grow by more than 500,000. That is not good enough. We have to enact an agenda that includes the best trained workers, the most developed and sophisticated infrastructure, the most robust manufacturing base, and the strongest defense against currency manipulation. Until every American worker is able to rise out of poverty, we still have work to do. Labor Day, celebrated last week, shouldn't simply mark the end of summer; it should mark the beginning of a renewed commitment to fighting for American workers, American businesses, and strengthening our middle class.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, most of my colleagues might look at these pictures and think they depict facilities owned by ExxonMobil or BP, but this is, amazingly enough, a picture of Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley, to most Americans and most people in this Chamber, if they know of it, is a bank. Morgan Stanley used to be an investment bank and now it is just considered a bank. Let me explain.

Morgan Stanley owns a company called TransMontaigne, a petroleum and chemical transportation and storage company, and Heidmar Inc., which reportedly manages more than 100 oil tankers--tankers that look like this.

Today I held a banking subcommittee hearing, which the Presiding Officer attended, as did Senator Merkley and Senator Toomey, to examine how the line between banks and commercial enterprises is blurring. Increasingly, these large institutions combine banks and trading firms and energy suppliers and oil refiners and warehouses, as well as shipping firms and oil tankers and mining companies.

Federally insured bank holding companies, once in the business of providing checking and savings accounts to workers or loans to small businesses, are now also in the business of owning physical commodities, including aluminum, oil, and electricity. Witnesses testified at the subcommittee hearing that these risky Wall Street practices are artificially inflating prices for manufacturers and consumers. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs take their cut when we fill up our tanks, take their cut when we buy a Coke or buy a beer in an aluminum can. They take their cut increasingly in the copper

market, a metal that is in all kinds of industrial products.

A recent article in the New York Times said:

The maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee

and more have brought billions in profits to investment banks

like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase Morgan Stanley, while forcing

customers to pay more every time they fill up a gas tank,

flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cell phone.

For years, our Nation separated banking from traditional commerce. But about 13, 14 years ago, after years of eroding that protection, Congress finally tore down what was left of that wall. Beyond just combining commercial banking with insurance and investment banking, banks are now allowed to trade in commodities and to engage in a variety of nonfinancial activities. Four years later, after that 1999 repeal, the Federal Reserve enabled the first financial holding company to trade in physical commodities.

The justification for this is a familiar one: Other companies were doing it, they told us, and banks were at a competitive disadvantage. Over the next 6 years, the rules unraveled, becoming looser and looser, until the loopholes were big enough for these six megabanks--now $600 billion in assets, up to $2.3 trillion in assets--the loopholes are big enough for these six megabanks to jump through.

The expansion of our financial system in traditional areas of commerce--from crude oil to natural gas to mining and shipping--hasn't happened in a vacuum. It has been accompanied by a host of anticompetitive activities. These activities threaten consumers. They threaten American businesses that rely upon efficient markets and arm's-length transactions. They especially threaten American manufacturing when they buy and sell and manage and transport and store metals.

From speculation in the oil and gas markets to inflated prices for aluminum to energy manipulation--we know the role of banks has expanded. Banks have expanded far beyond their traditional roles.

There has been little public awareness of or debate about the massive expansion of our largest financial institutions into new areas of the economy. That is, in part, because regulators have been less than transparent about basic facts. We can't get the information from the Federal Reserve. Whether a person is a citizen or a reporter or a Senator sitting on the Banking Committee, we can't get from the Federal Reserve the information we need to know about the governance and these rules about commodity trading by the banks. It is also because these institutions are so complex and so dense and so opaque and so impossible for people to understand that we simply can't figure out what we need to figure out.

The six largest U.S. bank holding companies have 14,000 subsidiaries. The six largest U.S. bank holding companies have 14,000 subsidiaries. Fewer than 20 of those 14,000 are the end of our traditional banks.

There are three important issues here that concern me--that Morgan Stanley can own refineries and can own the ships. Three important issues concern me, whether it is Morgan Stanley, whether it is Goldman Sachs, or whether it is JPMorgan Chase, for aluminum, copper, electricity, or oil.

The lessons of this hearing were three. No. 1, these institutions can control physical goods and financial contracts based upon those goods, meaning they know more about the trading of these goods because they store the aluminum in two dozen warehouses in Detroit or because they are moving the oil in these tankers. They know more about transactions, they know more about price, they know more about movement of goods, so that means they can trade on inside information and it gives them an advantage in proprietary trading. It means they can manipulate markets.

No. 2, these institutions--these banks that own the oil tankers and own the refineries--have access to cheap funding--cheaper funding from the Federal Reserve--that means us, as taxpayers--that they can use to finance their commodities activities. I will say that again. Because they can go to the window, they can get cheaper financing. These banks can get cheaper financing.

They say there is a wall between their traditional bank activities and what they are doing while owning these commodities and buying and selling and transporting and storing and gaming the markets, but they can get money cheaper from taxpayers. They can borrow money at a less expensive rate than anybody else, they and their competitors who also might own oil tankers or refineries.

No. 3, they are exposing themselves and us--the economy--to risks that can threaten our financial system. Just imagine the economic, the environmental, and the reputational impact to a megabank of an Exxon Valdez or a BP oilspill. Think of the economic impact that could have on the stability of the bank and the success of the bank and, therefore, the stability of the whole financial system.

Today was the first of what I expect to be several hearings on this issue. Taxpayers have a right to know what is happening. American citizens have a say in our financial system because taxpayers are the ones who will be asked to rescue these megabanks yet again if the unthinkable--which almost inevitably happens in this world over time-- if the unthinkable happens.

Madam President, in 1935 Senator Robert Wagner of New York introduced the National Labor Relations Act. Also known as the Wagner Act, this bill would prove to be one of the most important pieces of legislation in our Nation's history. This desk at which I sit was used by Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, who was Franklin Roosevelt's favorite southern Senator, they said, who later became a member of the Supreme Court. Senator Black sat at this desk and helped draft legislation with the National Labor Relations Act. In fact, he did some of the early work on what would be the Fair Labor Standards Act. What he proposed as a 30-hour workweek later helped Senator Wagner pave the way for the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Before President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law, American workers were routinely harassed and fired for organizing unions. American workers were often intimidated and prevented from bargaining collectively. The Wagner Act changed that. One year after its passage in 1936, this law gave rubber workers in Akron, OH, the legal tools needed to protect against poor working conditions and to protest the conditions under which they were working. The bill authorized an independent Federal agency consisting of Presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate.

The National Labor Relations Board protects American workers. It protects union members and private sector employees without a union card--both--to work together to improve their wages or working conditions. Today, the NLRB is needed perhaps more than ever.

Let me tell you a story real quickly, Madam President. A few years ago I was in Cincinnati at a dinner, and sitting at the table in front of me were six or seven middle-aged women--half White, half minority, perhaps.

They had just signed their first union contract with the Service Employees International Union. These five or six women were the negotiators on behalf of 1,200 janitors negotiating with the downtown Cincinnati business owners. There was an empty seat at the table, so I went and sat down.

I said: What does having this union mean to you?

They had just signed the contract that day.

One woman said: I am 51 years old. This is the first time in my life I have ever had a paid 1-week vacation.

Think about the number of Americans who do not have a paid 1-week vacation. For people in jobs that dress like me, for the pages sitting here, most of their parents, I imagine, are used to working in a place where they get a 1- or 2- or 3-week paid vacation. Much of America does not. That is just one of the things a union has brought to this country--giving people those opportunities.

The reason I say the NLRB is needed perhaps now more than ever is that in 2013 State legislatures are curbing collective bargaining rights. Two years ago in Ohio, the State legislature and Governor Kasich took away collective bargaining rights for all intents and

purposes for public-employee workers. The voters of Ohio said no to that, and 61 percent of them struck that law down in a referendum. But nonetheless the antiunion efforts from the most pro-corporate, conservative, far-right State legislators in State legislatures across the country continue unabated.

Workers are still being punished for discussing pay and bonuses with one another.

For 78 years the NLRB has been instrumental in addressing the challenges American workers faced. Senator Wagner explained on the floor:

It is necessary to insure a wise distribution of wealth

between management and labor, to maintain a full flow of

purchasing power, and to prevent recurrent depressions.

We know that when workers make decent wages, workers buy the cars made in this country, they buy the appliances, they go to the hardware store, they pay their property taxes, they buy homes, they renovate their homes, they do things that put money into the economy. If you only have a sliver of people who are very wealthy and a declining middle class, the purchasing power and the growth in the economy tends to diminish. That is not the kind of country we want, and it is not the kind of country we have had since World War II. But just a few years after the great recession, there is a widening gap between the average wage of workers and heads of corporations.

For families struggling to make ends meet after a breadwinner was unfairly forced off the assembly line, the NLRB matters.

If we do not confirm the President's nominees, then workers, such as Kevin from Akron, will have no recourse against retaliation for his union activity. Kevin and his coworkers wanted to form a union to stop a 12-hour shift policy from being put in place at their place of employment. The company fired six workers, including Kevin, for this union activity.

While the NLRB ordered the company to reinstate the workers--the NLRB said the company was wrong; under Federal law, the workers should be reinstated--the DC Circuit Court--in large part, with judges who almost always do the bidding of the wealthiest corporations in this country-- the DC Circuit Court delayed enforcement of the case until the pending challenge to the President's 2012 nominees is resolved in court or the board has a Senate-confirmed quorum.

Kevin is a human face of why America needs a fully staffed National Labor Relations Board with the legal quorum needed to do its job. We should confirm these board members. We should make sure workers such as Kevin receive the workplace protections--whether they are union members, whether they are not union members--they deserve.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Stabenow be recognized for up to 3 minutes and that I be recognized for up to 5 minutes.

Madam President, I thank the chairwoman of the agriculture committee for her work. This is legislation that saves taxpayers literally tens of billions of dollars while strengthening the safety net. The bill provides adequate revenue and nutrition for literally millions of people--children, seniors, people on disability, and people who work in low-income jobs--and that is also important in this agriculture bill.

Madam President, in the years leading up to the financial crisis, the biggest banks and lenders created new ways to make record profits off of consumers. They made predatory loans to working-class families, created prepaid cards with exploitative fees, and gave out student loans to first-generation college students with interest rates sometimes as high as 20 percent.

Today millions of consumers are still trying to recover from these unscrupulous practices while companies keep looking for new ways to increase their profits at the expense of these consumers. Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect Americans from consumer fraud and abusive fees and products.

I thank the Presiding Officer for her role in this before she came to the Senate.

More than 700 days since its creation, American citizens are now just getting to vote for a consumer watchdog to head the organization. Because of the CFPB, consumers can now decipher credit card applications and have help correcting erroneous credit reports.

Because of these successes, confirming Richard Cordray as the Director was right. We know where he stands. We know for whom he stands--as a strong advocate for consumers, families, and small businesses.

No one doubted Richard Cordray's qualifications or temperament for the job. This is the first time in American history when one party refused to confirm a nominee because they didn't like the agency. A terrible precedent was being set. Thankfully a number of our colleagues understood--as we discussed last night--it was important to move past that.

Richard Cordray served as Ohio's first State solicitor. He represented the U.S. Government before the Supreme Court. He has been elected the attorney general and State treasurer of Ohio. He has received bipartisan accolades and support from Ohio's business and consumer groups.

Let me share a bit of a letter written by a Republican Member of Congress from my home State, Representative Steve Stivers.

Rich has always proven himself hardworking, collaborative,

and pragmatic.

If you take the time [. . .] to evaluate Rich's character

and disposition, you will find him to be an individual who

listens to your opinion and seeks mutually acceptable

solutions.

Representative Stivers is right. Under Cordray's leadership, the Bureau has earned praise from industry and consumer groups alike for the rules it has come up with. It has already recovered millions of dollars for consumers from credit card companies, credit repair companies, and others. That is why consumers won a victory today and should be happy that the 2-year-long process that has prevented Richard Cordray from being considered has finally come to an end and we can now move forward.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 196, submitted earlier today.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 17, 2013; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the majority leader be recognized; and that following the remarks of the two leaders, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 178, the Hochberg nomination, and the time until 10 a.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees.

Tomorrow at 10 a.m. there will be a rollcall vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Hochberg nomination.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Thune.

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

Mr. President, there is broad agreement that overleveraged financial institutions significantly contributed, to put it mildly, to the 2008 financial crisis and that they were bailed out because everyone knows they are too big to fail.

Years later--5 years later now--there is an implicit assumption that the largest megabanks--the five or six largest banks in the country-- are still too big to fail. That means the markets give them funding advantages that experts estimate are as high as 50 or 60 or 70 or even 80 basis points.

That means when they go in the capital markets, they can borrow money at close to 1 percent. Eighty-eight basis points is fourth-fifths of 1 percent. They can borrow money at a lower cost than virtually anyone else in our economy.

Studies from Bloomberg have shown that this can mean a subsidy of upward of $80 billion to these five, six, seven megabanks--these large megabanks.

Last year, as a result, my colleague Senator Vitter and I began to push the banking regulators--the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--to use stronger capital and leverage rules to end this too-big-to-fail subsidy.

There is now bipartisan agreement that imposing more stringent capital

and leverage requirements for the largest financial institutions could help prevent the next financial crisis and prevent future bailouts.

Unfortunately, the Basel Committee--named after a city in Switzerland--responsible for the Basel III international capital rules adopted a mere 3-percent leverage ratio.

In 2007, the investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were leveraged 33 to 1 and 31 to 1, respectively. These institutions would have been compliant with the Basel III international leverage ratio, and yet each would have become insolvent, or nearly insolvent, if the value of their assets declined by as little as 3 percent. That meant they only had sort of 3 percent protection, and if their assets declined by more than 3 percent, they would be what you call underwater. They simply would be a failing, unsustainable institution or bank.

I am pleased to say that this week regulators finally went beyond these inadequate rules and proposed a 6-percent leverage ratio for insured banks. I said earlier, Senator Vitter and I had argued for this and were pushing the banking regulators to do what they, in fact, did this week.

The move is a necessary step in the right direction. It shows how far this conversation has gone in a short time. But there is more work to be done. Let me explain several things we can do now.

First, the number needs to be higher. The Wall Street Journal editorial board--not a group of people with whom I often agree or with whom I see eye to eye very often--wrote this morning about these rules:

[O]ur preference would be to go north of 6 percent.

To be higher.

Why not approach the capital levels that small finance

companies without government backing are required by markets

to hold, which can run into the teens?

They are required by markets. For the megabanks, the market does not quite respond the same way because of their economic and their political power.

Second, I am still concerned that banks can use risk weights and their internal models to game capital rules. This amounts to the banks determining for themselves--this is not some government body or some unaligned group of economists--this amounts to the banks determining for themselves how risky their assets are, thereby setting their own capital requirements.

The Financial Times said today the biggest banks plan to use ``optimization'' strategies--not more equity--to meet the new leverage ratio.

``We're going to be able to pull a lot of levers,'' said an

executive at a large US bank on Wednesday. . . . Analysts at

Goldman Sachs noted in research for clients that ``banks have

a lot of options to mitigate the impact.''

That is why we need simpler rules that cannot be gamed by Wall Street, and this rule cannot be watered down by Wall Street lobbyists.

There is no reason agencies should not finalize these rules and begin implementing their rules tomorrow--not go through the long rules process. We cannot wait. Small businesses and families cannot afford to wait, neither can our economy.

Finally, there is more work to be done to rein in Wall Street megabanks. Senator Vitter and I have a bill that would do this--the bipartisan too big to fail act. It would restore market discipline by raising megabanks' capital requirements and limiting the Federal safety net that supports them.

I have also proposed legislation called the SAFE Banking Act to cap the amount of nondeposit liabilities that any single megabank can have.

The regulators have begun to do their jobs. It is time for Congress to do its job. This week was a good week. It was a step in the right direction, but it is time to finish the job. It is time to end too big to fail once and for all.

I yield the floor.