Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, another Congress is ending, a President's term is coming to a close, and, yet again, this Senate, the President, Washington have failed to address the pension crisis facing far too many workers. The American people are tired of waiting for us to do our jobs, and they are tired of being told by Leader McConnell and President Trump: You are on your own. The House has twice passed legislation that would address the multiemployer pension crisis, but under Leader McConnell the Senate has failed these Americans. As for the White House, I don't even think President Trump knows, much less cares, about the multiemployer pension crisis. We ought to be working to support all the workers and retirees around the country whose lives have been upended during this pandemic, and that should include more than a million Americans in multiemployer pension system. After a lifetime of hard work and service to our country, they have already waited too long for Congress to do its job and to protect the benefits that these workers earned through a lifetime of work. We have been trying to solve this crisis for years. The House has done its part. They passed the solution multiple times now. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate, is deliberately blocking it, and his party and his Members and the President support him in blocking it. Senate Republicans said this week that after a year of negotiating and talking to stakeholders, they made substantial progress toward a common ground, but then they released legislation that walked back all the progress that we had made. It is a betrayal of the people whom we serve. This pension crisis affects retirees across the country of all political parties. Unions, chambers of commerce, and small businesses pretty much all agree that we need to get this done. Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell doesn't. There is no excuse for Senate Republicans standing in the way of a deal. This only gets more expensive the longer we wait. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to solve this. We waited year after year after year while Senator McConnell has simply twiddled his thumbs. The public health crisis and the economic crisis we are facing right now are not happening in a vacuum. The damage caused by the pandemic and the President's failures is layered on top of all the existing problems in our country, including the crisis facing these workers and retirees who are in danger of losing the retirement security that they earned. I always emphasize ``that they earned.'' These pension plans were already in danger. Now the economic emergency we are in has put them in a worse position. We are talking about retirees who did everything right. They spent years working on assembly lines, bagging groceries, driving trucks, working construction--working hard to keep our economy going. Money came out of every single one of their paychecks to earn these pensions. People in this town don't understand the collective bargaining process. People give up dollars today at the bargaining table for the promise of a secure retirement with good healthcare and a pension. Think about that. These workers are sitting around a table with their representatives, bargaining, collectively bargaining with management, saying: OK, we will take a smaller salary. We will take a smaller hourly wage today so that money will go into pensions and healthcare. Yet because this Senate won't act, because Senator McConnell never calls us together to do this--to take care of workers--these workers are losing parts of their pension. This crisis in my State affects thousands of people. It affects the massive Central States Pension Plan, the Bricklayers Local 7, the Iron Workers Local 17, the Ohio Southwest Carpenters Pension Plan, the Bakers and Confectioners Pension Plan, and on and on and on and on. It touches every single State from Mississippi to Ohio, from Massachusetts to California--every State in this country. We are talking about our entire multiemployer pension system. If it collapses, it won't just be retirees who will feel the pain. Current workers will be stuck paying into pensions they will never receive. Small businesses will be left drowning in pension liabilities they can't afford to pay--small businesses that have been in the family for generations. And there are a number of them in Ohio, businesses that people in this body will have heard of that make products they use. Small businesses and family businesses could face bankruptcy. Workers will lose jobs as businesses are forced to close up shop. The effects will ripple across the entire country at a time when we can least afford it. We knew before the pandemic that this system could collapse. It is more likely to fail now. That is why the Senate must act. We know who will get hurt the most if the system collapses. It is not Wall Street. It is never Wall Street when it comes to Senator McConnell. It is never Wall Street that gets hurt. It is small businesses. It is their employees. It is the people who make this country work. Their lives, their livelihoods will be devastated if Congress fails again. Workers and retirees in Ohio and around the country have rallied in the name of Butch Lewis, a great Ohioan who helped lead this fight, who passed away far too soon fighting for his fellow workers. His widow, Rita, has become my friend. She has continued this fight. She has become a leader and an inspiration to so many of us. I brought her to the State of the Union twice. She has made the trip here over and over, along with so many workers and retirees. They travel all day and night on buses. They have rallied in the bitter cold of the winter and in hot DC summers. Their government, their majority leader, their President refuse to listen and turn their backs. Rita once told me that retirees and workers struggling with this crisis feel like they are invisible. They feel like they are invisible. To far too many people in Washington, they are invisible. They are not invisible to me. They are not invisible to Speaker Pelosi or Leader Schumer or Senator Smith or Senator Peters or Chairman Neal or Chairman Scott--all of whom have joined with me on fighting for this--and to so many colleagues who worked for years now trying to find a bipartisan solution. We won't give up until these retirees' benefits are protected. It comes back to the dignity of work. When work has dignity, we honor the security--the retirement security--that people earned--again, sitting down at the bargaining table. Workers give up wages today to put money aside, matched by employers, generally, for the future, for this retirement. They made the right decision back then, but we are not making the right decision right now as their pensions are in trouble. I urge my colleagues in this body--colleagues with healthcare and retirement plans paid for by taxpayers, all of us who are in this body--to think about these retired workers and the stress they are facing. Join us. Let's pass a solution that honors their work. Let's honor their work. Let's honor the dignity of work. Let's keep our promise to them. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, this spring, I was talking with a grocery store worker in Ohio, who told me: ``They call me essential, but I feel expendable.'' That grocery store worker and thousands of others who are on the frontlines of this pandemic risk their lives so that Americans can keep food on their tables and get their packages delivered. They change linen in hospitals. They drive city buses or rural buses. They stock shelves in supermarkets. When these workers go home at night, having been exposed to the public pretty much their whole workday, they worry they are going to bring the virus home and infect their families. It is essential workers keeping our society going. A number of American corporations claim to recognize this. They have run feel-good ads--at least they did early in the pandemic--saying ``thank you'' to essential workers, claiming these workers are the heart of their companies. But saying ``thank you'' is not nearly enough. Workers don't need a PR campaign. They need fair pay and protections on the job. These corporations get positive press off their workers while too often paying them poverty wages and, in too many cases, failing to protect their safety in the workplace. I wrote an open letter this summer to corporate executives, published in their paper of record, the Wall Street Journal. I said to these corporations: You say your workers are essential. Then treat them that way. Our economy is supposed to reward people whose talents are in high demand. That is what we are all taught. That is what you always tell us; right? These workers' skills keep our economy going. Their paychecks should reflect that. It has been 6 months since that letter was published. It may surprise no one to learn that my phone has not been ringing off the hook with calls from CEOs who want to discuss renewed efforts to invest in their workers. All that has changed is that corporate profits have gone up, hazard pay has disappeared, and more workers have died. Profits are up at most of the biggest companies, especially the largest retail companies. The Brookings Institution studied the 13 biggest retailers in this country and found that their earnings have shot up 39 percent compared with last year, and stock prices are up 33 percent. Guess how much wages have gone up. One dollar an hour. The Washington Post looked at the 50 biggest corporations. Between April and September, these companies handed out more than $240 billion--240,000 million, $240 billion--to their stockholders through stock buybacks and dividends. It is workers making these companies successful. It is workers risking their lives on the job, but shareholders got nearly 8 percent of the profits workers created. Look at Amazon. The company's quarterly profits increased by a staggering 200 percent. But that same Amazon rolled back its tiny $2- an-hour raise in June and announced a bonus of just $300 per worker. You heard that correctly--not $3,000 but $300, from a company that brought in $280 billion in revenue last year. If even a global pandemic, where American workers have been on the frontlines--if even that--will not get corporations to rethink their business model that treats workers as expendable, then, frankly, it is time--and my colleagues should hear this--to stop letting them run this economy. They had their chance. They failed. Just look around us. If corporate America won't deliver for its workers, it is time we step in and create a better system, centered on the dignity of work. The American people have made it clear that they want a government that is on the side of workers. Eighty-one million voters gave Joe Biden a decisive victory of more than 7 million votes. That is a mandate for change. In June, I laid out actions that corporations could take on their own, like raising base pay to $15 an hour. Since they mostly refused, we should raise the Federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Workers are still not safe on the job. So President Biden can immediately issue an OSHA, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration, emergency temporary standard forcing corporations to protect their workers. Many companies still deny their employees paid sick leave, even during a pandemic. So we have to pass a national paid family leave plan. Corporations are expanding rather than ending their exploitive ``independent contractor'' business model. So we are going to have to use the law to make them treat their workers as true employees. You know how they do it: Particularly large corporations will contract out custodial work, security work, and food service work in their company cafeteria, for instance. They contract it out to a private company that pays much less than the corporation pays, often wages barely above the minimum wage. Those workers should have to be treated like workers living under American labor law. Corporations continue to coerce workers out of forming unions. So we need to pass the PRO Act--Protecting Our Right to Organize Act--to empower workers with a voice in their workplace. The economy isn't physics. It is not governed by a scientific law outside our control. It is made up of people making choices about our values and in what kind of society we want to live. That is the reason we have an Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It is why we have these agencies: to make sure that workers are treated fairly to begin with. We have the power to change how the economy works so that it rewards work instead of greed. We can create more jobs at middle-class wages. We can give people power over their lives and schedules. We can expand economic security and opportunity for everyone. Americans voted for this change. Americans aren't going to wait for corporations to reform themselves on their own. That is for sure. They never have. They never will. It is up to the rest of us to deliver for the people whom we serve and create a country where all work has dignity. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I agree and agree to work with Chairman Crapo and with his successor as Banking Committee chairman, with Senator Grassley, and with appropriate administration officials consistent with that intent. I share the desire to ensure that adequate funds are provided and agree that the best way to do so is through the creation of a fund that is to be used exclusively for the payment of whistleblower awards. Such a fund should also provide for awards of at least 10 percent of the funds in cases covered by the bill. I will work with Senator Grassley to make clear that this is our intent to administration officials.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I would restate my request, whenever I come to the floor, that the Presiding Officer wear a mask because he has people sitting in front of him that could be at risk. Remembering Paul Sarbanes Mr. President, this weekend, we lost a former Member of this body who truly embodied the spirit of service that should animate all of our work. His name is Paul Sarbanes. He passed away a few days ago. He was a longtime chair of the committee of the Presiding Officer. As chair of the Banking and Housing Committee, he was always a voice for consumers and working families, standing up against powerful corporate interests. The accomplishment that bears his name, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, was a landmark law in our efforts to hold corporations accountable. It helped protect Americans who invest hard- earned money for retirement and for their kids' education from corporate banking fraud, the kind that bankrupted families after scandals like Enron. Senator Sarbanes also never ignored the housing part of our committee's jurisdiction. He fought to make sure that all Americans could find and afford a place to call home. Whenever developers tried to make a deal in Maryland, he was always adamant they include affordable housing in their projects because, fundamentally, he never forgot where he came from. The son of Greek immigrants, Paul Sarbanes grew up a working-class kid, bussing tables at his family's restaurant on the Eastern Shore. In the Senate, he cared about getting results for the people he served, not about getting the credit. Some of his colleagues called him the ``stealth senator.'' He welcomed the nickname. He told the Baltimore Sun that stealth is ``one of the most important weapons in our military arsenal. . . . If you let somebody else take the credit, you can get the result.'' Senator Sarbanes was the definition of a true public servant. May he rest in peace as he joins his beloved wife Christine. Connie and I pray for Representative John Sarbanes, his son, and the entire Sarbanes family. I hope my colleagues will join me in honoring Senator Sarbanes by building on his legacy, standing up to the corporations that have too much power in this country, and fighting for the working people we serve. Paul Sarbanes, like many others in this body, understood the dignity of work National Defense Authorization Act Mr. President, yesterday the House overwhelmingly passed the NDAA conference report by a veto-proof majority of 335 to 78. That bill includes our comprehensive bipartisan reform of our anti-money laundering laws. I would like to thank my colleagues, especially Senator Crapo and other Banking and Housing Committee colleagues: Senators Warner, Jones, Reed, Rounds, and off the committee, Senators Wyden, Whitehouse, Graham, and Grassley, and the Presiding Officer, Senator Cotton, for his work on this legislation. On the House side, Chairwoman Waters and Chairman Maloney and Representative Cleaver, thank you to all of them for working so hard to ensure that today we have this crucial bipartisan legislation in this defense conference report that will reform our money laundering laws and finally end abuses by anonymous shell companies. I would like to extend my thanks to a former colleague, Chairman Levin, who was chair of Armed Services and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and to President Obama, who both voted on these issues for years. Many of their good ideas are codified in this bill, harvesting some of the seeds they planted years ago. The Anti-Money Laundering Act and the Corporate Transparency Act are the products of months and months of bipartisan negotiations between and among Members of the House and Senate and certainly the staffs of Senator Cotton and me and Senator Crapo and others. I thank them for their good work. The bill is a critical step to fight money laundering and crack down on shell companies. While there are things I would have done differently had we been writing the bill on our own, overall, it is an effective and comprehensive response to the problem of illicit finance. I strongly support it. Criminals abuse the U.S. financial system to launder money from drug trafficking, organized crime, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, weapons sales, and other criminal activities. I spoke today about this with Sheriff Burke of Toledo, the Lucas County Sheriff, a longtime sheriff, and U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott of Cleveland of the Northern District. They welcomed this language, and they welcome this law. This will help them do their jobs better. Much of this dirty money that comes from organized crime in Medicaid fraud, weapons sales, drug trafficking, and sex trafficking is laundered through anonymous shell corporations. These are not victimless crimes. They directly hurt Ohio communities, especially those torn apart by the opioid crisis. Sinaloa cartel actors and Fentanyl traffickers have been destroying thousands of families. They use money laundering to get their drug money in and out of the country. Human traffickers who prey on runaways at truck stops along major interstate highways in Ohio and across the country also use the financial system to launder their profits. We need to give law enforcement new modern tools to stop their crimes. The bill finally requires comprehensive reporting by U.S. companies of their actual owners--no more hiding these abuses in anonymous shell companies. It cracks down on bankers who look the other way to actively aid money laundering and cracks down on Big Banks that have shoddy compliance systems. If you are helping drug traders hide their illegal fentanyl profits, you deserve more than a slap on the wrist. Banks cannot be too big to jail, and laws can't treat them that way. I will closely monitor how this critical legislation is being implemented. I spoke this week already with the Secretary of Treasury designee and the Deputy Secretary of Treasury designee about being ready to administer and enforce these laws. I look forward to working with the administration to ensure that Treasury puts in place effective anti-money laundering and corporate transparency rules to implement the bill as soon as possible. We know that criminals have long been revising their tactics to get around our current laws. This bill will enable us to get ahead of them and stay ahead of them. I urge my colleagues to support it. They supported this language in the NDAA, and I ask them to support the NDAA Taken together, as we designed them, these measures reform, update and strengthen our current anti-money laundering laws and make critical changes to U.S. corporate disclosure laws to combat abuses by owners of anonymous shell companies--including foreign owners from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other countries--who have for years been exploiting our system for criminal purposes. The legislation strengthens the Treasury Department's financial intelligence, anti-money laundering (AML), and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) programs, modernizing our legal regime and improving communication, oversight, and information-sharing in these areas. The conference agreement requires much more routine and systemic coordination, communication, and feedback among financial institutions, regulators, and law enforcement, to enable them to identify and act on suspicious financial activities, better target bank resources on critical AML tasks, and increase the likelihood of bad actors being caught by law enforcement. It also provides for new whistleblower protections for those reporting BSA violations and provides for payment of whistleblower rewards. It establishes tough new penalties on those convicted of serious Bank Secrecy Act violations, including additional penalties for repeat violators, and imposes a ban on financial-institution board service for those convicted of egregious BSA-related crimes. It would require important new reporting from the Department of Justice and Treasury to better enable Congress to oversee the use of-- and sometimes continuing violations by banks under--deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements, which too often are a slap on the wrist by regulators for banks that evade sanctions, violate our AML rules, or otherwise violate banking laws. As I have said, banks can't be too big to jail, and regulators can't treat them that way. To help accomplish all these goals, the conference agreement authorizes additional funding for the Treasury Department, and we expect the Department to insist on strong accountability for results and to be responsive to congressional oversight as its officials work to implement this legislation. In addition, the bill finally requires comprehensive reporting by U.S. companies of their actual owners. No more hiding in the dark abuses by anonymous shell companies to commit crimes. Unlike in most areas of reform and transparency, where the U.S. has led the way, on this issue of anonymous shell companies we have long lagged behind other nations, and failed to require uniform and clear ownership information for firms at the time of their incorporation in the states. This information is critical to law enforcement. In the U.S. investigators often have to spend precious time and resources issuing subpoenas and chasing down leads--sometimes jumping from anonymous shell company to anonymous shell company--to secure basic information about who actually owns a company. That makes no sense. And with this bill, it will end. Treasury's National Money Laundering Risk Assessment estimates that around $300 billion in illicit proceeds from domestic financial crime is generated annually. Criminals have for a very long time abused our financial system to launder funds gained through narcotics trafficking, organized crime, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, weapons proliferation and other criminal activities. Much of this dirty money is laundered through anonymous shell corporations. Over the years we have heard all about these abuses, from the ``Panama Papers'' to the ``Paradise Papers'' to, more recently this year, the series of news articles called the ``FinCEN files.'' These exposures of abuses in our system by dedicated journalists and national and international transparency organizations have highlighted problems involving human trafficking, drug trafficking, terrorism, money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, and other crimes involving illicit finance. None of these abuses are victimless crimes. Money laundering for drug cartels has a direct line to the opioid crisis in Ohio, where Sinaloa cartel actors or fentanyl traffickers have been destroying thousands of families. Combined with the pandemic, these drugs have hurt thousands of Ohio families. Human traffickers who exploit the misery of runaways in truckstops along major interstate highways in Ohio and across the country use the financial system to launder their profits. Medicare fraudsters cost the taxpayers $2.6 billion in one recent year, according to the HHS Inspector General, and tarnish the reputation of this lifeline for seniors. That's why anti-money laundering and corporate transparency laws are so critical: they protect the integrity of our financial system, provide critical intelligence to law enforcement to combat crime and help give victims the tools they need to hold bad actors accountable. Under Treasury's existing rules, banks are already working to secure some of this information from accountholders when they open accounts. And while banks must continue to play a key monitoring role, it's also important that we finally, after all these years, require companies to provide basic information on their ownership when they're formed. The bill contains a strong definition of ``beneficial owner'' which includes a two-part test covering individuals who, directly or indirectly, exercise substantial control over an entity or hold or control an ownership interest in the entity. The definition is clear that a nominee, intermediary, custodian, or agent acting on behalf of another individual cannot be the beneficial owner of an entity. Nominees are not beneficial owners; neither are trustees or attorneys acting as agents. The definition is also clear that employees do not qualify as beneficial owners of an entity unless, apart from their employment status, they hold an ownership interest in the entity or can exercise substantial control over the entity such as the ability to transfer some or all of the entity's assets or earnings to their personal use. The provision defines ``beneficial owner'' as an individual who directly or indirectly ``owns or controls not less than 25 percent of the ownership interests of the entity.'' When applying this part of the test, FinCEN must consider what to do if no one individual meets the 25 percent minimum, and how that situation may trigger the second part of the beneficial owner test which requires disclosure of the individuals who exercise ``substantial control over the entity.'' To determine whether an individual exercises ``substantial control'' over an entity, FinCEN is not intended to devise a numerical, narrow, or rigid test. Instead, the standard is intended to function with flexibility to take into account the myriad ways that an individual may exercise control over an entity while holding minimal or even no formal ownership interest. They include written and unwritten agreements, arrangements, or understandings, instructions to company directors or officers, letter of wishes, control over personnel decisions, economic pressure on company shareholders or employees, coercion, bribery, threats of bodily harm, and other legal and illegal means of exercising control. Evidence that one or more individuals are exercising substantial control over a specific entity is expected to vary widely and may encompass such matters as emailed or telephoned instructions from the individuals suspected of being beneficial owners or their agents, employment or personnel decisions made at the direction or with the approval of such individuals, financial accounts that name such individuals as signatories, investment decisions made at the direction or recommendation of such individuals, or transfers of funds or assets to or at the direction of such individuals. Requiring companies to provide their ownership information and storing it in a secure federal database like FinCEN's, alongside account holders' banking information, will help address longstanding problems for U.S. law enforcement. It will help them investigate and prosecute cases involving terrorism, weapons proliferation, drug trafficking, money laundering, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, human trafficking, and other crimes. And it will provide ready access to this information under long-established and effective privacy rules. Without these reforms, criminals, terrorists and even rogue nations could continue to use layer upon layer of shell companies to disguise and launder illicit funds. That makes it harder to hold bad actors accountable, and puts us all at risk. The bill also contains certain exemptions. The basic justification behind the bill's exemptions is that each exempt category refers to entities that already disclose their beneficial owners to the government in one way or another and so don't need to duplicate that disclosure in the FinCEN database. For example, publicly traded companies already disclose their true owners to the SEC, and banks already disclose their true owners to federal bank regulators; there is no reason to require those entities to disclose the same information to FinCEN. Each of the exemptions should be interpreted as narrowly as possible to exclude entities that do not disclose their beneficial owners to the government. Exemptions created for pooled investment vehicles, dormant companies, and certain nonprofits require especially narrow interpretations to limit those exemptions to entities that provide some level of ownership disclosure to the government. The exemption for pooled investment vehicles is intended to be available only to PIVs that rely for investment advice and services on a regulated bank or on a securities broker-dealer, investment company, or investment adviser that is registered with the SEC, has disclosed its own beneficial ownership information to the federal government, and has filed a Form ADV disclosing the PIV's legal name and any other information related to the PIV that the federal government may require. In addition, PIVs formed under the laws of a foreign jurisdiction must file with FinCEN a certification identifying every individual that exercises substantial control over the PIV, providing the same information required for beneficial owners. Because evidence shows that criminals, fraudsters, and U.S. adversaries are increasingly using PIVs to launder funds and commit other wrongdoing, this exemption is of special concern and should be subject to continuous, careful review by Treasury as provided in the new 31 U.S.C. 5336(i) to see whether it should be retained or removed. The exemption for dormant companies is intended to function solely as a grandfathering provision that exempts from disclosure only those dormant companies in existence prior to the bill's enactment; those grandfathered entities are also required to immediately disclose their beneficial owners to FinCEN as soon as their ownership changes hands, they become active entities, or they otherwise lose their exempt status. No entity created after the date of enactment of the bill is intended to qualify for exemption as a dormant company. The exemption provided to certain charitable and nonprofit entities also merits narrow construction and careful review in light of past evidence of wrongdoers misusing charities, foundations, and other nonprofit entities to launder funds and advance criminal and civil misconduct. This exemption is intended to apply only to entities that are engaged in charitable or nonprofit activities, and not to entities engaged in for-profit businesses or for-profit activities. The exemption is based, in part, upon provisions in U.S. and state laws that enable federal and state officials to regulate and investigate nonprofit organizations to ensure, for example, that the individuals behind them are not using the entity's assets to inappropriately enrich themselves, unfairly compete against businesses that pay taxes, or advance other inappropriate objectives. In addition, the exemption given to entities that ``operate exclusively to provide financial assistance to or hold governance rights over'' a charitable entity is intended to be even more restrictive; it is confined to entities that qualify as U.S. persons under U.S. tax law, have only U.S. citizens or residents as their beneficial owners, and derive ``at least a majority'' of their funds from U.S. persons--meaning the exemption is not available under any circumstance for entities formed under foreign laws, established for foreign beneficial owners, or funded primarily with foreign funds. Again, these exemptions are intended to be narrowly interpreted to prevent their use by entities that otherwise fail to disclose their beneficial owners to the federal government. To ensure the bill's exemptions function as intended, the Treasury, FinCEN, OCC, IRS, SEC, CFTC, and other federal regulators should review and, if necessary, strengthen their filing forms to ensure that beneficial as well as nominal owners are disclosed to the federal government by the specified exempt entities, including investment companies, investment advisers, pooled investment vehicles, money transmitting businesses, and all entities registered with the SEC, among others. The justification for the exemption of entities that have both physical operations and at least 20 employees in the United States is that those entities' physical U.S. presence will make it easy for U.S. law enforcement to discover those entities' true owners. Like other exemptions in the bill, this exemption should be narrowly construed to exclude entities that do not have an easily located physical presence in the United States, do not have multiple employees physically present on an ongoing basis in the United States, or use strategies that make it difficult for U.S. law enforcement to contact their workforce or discover the names of their beneficial owners. This exemption should be subject to continuous, careful review by Treasury under the new 31 U.S.C. 5336(i) to detect and prevent its misuse. Extending the disclosure exemption to subsidiaries whose ownership interests are owned or controlled by one or more of certain identified exempt entities is, again, intended to be interpreted as narrowly as possible to exclude subsidiaries that never disclose their true owners to the federal government. The exemption is intended to apply only to subsidiaries that are wholly owned or controlled by one or more of the exempt categories of entities; that's why the provision does not contain any reference to the 25% ownership figure that appears in the definition of beneficial owner. The Federal Reserve, Treasury, OCC, SEC, CFTC, FDIC, and other federal regulators should review their filing requirements to ensure that the entities that report to them, such as banks, publicly traded corporations, securities dealers, exchange operators, or commodity brokers, include requirements to disclose the subsidiaries they wholly own or control. This exemption, like others, should be subject to continuous, careful review by Treasury under the new 31 U.S.C. 5336(i) to detect and prevent its misuse. For their part, FinCEN identifiers are intended to simplify beneficial ownership disclosures by eliminating spelling and naming issues that can cause confusion or mistakes related to the precise individuals or entities in an ownership chain. FinCEN should design rules that will encourage both individuals and entities to obtain and use FinCEN identifiers in their beneficial ownership disclosures. When assigning FinCEN identifiers to entities, FinCEN should first ensure that the entity has already disclosed its beneficial ownership information to FinCEN. An entity that has not disclosed its beneficial ownership information to FinCEN does not qualify and should not be granted a FinCEN identifier. It is critical that, from the beginning, FinCEN issue rules that ensure only one identifying number is assigned to each individual and to each entity, including all successors to a specific entity. FinCEN should also establish mechanisms to detect and correct any procedure or database field that may lead to the same individual or entity possessing or using more than one FinCEN identifier. Chairman Crapo and I agreed two years ago that we must get this done in this Congress--we must finally enact sweeping legislation to require complete ownership information--not of front men and women, not of those forming companies on behalf of those who will pull the strings from behind the curtain--but of the actual owners of companies to be available to appropriate law enforcement, intelligence and national security officials in our government who need it to combat crime. This bill lays out a system to do that simply, efficiently and effectively, without unduly burdening small businesses or others, and while providing extensive protections for the information. In Europe, that information is included in a public database. This approach is different, imposing some limits on who will have access, and under what circumstances. For example, it provides that federal agency heads or their designees--and agencies can extend that delegation as far down in their organizational chain as they like--can provide access to the database to appropriate law enforcement authorities once per investigation, so they do not need to keep repeating that authorization for the same investigation. And those delegations can be made on a bulk basis, so groups or classes of employees can be authorized to access the data as needed. For State, local or tribal law enforcement, they must get approval by a tribal, local, or state court of competent jurisdiction, which need not be a judge--it can include an officer of the court like a magistrate, court clerk or other administrative officer. While I saw no reason to treat federal, state and local law enforcement officials differently, my Republican colleagues insisted on this differential treatment, and I am hopeful that the flexibility we have built in should make it workable. It is far more workable than the scheme some had pushed, to require approval by a federal judge each time law enforcement wanted to access the database--an approach which would have gutted the bill, tied up our federal courts, and effectively rendered it inaccessible to state and local law enforcement. But the key here is a robust, functional and effective database at FinCEN to house this information and make it readily available. FinCEN should take immediate steps to create the new database needed to contain beneficial ownership information. It should use state of the art technology, procedures, and safeguards to ensure the database is secure, easy to search, easy to audit, and easy to correct and update. FinCEN should use its new hiring authority to hire the information technology specialists needed to create the new beneficial ownership database. In designing the database, FinCEN should survey other beneficial ownership databases to determine their best features and design, and create a structure that secures the data as required by law. FinCEN should ensure that federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement can access the beneficial ownership database without excessive delays or red tape in a manner modeled after its existing systems providing law enforcement access to databases containing currency transaction and suspicious activity report information. FinCEN should allow federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement to access the beneficial ownership data for both criminal and civil purposes, including law enforcement activities designed to combat terrorism, money laundering, trafficking, corruption, evasion of sanctions, noncompliance with tax law, fraud, counterfeit goods, market manipulation, insider trading, consumer abuse, cybercrime, election interference, and other types of criminal and civil wrongdoing. FinCEN should also provide appropriate access to beneficial ownership data for foreign law enforcement requesting the information for criminal or civil purposes, including appropriate requests made by a prosecutor, judge, foreign central authority, or competent authority in a foreign jurisdiction, keeping in mind that U.S. law enforcement will be seeking similar information from those same foreign law enforcement agencies on a reciprocal basis. FinCEN should endeavor to design a system that will provide appropriate beneficial ownership information to foreign law enforcement without excessive delays or red tape. As part of its implementation effort, FinCEN should take immediate steps to work with states and Indian Tribes to determine how to confirm that all covered entities formed or administered by those states or tribes actually file and update the beneficial ownership information required by law. We expect FinCEN to include any resulting procedures or audits in the rule implementing the law. FinCEN should also include appropriate provisions in the implementing rule requiring federal, state, and tribal agencies to cooperate with its efforts to ensure an accurate, complete, and highly useful database of beneficial information and to provide notice of the law's beneficial ownership transparency obligations, as required by the new law. The Treasury IG should take immediate steps to establish a process to accept, store, and analyze information provided by a federal, state, local or tribal agency, foreign government, financial institution, reporting company, civil society group, the public, or others in the form of comments or complaints related to how FinCEN provides notification of the law's beneficial ownership transparency requirements, how FinCEN collects and stores beneficial ownership information, or regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information in the FinCEN beneficial ownership database. As part of that process, the Treasury IG should establish procedures that will enable comments or complaints identifying false, out-of-date, or incomplete beneficial ownership information in the database or providing correct, up-to-date, or complete beneficial ownership information in the database promptly to reach the FinCEN personnel charged with ensuring the database's accuracy, completeness, and timeliness. In addition, the Treasury IG should establish a procedure to conduct periodic audits to determine the extent to which such information actually reached the proper FinCEN personnel, was logged, stored, and analyzed, led to changes in the database, and actually improved the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of the beneficial ownership database. In response to the bill, the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy should take immediate steps to revise the Federal Acquisition Regulation to require covered federal contractors and subcontractors, at an early stage in the federal procurement process, to disclose to the federal government in writing, and to update over time, information on their beneficial owners. To carry out this provision in the law, the Administrator should work with the General Services Administration to add a beneficial ownership disclosure requirement to the database authorizing entities to bid on federal contracts. At the same time it is developing regulations to implement the new law, FinCEN should simultaneously revise the existing customer due diligence rule to bring it into harmony with the new law and all proposed regulations. In doing so, FinCEN should carefully evaluate the existing customer due diligence rule and preserve provisions that do not conflict with the new law. Among other changes, the revised customer due diligence rule must use the new definition of beneficial owner established in the law. Treasury and FinCEN should create a transition period for financial institutions to implement the new beneficial ownership requirements. Lastly, FinCEN should also take steps to establish procedures as needed to administer the revised customer due diligence rule effectively. Updating and strengthening our AML and beneficial ownership laws will give us a 21st century system to combat these crimes. I guarantee you criminals have long been revising, adjusting and amending their tactics to circumvent our current laws. We must get ahead of them, and stay ahead of them. This bill will enable us to do that. I urge my colleagues to support the conference report and this important measure. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I always appreciate the persistence and integrity and intellectual vigor of Senator Whitehouse's comments on the floor talking about climate and talking about the corruption of big money and climate politics and climate decision making. So to Senator Whitehouse, thank you.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the American people sent a clear message in this election. They want us to get to work to empower people with a plan to fight this virus and to get people back to work, back to school, and back to their lives. They gave President-Elect Biden a commanding 5-million vote victory to do that. It is time for us to get to work. We have had more than 1 million new cases just in the past week. Yet what does Leader Mitch McConnell--what does he keep the Senate in session to do? He keeps the Senate in session and he puts essential workers at risk all to try to ram through an unqualified nominee who pretty much everybody in this body knows has no business serving on the Federal Reserve. Let's be clear on what this is about. It is about our outgoing President--again, who lost the popular vote by 5 million people and lost an electoral college by a landslide--trying to sabotage our economic recovery on his way out the door. Yesterday, luckily, Senators of both parties rejected that effort. There were 80 million Americans-- most ever by a lot--who voted for stability in this election. Judy Shelton, the Trump nominee, promises more Trump chaos. You can't say you support working people while putting someone in charge who has no problem whatsoever threatening their jobs and their savings to push a bizarre intellectual agenda. She has no idea how to handle an economic crisis like the one we are in. Her positions aren't conservative. They are not traditionally conservative, which we could debate. I would be willing to vote for conservatives, as I have before, if I thought they were qualified and their thinking was not so far, far right out of the mainstream. But her positions aren't conservative; they are disqualifying. For three decades, she has advocated returning to the gold standard. No serious person--progressive, moderate, conservative--no serious person, left or right, still believes in the gold standard. She opposes FDIC, Federal deposit insurance--the insurance that protects your money when you put it in the bank. She has flip-flopped on these issues several times during her nomination. The only thing consistent she stands for is that she--no surprise--wants to do what Trump wants to do. But Americans have moved on from Donald Trump, 80 million strong. It is time for the Senate to move on from this failed nomination and this failed Presidency. This nomination was a waste of time. Look what we should have been doing instead. You all know that. Every moment we spend on unnecessary, unqualified nominees like this is time the Senate isn't spending saving lives. It is time to get to work delivering results for the people whom we serve. We are watching hospitals fill up again from Oklahoma to Ohio. Our healthcare system is getting overwhelmed. Gig workers and self-employed workers will lose their unemployment insurance at the end of the year. Small businesses and local governments are running out of money. It doesn't have to be this bad. I have had enough and I think my colleagues in both parties have had enough of this false choice between saving the economy and combating the virus. We have to do both, and we can do both. It is not an unsolvable problem. We need the resources, and we have the resources. We are the greatest, wealthiest country on Earth. We have some of the hardest workers, the best scientists, and the smartest doctors. We have manufacturing expertise. We have natural resources. We have the world's reserve currency. We have all those things. But President Trump and Senator McConnell want you to believe we can't solve big problems; we can't use our resources to help ordinary families; we can't use our talents to produce tests and PPE; we can't use our ingenuity to figure out how to open businesses and schools safely. They have essentially thrown up their hands and said: Sorry, America, you are on your own. They want you to believe this is the best America can do. In this election, Americans made it clear they don't buy that. They have had enough of aiming low and being told: We can't do that. We can't solve this problem; it is too big. We can't govern. We can't afford it. We can do big things. We did big things in World War II. We did big things combating communism. We did big things combating the Great Depression. We can do big things, and we can solve the problems for the people we serve. We did it this past spring. When we passed the CARES Act unanimously, one study said that 12 million people were kept out of poverty because of the $600 unemployment insurance, because of the help to small businesses, because we helped local governments, and because we helped people stay in their homes. There were 12 million people kept out of poverty. And the individual checks that were sent out, essentially, that expired in July and August. Since then, we have seen literally thousands of Americans a week falling into poverty. We kept millions of Americans from falling into poverty. We can do it again. We can keep Americans from losing their homes. We put in place an eviction moratorium. We gave people stimulus checks. We helped support the small businesses. Why are we not doing that again? Why does Senator McConnell not want to do that again? We can rise to meet this moment. We can restore people's faith in their government. We can't allow President Trump--with his out-the-door appointees of people out of the mainstream--we can't allow him to sabotage this economy and sabotage this government from within, creating chaos wherever he can, after voters decisively, decisively, decisively rejected him with an electoral college landslide and rejected him by more than 5 million votes. The voters have sent a clear message to all of us to get to work. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I start by asking the Presiding Officer to wear a mask as he speaks and the people are below him. I can't tell you what to do.

Mr. BROWN. I know you don't need my instruction. There clearly isn't much interest in this body in public health. We have a President who hasn't shown up at the Coronavirus Task Force in months. We have a majority leader who calls us back here to vote on an unqualified nominee and, at the same time, to vote for judge after judge, exposing all the people who can't say anything. I understand. There are people in front of the Presiding Officer and we expose all the staff here and the majority leader doesn't seem to care. The American people sent a clear message in this election. They voted for stability. They rejected an administration that has failed them in the middle of a public health crisis and economic crisis. People want a government that works for them and is on their side. My colleagues in both parties know this. I know some of you feel like you have to humor the outgoing President, continue to make excuses for him, continue to run from the media when they might ask a question about your opinion on the President. But you know that Joe Biden won, and you won. Most of you won your elections--including the Presiding Officer--fair and square on the same ballot. You don't have to play along with the tweets and the chaos. He threatened the Republican Governor of Ohio today, for instance, because the Governor of Ohio--I think he said the term ``President- Elect Biden,'' and that offended the President. You don't have to play along with the tweets and the chaos and the crazy anymore. We need to move on. We need to actually deliver for the people who voted for us and put their faith in us. The last thing we should be doing is granting Trump one last wish--one more opportunity to salt the earth on his way out. The Federal Reserve is supposed to be a steady, guiding hand, making sure our economy actually delivers for the people who make it work. They are supposed to worry about the big picture of the economy so hard-working families don't have to. But Judy Shelton--most of my colleagues know this. I have talked to many of them. She believes the opposite. That is why Trump wants one last pick for the Federal Reserve, and Senator McConnell and all the spineless people in this body continue to give him that last wish. Eighty million Americans voted for stability. Shelton promises more Trump chaos. I know we have disagreements. We have progressive economic ideas and conservative economic ideas. I am fine with disagreements. That is what government is about. That is what self-government is about. Judy Shelton isn't a conservative. She is way, way off the ideological spectrum. For three decades and more than 50 publications, Shelton has advocated returning to the gold standard. Let's be clear what that means. It would mean abandoning some of the most important tools we have to make people's lives better. We can't sabotage our economic recovery before it even happens by putting people in charge who would drive us backward. You all know that. I know you all know that, but you have to do President Trump's bidding one last time. If we had followed Shelton's advice earlier, we might still be in the great recession. In multiple writings, she said she opposes FDIC deposit insurance--the insurance that protects your money and mine when we put it in the bank. In other words, she thinks that if a bank fails--and we all remember from 2008, at the end of the Bush years, banks do, indeed, fail, one after another after another. If a bank fails, then she thinks all the families whose savings and paychecks are stored in the bank should just lose their money. Passing Federal deposit insurance was one of FDR's first acts during the Great Depression for a reason. It guaranteed that your money was safe in the bank as a bedrock of our modern economy. It is not some intellectual exercise; it is real. I dare anyone to explain to working families in Georgia or Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania or Colorado or any community that saw banks close their doors in the great recession that, as Judy Shelton wrote, that the FDIC insurance is ``a hugely distorting factor,'' whatever that means. Don't take my word for it. People on both sides of the aisle agree that she has no business making huge decisions that affect what kinds of jobs people can get and the interest rates on their mortgages and the power they have to negotiate for higher pay. The New York Times, seen by many as pretty progressive, and National Review, seen by an equal number as pretty conservative, both oppose her, so do conservative thinkers at the American Enterprise Institute. They use words like ``dangerous'' and a ``gamble.'' Over 100 experts--many of whom don't see the economy the way I do, who are much more conservative than I--warned against putting her on the Fed. Their basic concern is she won't do what is good for workers or what is good for the economy. She is a political hack. She is the outgoing President's political hack. That is why Senator McConnell marches down the aisle, stands at his desk, and pushes Judy Shelton--why? Not because his Members want it; they don't. Most don't have the guts to stand up to Leader McConnell or especially to the President. He is pushing it because President Trump has one last request to put his hack on the Federal Reserve. The American people had enough of gambling. They made that very clear. Now is not the time, in this terrible economy, for fringe theories. We are in a public health crisis. We are in an economic crisis. During her nomination hearing, one of my Republican colleagues asked her this question--how she would we get us out of a situation. This is last year, keep in mind. How would she get us out of a situation where consumer confidence and spending dropped, unemployment jumped from 3.5 percent to 6.5 percent in a short period of time, and we are in a recession--how would she we get out of that? Her response was: ``It is hard to imagine that situation.'' Think about that: ``It is hard to imagine that situation.'' Really? That is supposed to be the job of the Federal Reserve. Every worker in America imagines it right now. They live through it. Things are much worse than that question--3.5 percent to 6.5 percent in a short period of time. When the pandemic set in, consumer spending plummeted, and the unemployment rate shot up from 3.5 percent to 15 percent in April. Right now, 11 million people are out of work. Coronavirus cases are skyrocketing all over the country. The outgoing President has abandoned his job except, of course, pushing for a hack at the Federal Reserve. He is not going to coronavirus meetings. Senator McConnell doesn't seem to care. The Republican majority doesn't seem to care that he is not going to those meetings. Instead, we are meeting this week to confirm young, far-right judges and a hack on the Federal Reserve who a whole lot of former Fed Chairs of both parties, that all kinds of Bush economists and economists working in Democratic administrations--both sides are saying she is a hack. They are saying she shouldn't be on the Federal Reserve. Yet 1, 2, 3, 4--count them, 49, 50--I don't know how many Republican Senators are in line because Trump said to get in line and vote for Judy Shelton. People have enough to worry about: the health of their loved ones, their jobs, their rent, their utility bills. But Shelton is so out of touch, she can't imagine so many families live that reality every day. Americans shouldn't also have to worry that fringe academics are running experiments with our national economy. People want peace of mind. They want stability. They want to have confidence that the people in charge can handle this crisis so they can get back to their lives. You can't say you support working people and want to get back to work and get back to their paychecks, while at the same time putting someone in a position of authority who has no problem threatening their jobs and their savings to push her bizarre, intellectual, academic agenda. In fact, at a time when unemployed Americans would love to be able to safely go to any job, Judy Shelton didn't even show up for her last job. That is not someone who has empathy. My colleagues knows she has no business on our central bank, just like you know Trump lost the election. I know you can't really say that. You can't say Trump lost the election. You can't say President- Elect Joe Biden because if you do, as the Governor of Ohio did, President Trump will threaten you as he did this morning. I know most of you don't even think you can vote against a hack that you didn't want to support before the election now that the election is over. Most of you said you are going to vote for her. I don't understand that. Americans have had enough of people who treat governing like a game. We need to rise to meet this moment. We need to restore people's faith in their government. Judy Shelton will make that harder. We can't allow Trump to keep sabotaging our government and our economy by creating chaos wherever he can, especially after voters decisively rejected him by more than 5 million votes--an electoral college landslide and 5 million more votes to President-Elect Biden than President Trump. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing Judy Shelton's nomination. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, that sounded really good. Senator Grassley knows, of course, she was a good witness. Of course, she didn't take positions. Of course, she said she made no promises. Of course, Judge Barrett said she was openminded. Cut through it all. I am not a lawyer, and I don't serve on the Judiciary Committee. I don't think Senator Grassley is a lawyer, but I am not really sure. Maybe he is. I might be mistaken, and I apologize if he is. Yet we all know why she was nominated. President Trump said why she was nominated. President Trump has been very explicit in saying that he wants a judge who will overturn the Affordable Care Act and that he wants her there quickly because the Affordable Care Act hearings begin soon after the election. He wants a judge who will undermine women's rights to make their own decisions about their own healthcare. He is putting her on because he knows she will oppose workers' rights. He is putting her on because he knows she will oppose marriage equality. He also wants her on quickly because he said: I want her there when the election is contested after the election. So, of course, Senator McConnell always does the bidding. Senator McConnell comes out of his office. I assume he gets many of his marching orders from the President of the United States. He comes down here, and 51 spineless Senators--and then there is the Senator sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair, and I appreciate his courage--do whatever the President tells McConnell to tell them on issue after issue after issue. I mean, that is the way this place works. That is the corruption of this place. The President of the United States has said: I want her confirmed now because I want her there to decide the election that I am going to be involved in, and I want her there now so she can overturn the Affordable Care Act. Of course, Judge Barrett said to the committee: Well, I have made no promises. I have made no commitments. I have not cut deals with anybody. Of course, she says that, but the fact is that this is why the President nominated her. We know that. As a result, in my State, I know what the Affordable Care Act has done for the last decade. There are 900,000 people who have insurance who didn't have insurance before the Affordable Care Act. More than 100,000 people under the age of 26 have been able to get health insurance because they have been able to stay on their parents' healthcare plans. There are a million seniors in Ohio who have gotten free preventive care--screenings for osteoporosis, physicals. More than 100,000 Ohio seniors have saved an average of $1,100 on their prescription drugs because of the Affordable Care Act. Maybe, most importantly, 5 million Ohioans have preexisting conditions. This was before the coronavirus. Now that number is higher. There are 5 million Ohioans who have had their preexisting conditions covered over the last decade. Why? Because of the Affordable Care Act, those people with preexisting conditions have been protected. Insurance companies can't raise their rates because of preexisting conditions, and they can't cancel their insurance because of their preexisting conditions. Those will be gone. The protections for preexisting conditions will be gone if the Affordable Care Act is gone. Protections for people under 26-- their staying on their parents' plans--will be gone if the Affordable Care Act is overturned by the Supreme Court. Now, they couldn't do it democratically. They couldn't do it because the citizens of this country didn't want it repealed. So President Trump has gone to the courts to legislate so they can overturn it. We know all of that. That is why the comments of my friend from Iowa are just disingenuous. He knows that. Of course, she didn't sit in front of the committee and say: Yes, I made a deal. Of course, she didn't sit in front of those on the committee and say: I have strong feelings about the Affordable Care Act and gay rights and women's health. She is not going to say that. I am not a lawyer, but I know enough to know that she is not going to go to the committee and say that. We know what it is about. It is about repealing the Affordable Care Act. It is about taking rights away from LGBTQ citizens in this country. It is about taking rights away from women. Maybe it is also about fixing the election. Deep down, the President and Senator McConnell know they are not going to win the election this year, so they want that ninth vote in the Court just in case the President brings a lawsuit. If it ends up in the Supreme Court, he and the Republicans will have appointed six of the nine Justices. That is the game in town. That is what we know is rigged. So many millions of Americans are frustrated and angry with the way the President has failed the country during this pandemic. We know we have 4 percent of the world's population but that 22 percent of the deaths in the world are of Americans. It is not because we don't have good doctors in Utah or in Wisconsin or in Ohio; it is because of terrible Presidential leadership. President Trump and Senator McConnell have essentially left the country to fend for itself during this pandemic. The stock market is up, so Trump and McConnell seem to think everything is fine. The stock market is up. What the heck? They are oblivious to the families staring at stacks of bills. They are oblivious to the small businesses that are watching years and, in some cases, often decades of hard work and investment--or they are family businesses going back many, many decades--evaporate in a few short minutes, but the stock market is up, so Trump and McConnell seem to think everything is fine. It is the same story over and over again. Corporate lobbyists, their allies in Washington do whatever it takes to make sure Wall Street recovers, and then they say: Oh, no, we really can't afford to help anyone else. I hear from small, family-owned businesses all the time, how they are struggling. They are under incredible stress. They are worried about whether they can make rent or make payroll. They have waited on the phone for hours and couldn't get answers about loans. These folks aren't lounging in a C-suite corner office. They don't have high-priced lawyers and accountants who can do all the paperwork. They don't have the lobbyists who line up outside Mitch McConnell's office helping them. They are fighting for their dreams. We know why they are struggling. We know why some of them still can't open their doors 7 months--7 months--into this crisis because the President and this Senate have so botched this crisis. Again, 4 percent of the world's population, 22 percent of the world's deaths, and the President said: I take no responsibility. The President said: Not my fault. The President said: I get a 10 out of 10 for how I have managed this. President Trump has no plan, never has, to control the virus. He has not even tried. Imagine if President Trump, back in March, instead of lying to the American people--he knew how serious it was. He told his Wall Street friends, and he told that reporter from the Post. I can't remember his name. He told them it was serious, but he didn't tell the American people. He lied to us. Imagine, instead, if the President had worn a mask and stood up and treated us like adults and said to the American public: You know, this is really serious. This could turn from an epidemic into a pandemic. We have to fight back. I am wearing a mask. I ask every American to wear a mask, just like we ask people to wear seat belts and stop at stop signs. I want every American to wear a mask. I want people to socially distance so we can get this--but he didn't do any of that. Of course he didn't do any of that. And he also came up with no national testing, contact tracing strategy. He didn't invoke the Defense Production Act so that we could make cotton swabs and gloves and masks and gowns and all the things we needed to do to stay safe. He had none of that. He has no guidance on how businesses are supposed to protect their customers, no investment of our vast resources to help them do it. And we see the results. We saw them in April and May, in June and July, in August, in September, and now October. In fact, in my State, as in many States, there are more coronavirus diagnoses every day-- almost every day--than there were a month ago, 2 months ago, 6 months ago. Local restaurants are closed for good. The big chains may recover. Communities that already didn't get a lot of investment--Brown and Black neighborhoods, rural communities, places you can't see from Trump Tower--those places are seeing their homegrown businesses shut their doors and lay off workers. Black-owned businesses have closed at twice the rate of White-owned businesses. We know Latino- and Asian-owned businesses are getting disproportionately hurt. Our office hears from so many of these Ohio businesses. We have done a series of virtual roundtables with Ohio restaurants. One Ohioan in Zanesville talked about taking over the family business his dad first started 67 years ago. Business is down significantly. He tries to pay his employees a living wage and give them time off for vacations and family needs. He is a really good employer. He is afraid of letting his employees down. Another, a bar owner in Bellefontaine, told us his sales are down and he is worried about his own businesses. When he wrote to me, he didn't just talk about himself. He said that he is worried about the ripple effects on the farmers and suppliers, the truckdrivers, and so many others. Now he is dreading the winter, when he won't even be able to use the patio. He wonders what he is going to do, what the suppliers are going to do. And it is not just restaurants. The media reported on a newsstand in downtown Cleveland, owned by Mr. Patel, an Indian immigrant who came to Ohio and has lived the American Dream. He built a better life, started his own business, was employing other Clevelanders. Now the office building is empty. The food court is closed. His sales have dropped from $700 a day to just $200 a day. He is looking at impossible choices unless the government helps. We know we can. We did it in the spring when we passed payroll protection. There were all kinds of implementation problems. The Secretary of the Treasury and the President seemed more interested in the big guys than the little guys. Too many businesses went to the front of the line, but despite all that, we hear from businesses that are open today only because of PPP. I heard from Spangler Candy in Bryan, OH, a family-owned union company. I have toured their plant and seen the great work this, I believe, fourth generation management team has done. They have seen business drop 70 percent. They had to take their first Federal support in their 114-year history, using PPP to prevent layoffs. They kept their doors open, and they provided pandemic premium pay for their Teamster employees. A music and arts venue in Youngstown, the Westside Bowl, talked at one roundtable about how they how had zero dollars in revenue in the past 6 months. PPP kept their office staff and stagehands on payroll, but as it runs out, so will their ability to pay employees. Ohio Star Forge, a parts manufacturer in Warren, just north of Youngstown, represented by the Steelworkers, lost 90 percent of their business when auto plants shut down. PPP made a difference. They are now back to about 70 percent of their capacity. Polter's Berry Farm is a family farm in Fremont. One of their crops is pumpkins. The major pumpkin buyers are amusement parks and fall festivals. Pumpkin sales were down. PPP was helpful, but now they are worried about whether they can repay it. A+ Cleaners in Dayton has seen demand plummet. People don't need much dry cleaning when they are working from home. They were able to stay open with an EIDL loan and a CARES Act grant from the county. They are terrified of what happens when the money runs out. We have a bill to get more help to these businesses--the Small Business Lifeline Act. It would extend PPP through at least next spring. It would get more funding to the program so they can get more money out the door to these businesses. It would specifically target help to the truly small businesses that need it the most, including minority-owned businesses. It would extend the debt relief program. It would get help to nonprofits that we know are hurting just like businesses are. As important as these steps are, we can't just give businesses loans and think that will take care of it when the virus is still raging and the customers don't have jobs. That is why we need a comprehensive bill that actually meets the magnitude of this crisis. This visceral, decades-long opposition from my colleagues to unemployment insurance--I don't know how they don't realize that when 600,000 Ohioans are getting $600 a week, they are spending that money at local businesses. They are keeping the economy going from just a total crevasse. They are helping the economy. They are helping local businesses. They are giving those businesses revenue, but when the $600 just stops, not only are those 600,000 Ohioans' lives just so, so difficult, but it makes the businesses of which they are patrons, the businesses that they patronize--it obviously hurts them at their bottom line. I think the stories from these businesses really get to the fundamental question of what sort of country we want to live in. When we invest in small business, we invest in people and communities, not stock buybacks, not executive bonuses. I know that Senator McConnell and his colleagues here always are looking out for the stock market, always are looking out for Wall Street, always want to hear about stock buybacks and executive bonuses. I know that is their thing. But during a pandemic, I wish it were less their thing. The stakeholders in these businesses are not nameless, faceless shareholders. They are the owners' neighbors. They are family members. They are the people we see or used to see at our kids' schools, in the grocery store, and at church. A year from now, do we want to be left with only the biggest companies that follow the Wall Street business model that treats workers as expendable? Ohioans know all too well what happens when you let Wall Street run things and you ignore Main Street. Our communities have watched for decades as factories closed and investment dried up and storefronts were boarded over in towns and cities that once were thriving. When people in those towns wake up, they realize the only jobs you can get are at a big-box chain for rock-bottom wages with no healthcare, no paid sick leave, no power over your schedule. Is that what we want for our future? We have the resources to fix this. We are the greatest, richest country in the world. Let's rise to meet the moment. Let's pass a comprehensive bill that gets help to our businesses, our workers, and their customers. And let's get the communities the support they need. Mr. President, in order to proceed to the consideration of H.R. 986, the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act, which the House passed with bipartisan support, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative business.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, before offering another unanimous consent, I just point out there were 10 years of protections for people with preexisting conditions under ObamaCare and 10 years of speeches from Republicans about repeal and replace, with no real proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act. The President has promised it about every couple of weeks through 4 years, and he still hasn't put a real bill forward.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, in order to proceed to consideration of H.R. 1759, BRIDGE for Workers Act, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I guess I am not surprised about that, considering I hear my colleagues talk about how outrageous it is that we were spending $600 a week to help unemployed workers, and this bipartisan bill that passed the House would help workers to get retrained and get jobs, and they are not willing to do that either, but we also know that this is a bill that--we have seen this act before.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, in order to proceed to the consideration of H.R. 4029, Tribal Access to Homeless Assistance Act, I ask that the Senate proceed to legislative session.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, in order to proceed to the consideration of H.R. 5084, Improving Corporate Governance Through Diversity Act, legislation to require corporations to disclose--just disclose the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of their boards, which again passed the House with bipartisan support, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I will hold the floor for just another few moments. I have watched Senator McConnell--and I am sorry to call some of my colleagues spineless, Senator Johnson, but, you know, when the President made comments about our soldiers who had died in battle, I didn't hear hardly any Republicans speak up. I admire the courage of the Presiding Officer. I admire Senator Murkowski and her courage over a number of things. But I see my colleagues--I hear what you all think. I know what Senator Sasse said during that townhall. I know many of you, if not most of you, maybe all of you--probably not--think that about the President's lack of integrity and lack of character and dishonesty and the lies he tells. And I know, I have watched, and I sat right here and I looked across the aisle during impeachment and I saw the look of fear in my colleagues' eyes because they didn't want to cross the President; they didn't want to get the President to tweet about them or even get a primary opponent to them. That is why I use that term, but more importantly to the citizens of this country, we spent most of the last month after month after month after month, confirming very conservative, very young judges. I understand why you want to do that, but we are not doing anything for the public. We had a high moment in March when Senator Johnson said we unanimously approved the CARES Act. A study shows the CARES Act kept 12 million Americans out of poverty. But then we ask to continue the CARES Act and do something similar like the Heroes Act, and instead Senator McConnell--and I know the lobbyists that line up in front of his door, I know they have a lot of influence on him, but we saw Senator McConnell say: no urgency, no urgency. My favorite Abraham Lincoln quote is Lincoln wanted to--his staff wanted him to stay in the White House and win the war and abolish slavery and protect the Union, and they wanted him to stay in the White House. And he said: No, I have to go out and get my public opinion baths. Are none of my colleagues hearing the pain of laid-off workers who have lost their unemployment? Haven't they seen schoolchildren--their parents saying: ``I want to send my kids back to school, but they are not safe'' because we aren't voting dollars to help? I talked to my daughter last night. Just a few days ago, they announced that instead of school opening in person in Columbus next week, it is going to open in January, if even then, because we are not helping schools open. We are not helping people avoid eviction. We are not helping local governments keep police and firemen on the streets and people who work in the parks and people who provide help for abused children and all the things that local governments do--we are doing none of that, but we have plenty of time to do judges. That is the frustration and why I made the comments I made It just breaks my heart that we all sit here. This is a group of pretty affluent and pretty privileged people. Yet we can't look out for people who are hurting like this country hasn't hurt for decades. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN. One last comment.

Mr. BROWN. I just don't really understand what I just heard, when the President went straight to the American people and told them it was going to disappear. He said it was a Democratic, liberal hoax to bring down his campaign. But look at a little history. I wear on my lapel a picture of a canary in a birdcage. It was given to me at a workers' Memorial Day rally, a rally to honor workers who had been injured or killed on the job. This canary in the birdcage--you know, the mine workers used to take it down in the mines 120 years ago. If the canary died, the mine worker got out of the mine. He knew that he didn't have a union that was very strong or a government that cared very much. He was on his own. So I always cared a lot about public health. That is really the best prevention for the canary in the mine. I wrote a letter to President Trump in 2018, after he had closed the Office of Global Health Security in the White House and essentially fired or transferred Dr. Ziemer, a Bush appointee who was one of the world's great malaria doctors. His job--he had 40 people on his staff. His job was to surveil the world and look at potential disease outbreaks that might turn into an epidemic which then might evolve into a pandemic. That was his job. The President eliminated the office. And I wrote a letter to the President asking him to reinstate it, and he didn't even answer the letter. Then, the following year, 2019, he brought Dr. Linda Quick home from China. And her job was to make sure, if anything was happening in China, that we would know about it and could help them prevent the disease. Our CDC--our Centers for Disease Control, we are the best in the world. It was the United States of America leading the charge to eliminate smallpox. It was the United States of America that led the job to all but eliminate polio in this country. Some of us here are old enough--the Presiding Officer, anyway, will remember knowing people who had minor cases growing up in our schools. So we know what that meant. It was the President of the United States who pulled CDC employees out of China because of a trade or some--depending on when the President loved Xi or disliked Xi--I mean, it was back and forth with the Chinese leader, and we just unilaterally disarmed. Then the President denied that the virus meant anything. I know he took care of ventilators, but other kinds of protective equipment, just talk to nurses and doctors and healthcare workers in our States--in Madison, in Cleveland, in Columbus, in Milwaukee, in Kenosha and Fairbanks and Salt Lake City. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I hear Senator Johnson talk about employers can't find workers. There are 600,000 in my State who lost their unemployment insurance just like that at the end of July. Six hundred thousand people lost $600 a week. I go back to March, when we passed this bill that was so important it passed unanimously. There was one amendment Republicans wanted for this $2.5 trillion bill. It was to strip out unemployment insurance so that those workers didn't get the $600 a week. What are they to live on? Six hundred thousand people in my State can't find work, 100,000 in Wisconsin, even more in New York, tens of thousands in Iowa and Utah. What are they to do? We know there is going to be a wave of evictions and foreclosures as people are thrown out of their apartments and their homes. This Congress continues to--the Senate just won't do its job. Do your job. If Senator McConnell would do his job, we could do our job and get this economy back on track. Thank you.

Mr. BROWN. Will the Democratic leader yield?

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I notice of the Presiding Officer and the junior Senator from Arkansas, who was the Presiding Officer right before, and far too often of the Presiding Officers that they are taking their masks off when they preside. I notice that right below the Presiding Officer are always three or four staff people who are fully masked. I also know that a number of our colleagues have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. I would hope that the Presiding Officers, starting today, would wear masks when they preside. As they speak and project, it puts people at risk who sit right below the Presiding Officer. I know it might offend the President of the United States that the Presiding Officer wears a mask when presiding because I know the President doesn't believe in it, but public health officials in Tennessee and Arkansas and Ohio and Oregon and Hawaii do. So I ask this of the Presiding Officer and would hope the Presiding Officer and others will consider public health when they preside over this body. Before I address my issue--and I will note when Senator Crapo has shown up on the floor to address--I want to point out a couple of things that I just heard from Senator Thune and Senator Wyden. Senator Wyden is exactly right. The only amendment to the $2.5 trillion package that the Republicans offered was to strip away the $600. I have always been puzzled by how much the Republicans as a party-- almost since Roosevelt--have hated unemployment insurance. I know you don't like social insurance. You don't like Medicare, but you pay into Medicare, and then you get a benefit when you need it. You pay into Social Security and get a benefit when you need it. You pay into unemployment insurance and get a benefit when you need it. I know the Republicans say they don't like Medicare, but every time they have a chance, they try to privatize Medicare. Right, Senator Wyden? Then they try to privatize Social Security, right? I can't believe the number of Republicans I have heard, when they have come to the floor, either publicly say or privately grumble to themselves or each other: I can't believe this $600 a week for these people. We shouldn't be giving that much money to these people. I mean, that was the tone of voice. There was, perhaps, derision in their voices. I was talking to an unemployed worker today who has lost her job, and she is hurting. I mean, fortunately she has a spouse, and her spouse has insurance, but she was talking about the $600 she got. It has also helped local businesses. A whole bunch of people in my communities are getting the $600 a week, and it keeps these businesses going too. I guess I don't understand the Republican hatred of unemployment insurance. I would think it would be trumped--pardon my verb--by how much it helps small businesses, but I guess it is not. So that debate, I guess, is over. I will also note that, when we were giving the $600 a week, one study showed it kept 12 million people out of poverty. But I guess everything is OK. The stock market is back up, so Trump and McConnell seem to think everything is fine Unanimous Consent Request Madam President, I thank my colleagues for joining me on the floor today to be voices for the millions of people who are frustrated and angry because President Trump and Senator McConnell continue to fail to get this pandemic under control. The stock market is back up, so Trump and McConnell seem to think everything is fine. They are oblivious to the families who are staring at stacks of bills, who can't pay their rent, who have to run up credit cards, who go to payday lenders--who don't know what to do. There are 600,000 people in my State who lost their unemployment insurance in August. What are they supposed to do? Senator McConnell and President Trump are oblivious to the parents who are under an overwhelming amount of stress. They try to do their jobs, juggle remote learning, and worry about whether their schools are safe. They are oblivious to the layoffs that keep coming, especially in local governments and school systems. It just didn't have to be this bad. We are the greatest, wealthiest country on Earth. What good is it if we can't rise to meet a moment like this? Trump and McConnell want you to believe that we can't solve big problems, that we can't use our resources to help ordinary families, that we can't use our talent to produce tests and PPE, and that we can't use our ingenuity to figure out how to open businesses and schools safely. A half a million Ohioans are out of work, and 220,000 Americans are dead. Yet McConnell and Trump have simply said: Not our problem. You are on your own. I mean, that is the story of this Senate unless you have a family member who is going to be confirmed as a Federal judge. Other than that, you are on your own. They want you to believe it is the best America can do. I think we can do big things. I think we can actually solve problems for the people we serve. We did it in the spring when we put $600 a week in the pockets of people who lost their jobs and kept millions out of poverty. We put in place an eviction moratorium, and we gave people stimulus checks to spend in this economy, but then McConnell and Trump let it all expire. Families are now forced to choose between rent and utility bills and between food and prescriptions. Yet nobody around here does. I understand that. Nobody here has to choose between food and prescriptions or between rent and utility bills. Nobody here does, but a whole lot of people in our States do. So they are turning to payday lenders and getting trapped in cycles of debt. They are going to lose their homes. One-sixth of renters are behind on rent right now. That is 11 million people. Most of them are behind on rent because they have lost their unemployment checks and don't have any place to turn. Even with that, extending UI would not be enough. It doesn't help you if you still have a job but have had your hours cut back. It doesn't help recent college grads or recent high school grads. It doesn't help if you are self-employed or are working odd jobs. As Senator Wyden said, we simply haven't modernized our unemployment system well enough. The CDC's eviction moratorium is also not enough. Without the dollars to back it up, it is only going to lead to a wave of evictions come the new year. We need to get money directly to the people so they may pay these bills or there will be a wave of evictions in the middle of a pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people a week are dropping into poverty, and we know that the $600 kept a lot of people out. Now people are dropping into poverty, so there is going to be a wave of evictions, and that wave of evictions is going to come. No. 1, it is terrible to be evicted anyway. No. 2, it is more terrible to be evicted in the middle of the winter. No. 3, it is even more terrible to be evicted in the middle of the winter in the middle of a pandemic. How can we sit here and allow that to happen? Even now, with the Trump administration's flawed eviction moratorium, evictions are happening. We see stories every day across the country, and more evictions are coming in January. The work we do in this body to get help to people can't make up for the lack of leadership from the White House, but we could mitigate some of the damage. The House did its job and passed the Heroes Act a few months ago. Over and over, I don't see a sense of urgency in McConnell and Trump. They have ignored the families. They have told the families: You are on your own. This month, the House again passed a bill to help families make ends meet. It provides the help for renters that I come to the floor to offer today. The bill contains $50 billion in emergency rental assistance. It extends the CARES Act and the eviction moratorium to virtually all renters through March. It will protect families, and it will protect public health so that it will not just be those families who are protected from eviction; it will be all of us around those families who could suffer from a compromise in public health. It will also give renters and property owners the help they need to pay their bills. Senate Republicans have refused to consider it and the bill that I offer here today. The multimillionaire majority leader and his caucus have the audacity to tell people who have lost their jobs and the audacity to tell essential workers making $10 or $12 an hour that it is too expensive to give them help to pay their bills in the middle of a national crisis. It is never too expensive to help Wall Street. It is never too expensive for a corporate tax cut. It is never too expensive to help the people who are in charge, but it is too expensive to help the people who are making $10 or $12 an hour. People are exhausted. They are tired of feeling like no one is on their side. The American people shouldn't have to fend for themselves in the middle of a once-in-a-generation crisis. That is essentially what the President and the majority leader are telling people: You are on your own. You are on your own. You are on your own It means we should be helping families pay the bills and stay in their homes. It means bringing back the $600 UI. It means getting support to our schools and communities so they can open. It means helping small businesses. It means putting money in people's pockets. Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill to provide emergency rental assistance and rental market stabilization and to provide a temporary moratorium on eviction filings, which is at the desk. I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Idaho, and I regret that he will not be my committee partner next year because he is moving on to--I guess he considers it a better committee. I don't know for sure. But anyway, the Senator from Idaho is right. We passed it unanimously back in March, and it worked. The $600 and the help for hospitals and schools and governments, local and State governments, actually kept--1 study said 12 million; say it is half of that--5, 6 million people out of poverty. It worked. So we said to Senator McConnell in about May or June--because these programs and dollars were running out--we see what has worked. We will jettison what doesn't work, and we will continue those programs. But then, lo and behold, Senator McConnell kept saying: No sense of urgency, no sense of urgency, no sense of urgency, and we got zero in the end, when we asked Senator McConnell in August to--don't let the $600 expire. We know more people will drop into poverty. We know more people will be evicted. We know, as Senator Jack Reed has worked on, we will see more people foreclosed on. Senator McConnell has used the crutch of half the Republicans, half my friends on this side of the aisle, don't want to vote another dollar. He said they won't vote for anything. So maybe Senator Crapo is an exception to that. But this proposal of McConnell, we know how cynical it is; we know how inadequate it is; we know how pitiful it is; and we know that Speaker Pelosi has made several offers. She started with a pretty big package that a lot of us thought was pretty close to ideal. We knew that there would be compromise. She came back with a significantly smaller package, and still they just say she rammed it through, and they rejected it. So I understand the handwriting on the wall that as long as Republicans control this body, that we won't take care of people at home, that we won't do adequate--adequate rental assistance, and we won't do adequate unemployment. We will see a cynical, inadequate sort of pitiful attempt by the majority leader to put something on the floor that really doesn't meet people's needs. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am glad to see a Member of the majority saying that Mitch McConnell ought to have us around here doing some work. I appreciate the Senator from Tennessee saying that. Senator McConnell said there was no urgency to help unemployed workers. Six hundred thousand unemployed workers in my State in August lost their $600 a week. What are they to do? Foreclosures are up. There are no dollars for public education so schools can open safely. I appreciate the Senator from Tennessee. Maybe she will talk to Senator McConnell and ask him to do his job so we can do our job. H.J. Res. 90 Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of H.J. Res. 90, the joint resolution of disapproval of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's Community Reinvestment Act rule. We know who gets hit the hardest by this pandemic and economic crisis. It is not Wall Street. It is not CEOs. It is not U.S. Senators. It is low-income workers. It is essential workers. It is workers who go to work every day and get exposed to this virus and then come home, anxious about potentially infecting their family. It is the middle class. It is communities of color. Those are the people getting hit the hardest. It is the same story we see over and over and over. Corporate lobbyists and their allies in Washington do whatever it takes--whatever it takes to make sure that Wall Street recovers, and then they say: Oh, no, we can't afford to--we can't--the budget, the deficit. We can give a tax cut to rich people, explode the deficit, but we can't do anything for regular people, for middle-class people, and for low-income people. We just can't afford to help anyone else. The stock market is back up, so Leader McConnell and President Trump seem to think that everything is just fine, thank you, in our country. Meanwhile, families don't know how to feed their children and how to make rent. They don't know about family businesses closing their doors and schools can't open for in-person learning. But, oh, yeah, the stock market is up, so Leader McConnell and President Trump seem to think everything is fine. Black-owned businesses have closed down at twice the rate--including in the State of Arkansas--closed at twice the rate of White-owned businesses during this pandemic. Black and Latino renters are more likely to be behind on their rent or mortgage. But the stock market is up, so Leader McConnell and President Trump seem to think that everything is just fine. Low-wage workers are more likely to remain out of work. There are 600,000 people in my State who can't find jobs. They have lost their unemployment insurance. But the stock market is up, so Leader McConnell and President Trump seem to think that everything is fine. Low-wage workers are more likely to remain out of work and more likely to be struggling to pay for food. We should--we should--but we are not because Leader McConnell is taking care of his contributors, he is taking care of the big-money people, and he is taking care of Wall Street. The stock market is up--I know I have said that a few times--but that is what matters to far too many people around here, and to the President of the United States, that is what matters. We should be rolling up our sleeves to invest in neighborhoods and the small businesses that sustain them. Instead, we have had another Trump appointee working to actually make it harder to invest in these communities at a time when they need support the most. For decades, redlining and government bank sanctions--you know how they started. It was the Black codes after reconstruction; then it was Jim Crow; then it was redlining; and now it is locking in discrimination by Trump nominees who have had another Trump appointee working to make it harder to invest. For decades, redlining and government- and bank-sanctioned discrimination left parts of this country--often Black and Brown communities, often rural areas in Southeast Ohio and Arkansas--with virtually no investment from banks. All kinds of people had dreams to start businesses, to build houses, to grow and support their communities, but they couldn't get the loans to do it. Even after Congress outlawed housing and lending discrimination based on race, whole communities struggled to get the loans they needed. Banks were happy to take Black and Brown and low-income people's deposits, and then they would lend their money to wealthy investors and companies outside of the community. Long after redlining and long after legal segregation officially ended, people living in largely Black and Brown neighborhoods weren't able to get mortgages to buy a home because the bank just wasn't making loans in those parts of town. Small farms and small businesses couldn't get the loans they needed to grow. That is why we passed the Community Reinvestment Act, the CRA, to make it clear that banks have a responsibility to serve all of the places where they do business, including low- and moderate-income areas. As I said, they would take the deposits and then take the money and lend it out to wealthy investors. The CRA is one of the foundational civil rights laws passed to address decades of explicit disinvestment and begin to undo the legacy of redlining. For 40 years, our government and banks alike have recognized in theory--in theory--that banking shouldn't just be about serving the people with six-figure salaries and big mortgages. It is about helping a family farm take out a loan. It is about helping a busdriver buy their first home or a brother and sister open a corner store in a neighborhood where there is nowhere to buy fresh groceries. It is about listening to what the communities need and making it happen, like helping to finance a new affordable housing development or offering small loans so that people don't have to turn to payday lenders. It is about investing in neighborhoods and borrowers who are locked out of the financial system based on who they were and where they were born. The three entities that oversee our banking system--the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC--acted together over those 40 years so that there was one CRA for all banks to follow and one set of expectations about serving customers in communities. But, in May, the Trump OCC threw out 40 years of progress--just threw it out the window. But, you know, the stock market is up, so Leader McConnell and President Trump seem to think everything is just fine. In the middle of a pandemic disproportionately--we have established, and even Senator McConnell understands, this pandemic disproportionately harms Black and Brown communities in Kentucky, Arkansas, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, and all over this country, but Trump's OCC unilaterally rewrote the CRA--unilaterally. The other Trump nominees didn't even go that far. Just 6 weeks before the rule was finalized, civil rights leaders, community development organizations, State and local officials, Senator Menendez on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Budget Committee, and I and others submitted over 7,500 comments on the OCC's and FDIC's proposed rewrite of the CRA. The vast majority of commenters opposed the agency's proposal. A coalition of civil rights leaders, the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and UnidosUS said the proposed rule invited--their words--``a return to discrimination against communities of color and low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.'' Remember how this worked. It was the Black codes; then it was Jim Crow; then it was redlining. Now it is locking in these discriminatory rules, and we said no to that. But, unfortunately, the Trump administration says yes to that. But 22 State attorneys general wrote that the proposal was ``contrary to the [Community Reinvestment Act's] purpose and text, will harm communities in the States, and should be withdrawn.'' Across my home State of Ohio, cities such as Akron, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Mansfield, Lima, and many others wrote and passed resolutions opposing this plan. Some in government--those not directly connected to the Trump administration--listened to the people we serve. The FDIC heard the feedback. FDIC saw the financial pain of the pandemic, and they declined to move forward. The Federal Reserve also said no, but the OCC plowed ahead. It ignored the thousands of civil rights groups and local nonprofits and banks, all of whom told them their plan just wouldn't work for low- and moderate-income communities. Instead, the agency said: We know best They think these Trump appointees in Washington know better than mayors and city council members and local advocates and small businesses in Ohio and around the country. The day after they announced they were ignoring the rest of the country and plowing ahead, Comptroller of the Currency Otting announced he would resign. Imagine that. First he inflicts this on us, and then he walks away, probably for a better paying job down the road. Since the rule was finalized, the Federal Reserve has set out on a path for all three regulators to work together to create a CRA rule that will increase the focus on lending and investments and services in low- and moderate-income communities and to small businesses and farms. That is what CRA is there for. That used to be bipartisan. That used to be the consensus around here. We should be investing in these communities that have been systematically excluded from sharing in our country's prosperity. That means strengthening the CRA. It means listening to communities when they tell us what they need. But the OCC's rule does the opposite. They even acknowledge there was widespread opposition to this rule, particularly from the communities the CRA was meant to serve. It should be easy for my Republican colleagues to join us in voting to revoke the OCC's rule and to stand up for the underserved in low- and moderate-income communities, rural communities, and communities of color whom CRA was meant to serve. I would just ask our Republican colleagues to join with what the FDIC wants to do--the Trump appointees there. Join with the Federal Reserve--Jay Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, Trump appointee. It is what the Senate should be doing--working to get our country through the worst crisis we have seen in our lifetime and investing in the communities getting hit the hardest. Instead, Leader McConnell is using the final days before an election to jam through another special interest judge who will carry out the corporate agenda that the voters keep rejecting. The Senate needs to get back to focusing on the people we are here to serve and to repeal the OCC's misguided rule to gut the Community Reinvestment Act. I urge my colleagues to support the resolution so that we can get back to the task of strengthening the CRA. The stock market being up-- as important as that is to Leader McConnell and President Trump in their belief that everything is fine because the stock market is up, there is way more to measure our economy than that. Support our resolution; strengthen the CRA; and help our communities across the country. Before yielding the floor, I ask unanimous consent that the letters from the National Urban League, the Center for Responsible Lending, and 45 civil rights organizations, consumer advocates, and unions in support of H.J. Res. 90 and opposing OCC's CRA rule be printed in the Record. Along with these letters that I have requested to be printed, I would also like to refer to a coalition letter supporting the resolution which can be found at: https://ncrc.org/wp-content/uploads/ dlm_uploads/2020/10/FINAL-H.J.-Res-90-SignOn-Letter.pdf

Mr. BROWN. I yield the floor.