Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I get around my own State of Vermont a lot. In fact, I get around the country a lot. I hear from a lot of people and I talk to a lot of people about what is on their minds.

Needless to say, in these very complicated and difficult times, there is a lot the American people are concerned about. They are concerned about gun violence, and they want strong legislation to be passed as soon as possible to protect their kids and the American people.

Overwhelmingly, they want legislation--over 80 percent of the American people in poll after poll--want legislation to protect the 1.8 million young people who are eligible for the DACA Program. That is what people talk about.

People talk about the high cost of healthcare, and they talk about the fact that they cannot afford prescription drugs because the drug companies are ripping us off every single day.

They talk about climate change and their fear about what kind of planet we are going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren if we don't transform our energy system away from fossil fuel.

The people I talk to in Vermont and throughout the country talk about our crumbling infrastructure.

They talk about the need for decent-paying jobs.

They talk about the high cost of a college education. I just talked to a teacher the other day in Wisconsin. She had tears in our eyes because she cannot afford to send her own daughter to college. I talk, every day it seems, to people who graduate from college, $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 in debt, and they wonder how that debt will impact the rest of their lives.

I talk to people in Vermont and around the country about the childcare crisis that we have and about the lack of affordable housing and about a million other issues that are on the minds of people in Arizona, in Vermont, and all across this country.

But I can honestly say that I have not heard one person come up to me and say: Bernie, we have to deregulate 25 of the largest banks in this country with cumulative assets of $3.5 trillion. No one has ever come up to me and said that is a major priority for the American people. No one has ever suggested to me that instead of talking this week about and moving forward on gun safety legislation or the DACA issue or the high cost of prescription drugs, we should be here on the floor of the U.S. Senate talking about the needs of some of the largest banks in this country. But that is precisely what the Senate will be discussing this week and probably next week as well.

If you want to know why the American people, in very, very strong numbers, hold the U.S. Congress in contempt, it is precisely because we have a Republican leadership that does exactly the opposite of what the American people want. And it is not just not dealing with the DACA issue or dealing with the gun violence issue. Over the last year, despite the overwhelming objections of the American people, Republican leadership tried to throw some 32 million Americans off of health insurance. Thank God we were able to beat that back.

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the American people do not believe that the Koch brothers and other billionaires should receive massive tax breaks. That is exactly what the Republican leadership provided.

And on and on it goes.

The needs of the middle class and working families are ignored while the needs of the wealthy and powerful, including Wall Street, are addressed.

Today, my Republican colleagues, along with some Democrats, tell us that what we should be doing right now is spending our time on deregulating some of the largest banks in America. How absurd is that? Not gun violence, not the DACA crisis, not the high cost of prescription drugs, not 30 million people without health insurance, but deregulating some of the largest banks in America.

Are our memories so short that we learned nothing from the 2008 Wall Street crash? Have we learned nothing from the savings and loan disaster of the early 1990s or the thievery of Wells Fargo over the last couple of years or the dishonesty of Equifax or the accounting fraud at Enron and Arthur Anderson or the failure of long-term capital management or the billions of dollars in fines that financial institution after financial institution has paid out for illegal or deceptive activities?

Just 10 years ago, as a result of the greed and the recklessness and the illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The official unemployment rate shot up to 10 percent and the real unemployment rate jumped to over 17 percent. At the height of the financial crisis, more than 27 million Americans were unemployed, underemployed, or stopped working altogether because they could not find employment.

Fifteen million families, as a result of that financial crisis, lost their homes to foreclosure as more and more people could not afford to pay their mortgages. Thousands of Americans set up tent cities in Sacramento, Fresno, Tampa Bay, and Reno because they had no place left to live.

As a result of the illegal behavior of Wall Street, American households lost over $13 trillion in savings, which shattered retirement dreams, wiped out life savings, and made it impossible for parents to send their kids to college. That is what Wall Street did 10 years ago. Against my strong opposition then, Congress and the Federal Reserve provided the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world to these huge banks because they were too big to fail.

But now, 10 years later, hoping that we forget all about that, these large financial institutions are back again. How pathetic is that? Just yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office told us that the legislation we are debating today will ``increase the likelihood that a large financial firm with assets of between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail.'' That is from the CBO.

In other words, this legislation makes it more likely that we will see another financial crisis and makes it more likely that there will be another huge taxpayer bailout and massive dislocation of our economy.

Under this bill, large banks with assets of up to $250 billion will no longer have to submit comprehensive plans on winding down if they fail. They will no longer have to hold sufficient capital in case their loans go bad. And they may never have to undergo a stress test to find out if they are adequately prepared to withstand an economic downturn.

Further, this legislation makes it easier for financial institutions to offer bogus subprime mortgages that caused so many Americans to suffer during the 2008 financial crisis.

This legislation makes it easier for large banks to steer African Americans, Hispanics, and the elderly into mortgages with high interest rates and hidden fees.

This legislation deregulates foreign banks like Deutsche Bank--a bank that in January of 2017 agreed to a $7.2 billion settlement for selling toxic mortgages during the financial crisis.

This legislation guts the Volker rule, allowing banks all over this country to gamble with the bank deposits of their customers on risky derivative schemes that were at the heart of the financial meltdown.

Let us be very clear. The major banks that we are deregulating in this bill were forced to pay over $49 billion in fines for a wide variety of fraudulent and deceptive activity. These very same banks received a taxpayer bailout of $47 billion from the Treasury and trillions in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve. Many of these banks, it should be pointed out, like Wall Street in general, have enjoyed record-breaking profits over the last 2 years. They are not coming here because they are losing money. Over the last 2 years, most of these banks have done very, very well.

So how does it happen that Congress finds itself worrying about the needs of huge financial institutions but ignores the concerns of ordinary Americans? The answer, as I think most Americans understand, has everything to do with following the money. Follow the money.

Since the 1990s, the financial sector has given more than $3.2 billion in campaign contributions and last year alone spent over $200 million on lobbying. If you want to hear about the corruption of the American political system, here it is. Since the 1990s, the financial sector has given more than $3.2 billion in campaign contributions and last year alone spent over $200 million on lobbying. That is why Congress will be spending day after day trying to make life easier for these large financial institutions, while at the same time ignoring the needs of working families.

No, we can't get a bill on the floor of the Senate that will lower the cost of prescription drugs. We can't do that. The American people overwhelmingly want us to act on gun violence. We can't do that. We are not able to protect the 1.8 million young people who are eligible for the DACA Program. We can't do that. But we can spend a week or two worrying about the needs of some of the largest financial institutions in this country. And that is why the American people are disgusted with what goes on in Washington, DC.

I have a radical idea, and that is that maybe--just maybe--instead of listening to the lobbyists here in DC, maybe we should listen to the American people, who believe that we should strengthen, not weaken, Wall Street regulations.

Believe it or not--of course we are not going to hear any discussion of this at all--believe it or not, the four largest banks in America are, on average, 80 percent bigger today than they were before we bailed them out because they were too big to fail. Incredibly, the six largest banks in America--this is wealth. This is power. This is who owns America. The six largest banks in America have over $10 trillion in assets--six banks, $10 trillion--equivalent to 54 percent of the GDP of this Nation. The six largest banks hold more than half of all credit card debt, control over 90 percent of all bank derivatives, underwrite a third of all mortgages, and control over 40 percent of all bank deposits. If any of these financial institutions were to get into financial trouble again, there is no doubt in my mind that once again the taxpayers of this country would be asked to bail them out--except this time, the bailout might be even larger than it was in 2008.

Now is not the time to be talking about deregulating large financial institutions--quite the contrary. If a financial institution is too big to fail, in my view, it is too big to exist. Now is the time to take on the greed and power of Wall Street and break up the largest financial institutions in this country, and I will be introducing an amendment to this bill to do just that.

I understand fully, as the American people do, the power of Wall Street and the huge amounts of money they spend on campaign contributions and lobbying. That should not, however, intimidate us. Now is the time for us to have the courage to stand up to these very wealthy and powerful institutions, defeat this legislation, and support the needs of the American people.

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