Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury Relating to the Review of Applications Under the Bank Merger Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I have said before--and I want to make this really clear--I don't hate anyone. I don't. I look for grace wherever I can find it, and when I say my prayers, one of the things I ask my Maker for is, ``Please, God, don't let me hate,'' because sometimes it is hard here in Washington.

You know, there have been many a morning when I have gotten up in my overpriced Capitol Hill apartment, and I am walking over here to the Capitol, and I give myself a pep talk. I talk to myself. I say: Kennedy, today you are going to follow Jesus.

And by 10 o'clock, I still want to follow Jesus, but I also want to slap the hell out of somebody.

So it is important that we remind ourselves: Don't hate.

And I don't hate anyone. And that includes President Biden. But President Biden and his people had the remarkable ability to take something that wasn't broken and try to fix it. They would take something that wasn't broken in government and take it apart, loosen a few screws, and then it would be broken.

In a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to vote to try to repair some damage that President Biden's folks did in that regard. It has to do with banks.

As you know, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency--I will call it the OCC, so you will know what I am talking about. The OCC regulates our banks, and that includes big banks but also small banks. We have got more small banks in America than we have big banks.

In fact, our smaller banks throughout this wonderful country make most of the loans to ordinary people. At a lot of the big banks, now, if you are just an average small businesswoman or businessman and you need a loan, you go to the larger banks, and they won't even see you. You have to go to a small bank to get that loan.

Small banks merge all the time. You have probably seen it in your local communities. Why do small banks merge a lot? Well, one of the reasons is they can provide better services to their customers.

Another reason that small banks tend to merge a lot is because maybe they want to move into a new geographical area, and they can't do it alone. So they will merge with another bank in that area.

A third reason that small banks merge a lot is because they think, when they discuss their merger, that together they will be stronger and more profitable, and therefore, can make more loans.

But another reason is to try to comply with Federal regulations. I mean, our Federal regulations with respect to a bank will take your breath away. There are a bunch of them, and it costs so much to comply with rules and regulations by the Federal Government.

Our rules and regulations now cost the American businessperson about $2 trillion a year. And I am not saying all of those are banking regulations or not, but the cost of those regulations gets passed on to consumers, and that is why, in part, products and services have increased in price.

But there are so many Federal rules and regulations that a small bank will often say: You know, I can't comply with all of this loan. I have got to get help. And we have got to spread the costs.

So that bank will merge with another bank and have more people in it, and it will be cheaper through economies of scale, which I know, Mr. President, you understand because you are a very successful businessperson. But they can spread the cost through economies of scale.

So small banks merge all the time. Now we recognize that. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, OCC, back in 1995, saw this coming. And the OCC, at that time, said: We want to devise a way for small banks to be able to merge fairly easily, but, at the same time, we at the OCC want to be able to make sure that what they are doing in this merger is not a risk to the consumer.

So the OCC, in 1995, issued what is called the Bank Merger Guidelines of 1995. Their rule for the merger of small banks was pretty simple. The OCC devised this short questionnaire where, if you were two small banks and you wanted to merge, you had to answer yes or no to 14 separate questions--very simple, very straightforward. To 14 questions, you answered yes or no.

And then the OCC--the folks at OCC--could look at your answers and see if they thought there was any risk to consumers. And the OCC also adopted a rule that said: Look, if we don't give you an answer within 15 days, because we are busy--the OCC said--your merger is automatically approved.

Short, sweet, very effective. We haven't had problems with our small banks, and none of these mergers--hundreds have taken place since 1995, which have actually made the financial system in America stronger and created virtually no risk.

Well, President Biden's people at the OCC decided that it wasn't broken; so they were going to fix it. Again, I don't hate anybody, but you have got to call it like you see it.

I think the folks at President Biden's OCC got up one day and thought there was an award for being stupid. They took this very simple and effective rule and procedure, and they turned it on its head. What they did was tier-one-level moronic.

Here is what they did. They threw out the old rule. They said: We are going to have a new rule, and the new rule is instead of these--this was in 2013--instead of these 14 simple yes-or-no questions, we are going to make all of these small banks submit so much paperwork to us that you could stack that paperwork right here and stand on it and practically paint the ceiling.

They threw out the 14 simple yes-or-no questions. They said that now these small banks--these are small banks, now, community banks--have to submit reams and reams of evidence: We, at the OCC, will start making a decision based on 19 criteria. The banks will have to prove that they complied with 13 of what the OCC call positive indicators, and the banks will have to show that they do not align with six of what the OCC started calling negative indicators.

The procedure, not only did it require reams of evidence, but just trying to read their rule that they put out, it was written in Sanskrit. You would have to hire a bucketload of lawyers to be able to just understand the rule.

Then President Biden's people said: Not only that, we are going to throw out this 15-day rule that, if you don't hear from us within 15 days, your merger is automatically approved.

Well, it threw the merger process for small banks that was working beautifully into total disarray. It just made the whole process more expensive, less efficient, and more expensive for consumers because the costs are passed on.

So in a few minutes, I am going to ask the Senate to reject President Biden's cumbersome rule. I am not going to suggest that we not regulate small bank mergers. I am going to suggest that we go back to the procedure that we were using since 1995, which worked, and that we go back and adopt that procedure. That doesn't mean that the OCC can't revisit it at some point.

But let me just be blunt. What President Biden's OCC people did was put together a plan--a new rule--that looks like it was put together by a heroin addict with a socket wrench. I mean, it is the most convoluted thing you have ever seen.

If we vote yes today--and I hope we do--then we will reject this rule and go back to doing it the old way. Budget Reconciliation

Mr. President, since I have a few minutes, I am going to move to another topic, reconciliation, which you are very familiar with. Thank you for all of your contributions to it, by the way, as we put together the bill.

The American people may be a little confused about what ``reconciliation'' means. As you know, a reconciliation bill is just a budget bill. That is all it is. It deals with spending of taxpayer money.

And why is it important?

Well, first it is going to be important to try to lower the prices that are gutting the American people like a fish. Inflation--President Biden's inflation--was simply pernicious. I don't know of another word for it.

It got to the point--I don't know about in your State, but in my State, you know, people shouldn't have to sell blood plasma to be able to go to the grocery store. They shouldn't. And make no mistake--we all know this--those high prices were man-made. Again, no disrespect, but that man's name was Joe Biden, and that is true.

The first goal of our reconciliation bill is to try to help get those prices down. How are we going to do that? No. 1, we are going to reduce government spending.

Why does that matter? Well, how did we get the inflation? We got the inflation because President Biden's favorite form of spending was more. I said many times if the White House during President Biden's term had discovered life on Mars, they would have sent it money immediately. And it was all this money that they injected into the economy, trillions of dollars, Inflation Reduction Act and the America Rescue Plan. They spent all this money. We had all of this money that came into the economy chasing too few goods, created demand, supply constant, and we had inflation.

So we are going to try to get those prices down--we, meaning this Congress--by reducing the government spending, which will reduce the stimulus to the economy, which, if we do it right, ought to lower interest rates. That is step 1 that we are going to try to achieve in reconciliation.

The second part of reconciliation, we are going to continue to try to reduce the rules and regulations. All of these rules and regulations have a price.

And when you are adding $2 trillion in costs that fall on the backs of businesswomen and businessmen, to stay in business they have got to pass the costs of all those rules and regulations on to the consumer.

So if we can get rid of some of these rules and regulations, like we are going to continue to do in a few minutes when we vote on a rule to get rid of the Biden rule I was just talking about, if we can reduce those rules and regulations, goods and services will cost less.

The third thing we are going to try to do in reconciliation or our ``budget bill,'' if you prefer that term, is redesign the Tax Code so that it looks like somebody designed it on purpose.

Since 1990, average GDP growth in America has been 2 percent a year. Now, that is just not acceptable. When we hit 2.5 percent now of GDP growth, we are so happy we want to go have a toga party. Two and a half percent is not acceptable.

We have got to start growing again at a normal rate. What used to be normal for America was 3 percent. Now, how are we going to do that? We are going to do that by encouraging businesswomen and businessmen to invest in their businesses and grow their businesses and hire more people.

And the byproduct of that is that wages will go up, and that way people will be making more money so they will be able to afford this inflation that President Biden left us with.

So the first goal of reconciliation is to try to reduce these prices, to try to kill inflation dead, but there is a second equally, some would say more, important reason, as the Presiding Officer well knows. In 2017, this Congress, during President Trump's first term, passed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We cut taxes by $4.3 trillion. And, boy, did it work.

The economy took off like a SpaceX rocket ship. Within a year, median household income in America had gone up $4,400, and people at the lower end of the wage scale enjoyed more tax benefits and more money in their pocket than people at the other end.

That is why I have to laugh when my Democratic colleagues say: Well, you know, this was a tax cut for the rich. No, all you have to do is look at the data. Unless you do your research on Twitter, you know that it helped people at the lower end of the wage scale more than those at the upper end. That is the good news.

The bad news is that those tax cuts expire at the end of this year. So we are going to try to extend them and make them permanent in our reconciliation bill. And if we don't, if we don't, then we are going to have a $4.3 trillion tax increase on the American people--$4.3 trillion.

I want the Presiding Officer to think about that when some of our colleagues try to throw up roadblocks to the reconciliation bill. In effect, what they are saying is, they want to raise taxes on the American people by $4.3 trillion. That is the most important thing we want to do in our reconciliation bill. It is not the only important thing, as I mentioned, but it is clearly the most important fact.

If we raise taxes right now, $4.3 trillion on the American people, this economy will begin a journey to the center of the Earth. We cannot let it happen.

Now, I don't want to minimize the importance of the role that reconciliation will play in lowering prices and lowering inflation. That is important. But worse than inflation is depression, and if we don't extend these tax cuts and make them permanent, we are going to be in a depression. And that is really what the reconciliation bill is all about.

I thank the Presiding Officer for his time, I will end like I began. I am not saying everything President Biden and his people did was wrong, but on this rule that they promulgated to hurt small banks, it was just disastrous, and we are going to try to fix it today. And my colleagues will vote with me on this.

We will return some sanity to the merger rules for small banking.

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