Providing for Congressional Disapproval of A Rule Submitted By Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues in advance of today's Congressional Review Act vote. I want to be clear about something. We are here today for a CRA vote, or a Congressional Review Act vote, that is on agency guidance--not a rule but an agency guidance from 2013--that seeks to protect consumers from discrimination.
CRAs are rule rollbacks. They are rolling back rules. They are not, though, meant to apply to years-old guidance from Federal agencies.
Today's vote is actually a radical departure of longstanding norms and statutory interpretation that will change the scope of the Congressional Review Act. What, then, could possibly be so important and so urgent that today we would break from longstanding tradition and demand a vote on something that could set an entirely new precedent for this body?
What is the guidance--not rule--that the Trump administration and Republican leadership of this body are going so far out of their way to undo? What this guidance does, very simply and very clearly, is to try to prevent discrimination in purchasing.
In 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau put this guidance in place in response to, unfortunately, widespread and well-documented persistent discrimination against Americans of color when financing the purchase of a car. The guidance did nothing more than remind indirect auto lenders that they were liable under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act for pricing disparities caused by markup in compensation policies. It offered concrete steps to those auto dealers that they could use to ensure compliance and support for fair lending.
Auto lending is the third most common source of debt for all Americans. We know that the way the established financing model works too often leaves space for implicit racial bias and leaves space for discrimination against Americans of color.
We know from studies that Americans of color who have better credit and who go in to try to purchase and finance a car, compared to White Americans with worse credit, will often get higher interest rates and worse terms on their loans set by auto dealers. In fact, in one specific study conducted by the National Fair Housing Alliance, they paired White Americans and people of color to visit auto dealerships and shop for the same car within 24 hours of each other. Unfortunately, and surprisingly--or maybe not to some--in most cases the applicant who was a person of color, despite having better credit and less debt, was offered higher cost financing options than the less-qualified White applicant. This is a practice that no one can support. This is a practice that most Americans think is outrageous. It is clearly wrong, and we should address it.
But we also know that, unfortunately, this kind of discrimination isn't unique to the auto industry. There are many areas of American lives where people of color, under the same circumstances, are often paying more. We know that implicit racial bias exists across sectors and industries and is a persistent issue causing people of color to have higher costs of living and to pay more.
Take the three largest lending markets: mortgages, student loans, and auto loans. We know discrimination persists in mortgage lending. A recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed 31 million mortgage records from 2015 and 2016--just a couple of years ago. They found that people of color were much more likely to be denied a conventional mortgage than White applicants, even after controlling for economic and social factors, including applicants' income, the size of the loan they sought, and the neighborhood where they wanted to buy.
Look at student loans. For-profit colleges disproportionately enroll students of color and saddle them often with unaffordable student loans, while offering little in the way of value in exchange.
Look at payday loans. Study after study shows that payday lenders concentrate themselves in communities of color where they prey upon financially distressed, low-income people and make a bad financial situation markedly worse.
In 2018 we should all agree that we should be doing everything we can to protect against this kind of discrimination. When you test, time and again, better qualified loan applicants walking in and, within 24 hours, less qualified applicants walking in, as well, and they get the better loan deal, the only difference is the color of their skin. This is unacceptable in an America that believes in fairness.
We should, in a very light touch, do something about that. That is what this advice did. This advisory simply said: Hey, auto lenders, here are some steps you can take to address this issue.
The study I referenced of sending in a Black couple followed by a White couple is something that hits home for me very personally. My family, in the 1960s, was part of a similar situation. In this case, it was buying the home that I grew up in. In 1969, just 1 year after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, when my parents were trying to find a home in New Jersey, they encountered an illegal practice known as real estate steering, or trying to keep Black families like mine out of White neighborhoods. Their bids on homes were routinely rejected in favor of White couples.
Eventually, my parents went to seek the help of a group of housing activists--volunteer lawyers, Black folks, White folks, Christian folks, Jewish folks--all part of a group in New Jersey called the Fair Housing Council. Together, they set up a sting operation where my parents went in and they were told, unfortunately, that the house they were looking at that they loved was no longer for sale. Then a volunteer White couple came right behind them and put an offer on the house, and it was accepted. Papers were drawn up. Then, on the day of the closing, the White couple didn't show up; my dad and his lawyer did. The real estate agent knew what he was doing was illegal.
First, he didn't accept it. He actually got angry. In fact, he got up and punched my dad's lawyer in the face and sicced the dog on my dad. A melee broke out. At the end, he was pleading with my father not to move into the neighborhood. He said crazy things like: Your people will not be happy here. Now, this is saying that the neighborhood didn't have things like ``my people,'' but in this country, we are all one people, one Nation, united, and indivisible. There shouldn't be different rules, different laws, and different treatment based on the color of our skin. I can't believe we are talking about this in 2018.
My family, thank God, moved into that house. I grew up in that hometown--a nurturing community, an incredible community that welcomed me and nurtured my brother and me. I am here today because of that kind of activism and people willing to stand up and say something basic and simple: You should not discriminate on the basis of the color of someone's skin.
Part of the reason I grew up where I was is because there was a law that was on my family's side and passed by this body--the Fair Housing Act. I am proud that for years, we Republicans and Democrats have stood up for this basic principle, this basic ideal. An even bigger part of the success of my family and my life is because there were people who didn't just celebrate the passage of a law, didn't just say their work was done, but they remained vigilant, active, and attentive in making sure the law was made real and practiced. They knew protecting America's civil rights was not a one-and-done endeavor but required constant vigilance.
The fact is, we have so much work left to do in this country that it is frustrating. We have a lot of work to do controlling the impact of implicit racial bias. We have people--courageous police officers, courageous activists, and police leadership--talking about the presence of implicit racial bias. I have been pleased that even Republican judges who are nominated, whom I get to interview on the Judiciary Committee, speak to the presence of implicit racial bias in the criminal justice system that often results with people who are charged with a crime, the same circumstances, getting longer sentences just because of the color of their skin.
This is not a partisan issue. This is us working against these issues and these factors of American life and making sure the basic ideal of fairness in American society is upheld. Outside of this body, American people know how implicit racial bias seeps into our criminal justice system, into our workplaces, and into our schools. The question is, What are we going to do about it? Why are we today going out of our way, possibly creating an entirely new congressional precedent, changing advisories into rules that can then be rolled back--why are we doing this on this issue, to roll back guidance that reflects something most of us should be able to agree on?
When an American goes in to buy a car and gets that car financed, the loan terms they get should be based on their creditworthiness--the amount of debt they have--not the color of their skin.
When we have comprehensive studies, empirical tests of literally sending in couples to go buy cars, why are we rolling back guidance that gives suggestions to auto dealers about how to control this? Why would this body, with the history of trying to address racial injustice, roll back a rule that is trying to address and control this practice in auto lending?
If you live in communities like mine, having to pay hundreds extra or $1,000 extra for a car, in a family making $20,000 or $30,000 a year, struggling for that moment that we all know, when you get your car, you get your keys, why should they have to pay more and have it impact on their home, their well-being, their finances, their college savings, and their ability to pay their mortgage? It is unfair. Based on what? Their skin color.
Rolling back this guidance has nothing to do with trimming bureaucracy. It is guidance. It will not help consumers. It will not help Americans of color. It will not help the ideals we swear an oath to--justice for all--and it is certainly not going to help our country to just be a place where working stiffs can get a fair shot at things we think of as the American dream: owning your home, sending your kids to college, and having a car.
At a time when the rest of the country seems to be paying closer attention to issues of discrimination, when we see anti-Semitism on the rise, greater attacks on Muslim Americans, at a time when we are looking at racial issues, why are we doing this now or at any time?
By passing this measure, we will be sending a message to millions of Americans that this body isn't just willfully out of touch but that we are going out of our way to create an environment where this practice is going to thrive, where the practice and the perpetration of discrimination against Americans of color persists in our country.
We should be beyond this. This is a chance, today, where we can make a difference. It may not seem big. We can send a message that these kinds of practices will not be tolerated. We can send a message that every American matters to this body. We can send a message that discrimination and prejudice, implicit or not, will not be tolerated on this soil.
I ask my colleagues, I beseech my colleagues, in the name of an American who is here today because of the Fair Housing Act, because of tests like this, where White couples have said--Black couples have said, ``I am here because of this history,'' why would we turn our backs on that kind of progress and not stand up for basic American fairness?
Thank you.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. BOOKER. I thank the Senator. I thank him for modeling that very character to me every day that I serve with him.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source