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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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. President Trump promised that he would lower costs for American families on day one. He promised to cap interest rates on credit cards at 10 percent, and so what is it that the Senate is prioritizing today? Making it easier for banks to merge, raising the cost of credit for small businesses and households, and eroding banking services in local communities.

This resolution would undo commonsense provisions and improvements to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency bank merger review framework after decades of that office rubberstamping deals that have reduced competition in the banking sector and put community banks all across this country out of business.

Now, we have witnessed small banks just vanishing from our local communities over the past several decades. These are the banks that are deeply rooted in our neighborhoods, that do the painstaking local lending that many small businesses rely on.

Regulators' long record of rubberstamping bank mergers has resulted in scores of branch closures, leaving consumers with fewer choices when it comes to whom to trust with their money.

Between 2006 and 2021, the Federal Reserve approved more than 3,500 consecutive mergers without denying a single one--not even one single no. With the regulators completely asleep at the switch since 1990, the number of banks in the United States has declined from more than 18,000 to fewer than 5,000.

The biggest banks have been the beneficiaries of this consolidation because they have grown even bigger. In the mid-1990s, the 20 biggest banks in this country held a total of 15 percent of all bank assets-- the 20 biggest had 15 percent of all the assets.

Today, the top 20 hold more than 65 percent of all bank assets, and the concentration at the very top is even more extreme. The biggest four banks alone hold more assets than the next 75 banks combined.

This problem can be life or death for small businesses that can't get ahold of anyone at a big bank who understands the local economy or the nuances of their business or their credit needs.

At a big bank, you get a 1-800 number and a cookie-cutter product developed in some far-off headquarters. The problem is even more dire in low-income neighborhoods where research shows that predatory lenders and check cashers proliferate as bank consolidation increases.

Concentrating power into a few financial giants and money centers reduces competition, and it results in Americans paying higher prices for their banking services. That means higher credit card interest rates, higher fees, higher auto loan payments, and unaffordable mortgages. And when these banks become too big to fail, the entire economy feels the pain when those banks' risk-taking blows up, and taxpayers are the ones who have to foot the bill when Wall Street comes in here demanding bailouts.

In recent years, regulators started to wake up to the fact that a highly consolidated banking sector is bad for consumers and bad for our economy. Bank supervisors and antitrust enforcers have been taking a careful look at the rules that guide how mergers are scrutinized, and they finally--finally--began to apply the law, as written by Congress, and they retired the rubberstamp.

In 2024, the OCC, which oversees most of the very largest banks, finalized improvements to the bank merger framework, creating a more comprehensive process and a more transparent process. First, the new rules will end the practice that allows certain mergers to be automatically approved just 15 days after the closing of the public comment period.

This resolution would reinstitute automatic approval just as Elon Musk's, his DOGE, guts the very staff that are reviewing these bank merger applications. It is a dangerous combination to actually say: We are going to do these automatic approvals, give them a really short period of time, and then cut the number of people who are there in the regulatory Agencies to be able to review the mergers.

Second, the updated rules also ensure that all applicants provide regulators with the information they need to weed out harmful transactions and to ensure that the OCC is more transparent about how it weighs certain factors when making a determination for whether to approve or deny a merger, and all that would go away.

The OCC's final rule is a commonsense step to revitalize the bank merger framework after decades of lax review. Passing this resolution would turn back the clock, raise costs for Americans at a time when they can least afford it, and choke off credit even more for the small businesses that need it most.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. It is bad for consumers, bad for small businesses, and, ultimately, that means it is bad for our economy.
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