Disapproving the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Relating to ``Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions''

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in complete opposition to yet another harmful bill put forth by Republicans, S.J. Res. 18, a resolution to allow the biggest banks to increase fees on their customers. You heard me right. I said this resolution will increase bank fees, and it will impact 23 million households, or roughly 1 in 5 households, that incur overdraft fees each year.

Despite Trump and Republican campaign promises to lower prices, the President decided to launch a global trade war just last week that wiped out a 2-day record of $6.6 trillion of wealth, affecting the retirement savings of millions of Americans. Moreover, the Fed Chair has said these policies will fuel higher inflation by sending the prices of consumer goods up.

It doesn't seem like the President cares about prices anymore, saying: ``I couldn't care less. I hope they raise their prices because, if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars. We have plenty.'' Trump doesn't care that prices for cars and other goods will rise significantly.

We are here today because Republicans now want to overturn a rule that limits bank overdraft fees to $5, down from $35 or more, and saves consumers $5 billion a year. Not surprisingly, more than 80 percent of Americans, including Republicans, want to get these high overdraft fees under control, yet Republicans will vote to take off the limits on these fees and say that higher fees are good for America.

Let's clear up a few myths. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule does not ban overdraft fees. Rather, it sets a reasonable limit at $5 per overdraft charged by the biggest banks in America.

Despite what opponents may claim, the rule does not impose a hard cap on this fee. It provides flexibility for large banks to charge more if their estimated costs and losses in providing this service are higher than $5. The rule even allows big banks to charge higher fees if they provide a simple, upfront disclosure to consumers.

Think about that. Why is it if you want to charge more money than the $5, you don't want to tell your customers that you are raising and charging more? I don't get it.

That is right, the biggest banks can feel free to charge higher fees, but they just have to tell consumers that they plan to do so.

Furthermore, this rule does not apply to any small community banks or credit unions. In fact, 97 percent of all banks and virtually all credit unions are completely exempt from the rule. Let me say that again. Community banks and nearly all credit unions are exempt from the rule. We are only debating whether the biggest banks in America should be able to raise these fees.

Republicans will try reverse psychology to convince Americans that it is in their best interests to fork over even more money to the big banks.

Mr. Speaker, let me help Republicans out. Making Americans pay high overdraft fees only benefits the big banks, no one else.

Let me be even clearer. A vote for this resolution is a vote for big banks. A vote for this resolution is a vote for big fees. A vote for this resolution is a vote against your constituents.

Don't just take my word for it. Nearly 300 consumer, civil rights, labor, religious, and community groups all across the country strongly oppose this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, these fee increases that Republicans are trying to jam down Americans' throats couldn't come at a worse time. The Federal Reserve reported that a key metric of inflation is going up, and that was before President Trump sent the stock market further into the tank with the global trade war he launched last week.

Republicans promised that inflation would go down and the stock market would thrive under his leadership, but 4 months into the new administration, that has proven to be false.

Whether you like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or not, it just doesn't make good sense to hike bank fees on 23 million hardworking families.

Democrats on the Financial Services Committee voted unanimously to oppose this resolution at a markup in February, and I urge all of my colleagues to unanimously reject it on the floor today.

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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker and Members, I think Mr. Hill said many banks do not charge overdraft fees. Then why are they opposed to $5?

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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Rose, I believe, said that there are constituents who say: Don't stop my overdraft. However, did they say: Charge me exorbitant amounts for overdraft? I don't think so.

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Ms. WATERS. Garcia).

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Ms. WATERS. Bynum).

Mr. Speaker, the Republicans keep complaining about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Let's review the terrible things they have done.

Since 2011, they secured more than $21 billion for 205 million consumers who were harmed by bad actors including the biggest banks. The agency has received more than 10 million complaints from harmed consumers, and insured financial firms responded. That is, on average, 25,000 complaints each week.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helps servicemembers, veterans, students, and older Americans. Mr. Speaker, they don't care who you are. They help Republicans, Independents, and Democratic consumers. The CFPB will not be able to help anyone if Trump and Musk are successful in shutting them down.

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Ms. WATERS. Clark), the Democratic whip.

Mr. Speaker, I am having a hard time here trying to figure out what is going on in this country. We are here taking up all of this time talking about $5 and talking about trying to limit the fees that people are being charged. We are saying: Let's help our consumers. Let's help our constituents and stop having them become victims of these huge fees that have been charged by the banks.

They say that a lot of banks are not charging them, but still, they are fighting $5 that we are trying to limit these fees for. We said that all we are asking you to do is to let the people know exactly what you are doing about fees.

How much are you charging them?

I don't know what is going on. I don't know what is going on with them, and I don't know what is going on with the President of the United States of America.

He has put us in a chaotic situation. For example, I just got word that he has changed his mind about tariffs. We were all trying to convince this administration that they should not be raising the tariffs on all of these countries and the fact that they were even harming our relationship with our allies, but no. He placed tariffs on every country in the world, even for an island that had nothing but penguins on it.

So today what he said was: Oh, I changed my mind. I am going to raise the tariffs on China, but I think I will put a 90-day pause on all of the stuff that I did raising these tariffs for all these other countries just a few days ago.

When we think about the chaotic situation that we are in while we are here talking about $5, Mr. Speaker, you know that this President fired our nuclear experts from the National Nuclear Security Administration. So here we are without the protection of the experts to let us know what should be done to make sure that we don't have nuclear power destroying us all.

After firing them, they discovered they had made a big mistake. So guess what, Mr. Speaker? They called them back. However, they couldn't find them because they had erased their addresses. So they looked and looked and looked until they could beg them to come back.

Then there were thousands of employees at the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the bird flu outbreak that were fired. They were fired when we were facing another pandemic.

Mr. Speaker, they have forced seniors to go in person to apply for Social Security. I am so worried about our seniors and Social Security. He promised us that he would not cut Social Security, but what he did was he destroyed the infrastructure of Social Security. He fired people and shut off the telephones making them go in person to find their Social Security office, which they are closing all of them down. Now all of our Social Security and our seniors are at stake not knowing what is going to happen and not knowing how to get in touch with the Social Security personnel who work there to get these questions answered. I could go on and on about this Cabinet sharing war plans on Signal chats.

Do I have to tell you more about the chaos, Mr. Speaker, the disruption? Do I have to tell you more about the uncertainty and the situation that we find ourselves in, Mr. Speaker?

We are here trying to place a lid on these overdraft fees because people don't know whether or not they are going to have a job to pay anything let alone the overdraft fees. They are not going to have money to put food on the table, to make sure that the children have clothing to go to school and to dress properly and all of that.

Mr. Speaker, for $5, we are here because they refuse to agree that there should be a cap on overdraft. If they want to charge more, we give them an out. They can do it in two ways. They can just tell the people that this is what they are doing, they want to increase for whatever reason, or they can calculate what they say their costs are for being able to provide overdraft fees and that they have to have a little more than $5. I don't know where we are going with all of this. I am totally disgusted, $5.

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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.

Mr. Speaker, when did it become unpopular to put more hands in the pockets of working families?

This resolution will cost American families $5 billion a year or about $250 per household in higher overdraft fees. No one in America wants to send a $250 check to the biggest banks every year.

To put this debate into perspective, Republicans spent a lot of time last Congress attacking a big bank capital rule called Basel III endgame. Republicans convened one dozen hearings on the topic and repeatedly referred to the 426 comments the public made on the proposal.

Mr. Speaker, do you know how many comments the CFPB received on the overdraft rule? They received more than 48,000 complaints, most of which strongly supported the rule which is more than 100 times the number of comments on the capital rule.

Consumers are just fed up with these types of junk fees, and the last thing they want is for Congress to raise them.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to join Senate bipartisan opposition to this resolution and vote ``no.'' Stand up for our constituents. Stand up for the people who depend on us every day to make sure they too can have a decent quality of life.

We are watching what Trump and Musk are doing, aligned with the billionaires who want more and more money and don't want to pay their taxes, and we are here fighting about $5.

Give me a break. I guess enough has been said.

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