Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to support an amendment I filed with Senators MERKLEY, BALDWIN, and BLUMENTHAL. The amendment is simple. It says Congress shouldn't make it easy to pass any trade deal that weakens our financial rules.

In 2008, we suffered through the worst financial crisis in generations. Millions of families lost their homes. Millions of people lost their jobs. Millions lost their retirement savings. And they watched as the government spent hundreds of billions of their tax dollars to bail out the giant banks.

In response, Congress passed some commonsense financial reforms--the Dodd-Frank act. These new rules cracked down on the cheating and lying in the financial marketplace. They required the big banks to raise more capital so they wouldn't need a bailout if they started to stumble. They gave our regulators new tools to oversee the biggest banks to make sure the rules were followed.

It is no surprise the giant banks don't like the new rules, so for 5 years now they have been on the attack. They have sent their armies of lobbyists and lawyers and their Republican friends in Congress to try to roll back the rules and let the giants of Wall Street run free again. Democrats stood strong to fight off these attacks because we knew that thoughtful rules can help stop the next financial crisis and protect our working families from another great recession. But now, if this fast-track bill passes, Democrats will be handing Republicans a powerful tool they can use to weaken our financial rules.

Here is how it works: This fast-track bill applies to any trade deal presented to Congress in the next 6 years, which is through the end of the Obama Presidency, through the entirety of the next Presidency, and into the Presidency after that. Fast-track prevents anyone in Congress from offering any amendments to a trade bill. And in the Senate, with fast-track, a trade bill can pass with just 51 votes, not the 60 typically required for major bills.

What if we have a Republican President in 2016 or 2020? Look, I hope that will not be the case, but this is a democracy and it is not up to me. Most Republicans--including ones currently running for President--are committed to rolling back financial reforms. With fast-track, they could weaken our financial rules in a trade deal and then ram it through Congress with just 51 votes in the Senate. That is a lot easier than the 60 votes needed for a head-on attack on the financial rules through the normal legislative process.

This is a real risk. We are already deep into negotiations with the European Union over a massive trade agreement. The European negotiators are pressing hard to include financial reforms as part of that trade deal. And lobbyists from the United States have recognized that the European trade deal is a great opportunity to weaken America's financial reforms.

Here is what a member of the European Parliament said just a few months ago: ``I have been approached by lobbyists that have clearly argued they want to have a weak European regulation, much weaker than Dodd-Frank, in order to use that afterwards as a level to undercut or undermine Dodd-Frank in the transatlantic negotiations.''

The big banks on both sides of the Atlantic are pushing for changes, too. A letter from some of the largest financial industry groups in Europe and the United States called for an ``ambitious chapter'' on financial regulations in the European trade deal. I don't think they are looking to make our regulations stronger.

Michael Barr, a former senior Obama official at the Treasury Department and one of the architects of Dodd-Frank, said that the risk to Dodd-Frank in a European trade deal is ``real and meaningful and worth worrying about.'' Barr has noted that European officials are ``barnstorming the U.S., looking for support to include financial services as part of the talks on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership,'' while the financial industry looks to use talks to ``overturn the pesky--and highly effective--rules being implemented in the U.S. under the Dodd-Frank act.''

The Obama administration, to their credit, has stood strong against such attempts. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew noted in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee that there is ``pressure to lower standards'' on things such as financial regulations in trade deals but that the administration believes that is ``not acceptable.'' Our lead negotiator, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, has said that the United States is ``not open to creating any process designed to reopen, weaken, or undermine implementation'' of Dodd-Frank. And President Obama's administration says our trade deals should not include regulation of financial services. I agree. But this President won't be President in 18 months, and there is nothing this President can do to stop the next President from reversing direction in the European negotiations.

Senator McConnell certainly knows this. That is why he is telling Republicans that ``if we want the next Republican President to have a chance to do trade agreements with the rest of the world, this bill is about that President as well as this one.''

That is why I am proposing this amendment--to make sure no future President can fast-track a trade agreement that weakens our financial regulations. All of my colleagues who believe in holding the big banks accountable and keeping our financial system safe should support this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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