Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, how much time remains on the Democratic side?

Mr. BROWN. We recognize that.

Mr. BROWN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BROWN. Will the chairman yield for a moment?

Mr. BROWN. OK. My one comment about CHIP, if that is OK, is that there are letters that are going to go out. I so respect what you did with Senator Kennedy. I know that your work was exemplary on it, 20 years ago, to start the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Mr. BROWN. I know. We all understand that.

Mr. BROWN. We so appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. My concern is that you know some of these families. When you write a bill like that, you meet a lot of these families who benefit--209,000 in my State alone. Some of the parents of those kids, if we don't move on CHIP in the next week or so, are going to get letters in the mail that read, ``Sorry, your child's health insurance is going to expire,'' while we are sitting here, dressed pretty well. I know you said that you grew up with the poor people, is how you said it the other night, but I worry about these families, and these are families with jobs. You know that about CHIP. These are families who make $8 and $10 and $12 an hour, who don't have insurance, and they are going to get letters, reading: Your insurance is canceled. How can we let that happen, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BROWN. Will Senator Toomey yield?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, has the Republicans' time expired?

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I am so amused at how any of my Republican colleagues can talk about this being a legitimate process and that they want Democratic support. I sat at the White House with Senator Wyden, with Senator Cornyn, with Senator Toomey, with a number of--probably 11 or 12--Republican Senators on the Finance Committee, and with 6 on the Democratic side of the Finance Committee. I went up to the President and had a copy of two bills in my hand. I brought it up to the whole group--the Patriot Corporation Act, on which I will speak in a moment. It does exactly what President Trump wants to do. It rewards corporations that pay good wages, that pay decent benefits, and that keep their production in this country. The President said that he liked it. He had had an interview with either Forbes or Fortune Magazine not too much earlier, and he had talked about it. Then I brought up to the President the Working Families Tax Relief Act, which puts money directly in the pockets of people who are making $25,000 and $50,000 and $75,000 a year. The President said that he liked that. But do you know what happened? He said it then, and he said it in a phone call that a group of us were on a little bit later. Do you know what happened? We know exactly what happened. They all went down the hall here to the majority leader's office. All of my Republican friends walked into that office, and they had their Wall Street lobbyists with them; they had their drug company lobbyists; and they had their tobacco company lobbyists. That is where they wrote the bill. There was no light of day on this. Then my colleagues on this committee told us that it was a legitimate process on the night that we had the markup in the Finance Committee. They call it legitimate, but they give us a bill with almost no warning. They try to jam it through. They change it in the middle of the night. Then we talk about it the next day. Then they change it in the middle of the night again. They add a healthcare provision about which the Congressional Budget Office said 13 million people will lose their insurance; rates will go up; premiums will go up 10 percent a year. If you are paying $500 a month today, you will pay $550 next year, and you will pay $605 the following year, and you will pay $660- something a month the following year. I mean, don't even insult us by saying that this is a legitimate process. I don't even want to talk about the process, because that really doesn't mean much to people. In this letter that my friend mentioned, the first line states: ``We write to express our interest in working with you on bipartisan tax reform.'' That is what Senator Wyden said, if you would like to look at it. I want to talk about my amendment, which is exactly what Candidate Trump campaigned on, exactly what pretty much everybody on this side of the aisle stands for, but most importantly, it is exactly what the American people have asked for. It is simple. It is called the Patriot Corporation Act. If a company does the right thing, if a company pays good wages and provides decent healthcare and retirement benefits to its employees and does its production in the United States, it will get a significant tax break based on the number of employees it hires--a significant tax break. President Trump said he liked that. He told Forbes that he wanted a bill with economic development incentives for companies. The President has said repeatedly that he wants legislation--a tax bill that supports companies that stay here and are patriotic, and he said that we should penalize companies that don't do their production in this country. This bill now--comments from my friend from Pennsylvania notwithstanding--gives a massive, permanent tax cuts to large, multinational corporations, and it gives them more incentives to move offshore. The Presiding Officer grew up in the Cleveland suburbs. A plant shuts down in Cleveland or Garfield Heights or Mansfield, where I grew up, it moves overseas, and it gets a tax break now. Don't you think we should fix that? Instead, this bill greases the wheels to send more jobs overseas. Of all the things we should fix, that is it. That is what the President wants to do, and that is what Senate Democrats want to do. Instead, Senate Republicans--again, that deal was struck back there in Senator McConnell's office--Senate Republicans are writing a bill that gives huge tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this country. The Center for Budget Priorities just yesterday came out with this, done precisely according to the numbers. In 2001 and 2003, 27 percent of the Bush tax cuts went to the top 1 percent. I thought that was too high at the time. This bill more than doubles that--61 percent of the benefits. It is not going to the middle class, and they know that when they say it over and over. In addition, it kicks 13 million people off of their insurance. We know that. Under this bill, U.S. companies would pay a rate of 20 percent on profit earned in a manufacturing plant in Akron, OH. That same plant can shut down, lay off its workers, build a new factory in Asia, and get a tax deduction for the cost of moving. Do you know what they pay? They potentially likely pay a zero-percent tax rate. So what are they going to do? Even in the Senate Finance Committee, where people are not as quick as one might think they are, 20 is a larger number than zero. Even we can figure that out. At 20 percent, what that means is that there is an even greater tax incentive to go overseas. The Presiding Officer knows Cleveland well. He knows that my wife and I live in a neighborhood in Cleveland, OH. Our neighborhood ZIP Code is 44105. There were more foreclosures in my neighborhood in the first half of 2007 than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. Why? It wasn't the Wall Street scam that caused so many foreclosures later; it was mostly because of the loss of manufacturing jobs. Do you know why that is? Partly because of trade agreements like NAFTA, other trade policies, PNTR with China, and all that. Much of it was about tax legislation giving incentives to move overseas. Why are we doing more of it? This bill rewards companies for sending jobs overseas. Our legislation, the Patriot Corporation Act, will work to keep jobs here. We know these corporate tax cuts are not going to end up in the pockets of ordinary working Americans. Senator Hatch and I had a very public discussion in the Finance Committee a couple Thursdays ago when the bill was voted out. We talked about a number of things. One of the things we talked about was this promise, this assertion, this myth that if we give a company a big tax cut, then we know what they are going to do. They are going to hand it out to their employees. They are going to give a $4,000 or $5,000 or $6,000 or $7,000 a year raise. That doesn't happen. That has never happened. When this body passed a tax holiday a decade-plus ago, the money that was brought back from overseas at a lower tax rate went to executive compensation, to stock buybacks, and to dividends--almost all of it. Workers didn't get raises and they didn't invest more in our economy. Companies are sitting on large stacks, huge caches of cash. Those companies can hire more people now. They can raise wages now. They are not doing any of that. What we ought to do, instead of shoveling more money to the top, to these large corporations that outsource jobs, we ought to cut out the middleman and put the money directly into the middle class. If my friends want to give a tax cut to the middle class, why don't we give a tax cut to the middle class? Why don't we directly put the money there? I know the President said that he is a big loser on this bill personally, that it will cost him zillions of dollars--whatever he said. We know that is not even close to true. But if we really care about the middle class, I say to my colleagues, let's give a tax break to the middle class. Think about it. They are not even hiding what they are doing. These cuts go to corporate stockholders. They don't go to raise wages; they go to executive compensation. They don't go to create jobs; they go to stock buybacks. They don't go to middle-class Ohioans, Oregonians, Texans, Pennsylvanians, or Alaskans. We know what will happen. Do you know what will happen? As Senator Rubio said, after we pass this bill and the President signs it into law, the budget deficit will explode again. Do you know what will happen? Senator Wyden knows. This will come back, and you guys will say: You know, we have this budget deficit, and we are going to have to raise the Social Security retirement age. Do you know what that means to a barber in Garfield Heights? Do you know what that means to a construction worker in Warren, OH? Do you know what that means to somebody who is working in manufacturing in Mansfield, OH? They can't work until they are 70. We can all work until we are 70, if our constituents allow us, because we have these jobs. Well, a lot of our constituents can't. And if that is the scenario--and it is almost inevitable--if we pass this bill, if we do this bill, if we pass this bill of big tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this country, we will drive a hole in the budget deficit, and then we will come back and make the middle class and working families pay to fill that hole. That is irresponsible. That is morally reprehensible. I yield.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I call up my motion that is at the desk.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Oregon, and I appreciate the time in this as we wind down this debate. The answer is yes. We have a tax system right now in place. I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle disingenuously say: Well, as for the Democrats, because they don't like our tax plan, that means they are for the tax system the way it is. Of course, we don't like the tax system the way it is, and we particularly don't like it in States like mine and, I would say, especially in places like Eastern Oregon, where companies shut down production in Lima, OH, or Springfield, OR, and move to Wuhan or Beijing and get a tax break for doing it. We want to close that loophole, but you know what, this bill explodes that loophole. It explodes it, because, as I said a few minutes ago, if a plant shuts down in Barberton or it shuts down in Xenia or it shuts down in Zanesville, the company, under this bill, would pay a rate of 20 percent on profits. If it shuts down and moves to Asia, it can build a new factory and get a tax deduction for the cost of moving, still, and pay a U.S. tax rate of zero. So why wouldn't they move?

Mr. BROWN. Briefly, very briefly.

Mr. BROWN. I take back my time.

Mr. BROWN. Sure.

Mr. BROWN. OK, I will yield for a question, if it is a question.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I reclaim my time.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I reclaim my time. Of course, I don't believe that is the new normal. It is the same old game they played before. If you are not for our tax plan, then you are not for tax reform. Nobody believes that. Of course, we don't think 1.5 percent is the normal. But do you know what else we know? We know that the last time, 20 years ago, when we focused on the middle class and cut taxes on the middle class during the Clinton years, the economy exploded. There were 22 million private sector jobs. But do you know what happened a dozen years ago? President Bush did two tax cuts for the wealthy, under the view that it trickles down and everybody will do better. During 8 years of President Bush, there was no net job growth. Yes, during the last few years, we have had this low level of GDP growth for a whole lot of reasons, but you don't fix it--you don't grow the economy--by giving tax cuts for the rich with the hope of it trickling down. One of the ways you fix that is to do the patriot corporation legislation. If a company does the right thing, if a company pays good wages, if a company provides decent health benefits and retirement benefits and keeps its production in the United States, that company gets a better tax rate--$1,500 for workers, the way this amendment would work. That is how you grow the economy. That is what Candidate Trump said and then President Trump said to me in a meeting with all my Finance Committee Republicans in the room--in the President's Cabinet room. Now, we know that. That just goes without saying, in spite of the myth that we continue to propagate on the floor. Before I turn it to Senator Durbin, who is one of the original authors of the patriot corporation legislation, I want to say one other thing. We have seen some pretty charts on this floor about middle-class tax cuts. Well, what we didn't hear mention was that on about the third year of this bill, the tax cuts go down and down and down and then they cross zero, and then you have tax increases. The Tax Policy Center said that, in 2019, 13 million households will have a tax increase; in 2025, 19 million households will have a tax increase; and in 2027, 87 million will have tax increases. Those aren't the Trump family that will have tax increases. Those aren't Senators' families that will have tax increases. Those are working families in Toledo, in Dayton, and working families in Omaha and in East St. Louis, IL. They are the ones who are going to get hit with these tax increases while the wealthy continue to get more tax breaks. I will yield the remainder of the Democratic time to the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin

Mr. BROWN. I appreciate the leadership of Senator Durbin on this issue. I want to ask Democratic Ranking Member Wyden a question as we wrap up. We have heard that in order to sell this scam that we see rushed through and negotiated in the majority leader's office with his Wall Street and drug company lobbyist friends, that to sell this scam for the 1 percent and their billionaire contributors, that Republicans continue to say the Democrats didn't want to participate, didn't want to do this in a bipartisan way. Senator Wyden and I were at the White House when I handed the President the Patriot Corporation Act and handed the President the Tax Relief for Working Families Act. Other Democrats were saying: Here are some ideas that can make this truly a bill aimed at the middle class, helping the middle class and expanding the economy. I keep hearing them say: We didn't want to do this. I mean, really. So I want to ask Senator Wyden--he is the senior Democrat on the Tax Committee--would you just expand on that? I mean, what really happened?

Mr. BROWN. This is a really simple debate. Then-Candidate Trump, President Trump, has said: We reward corporations that do the right thing: They pay good wages. They provide decent benefits. They keep their production in the United States. He then went on to say: Penalize companies that don't, but if they are patriotic, you give them a tax break. The Brown-Durbin amendment bill provides roughly $1,500 for every employee when companies do the right thing. Why would we not want to reward American companies that are making things in America? This suit I wear is made by union workers 10 miles from my house. Why wouldn't we want to reward companies that do that instead of reward companies that go overseas? Vote for the Brown-Durbin Patriot Corporation Act Amendment. I yield back my time.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, right now, as we all return from Thanksgiving--some of the American people did not have to work over Thanksgiving weekend, but many, many people in this country do and struggle and continue to work two jobs--and as Congress returns from Thanksgiving, the priorities of this Congress are becoming pretty darned clear to the American people. People want to know the answer to a fundamental question. In this body we all stand up for election every 6 years--in some cases, a little more often--and people fundamentally want to know which side you are on. Are you on their side? Are you on the side of Wall Street or the side of corporations that outsource jobs? So the question is this: Whose side are you on? The question is this: Are you going to stand with multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas, all to pad their own executives' fat bonus checks? Are you going to stand with banks that rip off consumers or that steal their information and get off scot-free? Maybe some of their executives give their bonuses back, but that is about the only penalty they pay. Are you going to stand with American workers who have been working too hard for too long for too little pay and who are just looking to catch a break? Are you going to stand with children whose parents work two jobs to put food on the table when, unfortunately, both jobs that they work do not pay for health insurance? These are the choices we face. Right now, the leader of the Senate--the majority leader, who works in that office down the hall, the majority leader back in that office there--negotiates with lobbyists, negotiates healthcare bills, and writes healthcare bills in the back room with drug company lobbyists and insurance lobbyists. Now he has written a tax bill in the back room. We voted on it last week in committee, but it just keeps changing. That is all done in the back room with Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, and his lobbyist friends from corporate America-- with the corporate America that ships jobs overseas, with the Wall Street banks that fleece Main Street taxpayers, and with other corporations, which are the drug companies and oil companies and the Koch brothers and all of that. These are the choices that we face. The leaders of the Senate have made it really clear whose side they are on--period. While the Senate spends its time on a bill to cut taxes for corporations that send jobs overseas--that is the bill that Senator McConnell is negotiating, is writing, is drafting with his lobbyist friends in that office down the hall--children here in America, pure and simple--there is no other way to say it--are about to be kicked off of their health insurance through the Children's Health Insurance Program. As soon as this week, families of young children are going to get letters in the mail that will bring devastating news--that their children will lose their health insurance--period. There are 209,000 of them who live in my State of Ohio--209,000 of them alone. This is what this program is. It was founded more than two decades ago. Senator Hatch--I give him credit as chairman of the Finance Committee--doesn't seem as interested, frankly, in this bill today as he was when he started, when he wrote the bill, because it has passed out of his committee, and Senator McConnell is too busy to put this bill on the floor so that we can pass it. The bill works this way: If there is a family and the parents lose their insurance, as many families do, the children still get insurance. That is why 209,000 children--tens of thousands of families in my State--rely on the Children's Health Insurance Program. But this fall, because this Congress is too busy giving tax cuts to rich people, because this Congress is too busy giving all kinds of breaks to the Nation's banks, because this Congress is too busy doing the bidding of the drug companies and the health insurance companies and the bidding of the oil companies, this Congress let CHIP expire. States are beginning to run out of money for CHIP. States are preparing to shut down this lifeline for 9 million children in Kansas, Ohio, Florida, and all over the country. Folks in this body--don't forget, we all get our health insurance funded by taxpayers, but we haven't done our job. As a result, families of 209,000 children in Ohio and 9 million children in the United States are going to pay the price. Think about how devastating it would be to get that letter in the mail. It is already an expensive and stressful time of year. Parents are worried about all kinds of things--higher heating bills, visits to their families for the holidays, the cost of childcare when kids take off from school for the holidays. They are scraping together what they can for gifts. They are already stressed enough. Imagine having to tell your daughter: I am sorry, honey, Santa probably isn't bringing much this year. We won't have any presents under the tree. You try not to let the child see the worry in your eyes because you are wondering how you are going to afford the debt for regular checkups each year, or God forbid she gets an ear infection or something happens and she needs to go to the doctor. But, oh my gosh, no, we got this letter in the mail that says--and I don't know if the letter will say it this way, but it should--that because Congress failed to do its job--a bunch of elected officials who have insurance paid by taxpayers failed to do their job to reauthorize and fund this bill so that 209,000 children in Ohio will be protected, as well as 9 million people in the country--Ohio, Arizona, California, Minnesota, and Oregon are all expected to run out of CHIP money by the end of the year, early January. Some States will need to start notifying families right now that they could lose their coverage. Virginia will have to start sending out notices as early as this week. Many other States expect funds to run out the first of the year. This is not just a few children whom maybe we don't want to think about; this is 9 million children--209,000 children in my State, tens of thousands of children in Kansas, and it is hundreds of thousands of children in Senator Nelson's Florida. These are working families who don't qualify for Medicaid but can't afford private insurance. They are families with two working parents who often aren't lucky enough to work for companies that provide health insurance. They are families with children who have special needs. CHIP helps provide access to specialty providers so the kids are never faced with a situation where their family can't afford the therapy or the expensive prescription drugs they need. Healthcare for all of our children is something on which we ought to be able to come together, wouldn't you think--especially at the holiday season. Leading into Christmas, wouldn't you think we could agree on that, that we ought to take care of the Children's Health Insurance Program? There has never been a gap for funding in the CHIP program. It was created in a bipartisan way. Senator Kennedy, who sat over here, Senator Rockefeller, who sat over here, and Senator Hatch, who is still in this body, all worked to create this program. In those days, Senator Hatch said: ``As a nation, as a society, we have a moral responsibility'' to ensure our children have healthcare. We have maintained that bipartisanship ever since, until now--until Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell, who would rather worry about tax cuts for the rich, would rather worry about helping banks keep consumers from having their day in court, would rather worry about helping the Koch brothers and the drug companies. That is way more important than taking care of 209,000 children in Ohio. I guess it is more important for Senator McConnell to go back in that room and write a bill with his lobbyist friends from the Koch brothers, oil companies, drug companies, and Wall Street--all his special interest buddies. He can write a bill for those big tax breaks for those companies but just not get around to taking care of these kids. Two years ago, with the support of advocates all over the country, we extended funding for CHIP with bipartisan support. We did it for 2 more years. We put kids first in this body, acted early to extend CHIP so families wouldn't have to worry. This year, in committee--and I give credit to Senator Hatch in this case, as well as Senators Portman, Wyden, and others. We passed a 5-year extension of CHIP, and almost all my colleagues voted for it, but passing it out of committee and patting ourselves on the back doesn't get the job done. I ask all my colleagues who sit here--again, with health insurance paid for by taxpayers--for one time this Christmas season to set partisanship aside and actually do the right thing. Let's forget the tax bill for just a few days. Let's forget helping the Wall Street banks for a few days. Let's forget about helping the oil companies and billionaire contributors on whom Senator McConnell and his colleagues rely. Let's forget about that just for a few days, and let's take care of 209,000 children in Ohio and tens of thousands of children in Kansas and 9 million children around the country. My friend Bill Considine is the CEO of Akron Children's Hospital. He is the longest serving CEO of any children's hospital in the country. He said: ``The fact that this reauthorization has been delayed for political reasons, for shallow campaign promises, is inexcusable.'' I have known Bill Considine for 25 years. I don't know if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Certainly, I don't think he cares much about that. What he cares about is taking care of kids. He says that the fact that we are putting these children and families at risk in the country we live in--there are no words we can use to justify it. He is right. There is no way to justify Congress's negligence. We need to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program this week--now.

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 rise to speak in opposition to the nomination of Joseph Otting to be Comptroller of the Currency. I appreciate Mr. Otting's willingness to enter public service. That said, he is not the person we need in this very important financial watchdog roll. We have learned lessons from the quality, the attitude, and the work of the person in this office, and I am virtually sure he is not the right person. We have made a lot of progress in the last 7 years since we passed Wall Street reform. The last thing we need is someone leading the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency working to weaken or eliminate important safeguards, instead of looking out for workers, borrowers, and the stability of our financial system. The financial watchdogs, including the previous Comptroller, Thomas Curry, took significant steps to right the wrongs that led to the 2008 financial crisis. It is important that we not have this collective amnesia that seems to permeate this body about what happened to this country 10 years ago. Working together, Comptroller Curry and other financial watchdogs strengthened rules for the largest banks. Independently, the OCC enhanced the supervision and examination of these banks, took enforcement actions against bad actors, and took steps to address concerns that the agency had been captured by the industry. There was clear evidence of that by previous people in this job. This administration is putting the banking industry back in charge of policing itself. We should have learned from that a decade ago. Mr. Otting is yet another bank executive who profited from the financial crisis and is being rewarded by the Trump administration with a powerful job overseeing our Nation's banking system. This is a man who worked at OneWest and made a fortune kicking military servicemembers, seniors, and working families out of their homes, all while pocketing $2.5 billion--that is billion with a ``b''--from the FDIC to protect his bank from any losses. The bank, OneWest, in this behavior, in this money from FDIC, in this action of kicking military servicemembers and seniors and working families out of their homes--this all might sound familiar to my colleagues; it certainly sounds familiar to the people in the Finance Committee and the Banking Committee. It is the same place that Mr. Mnuchin--now-Secretary of the Treasury--worked, doing the same kinds of things and work that Mnuchin did. Mr. Otting and his former boss, Secretary Mnuchin, refused to provide Senators State-by-State data on OneWest's foreclosures on seniors, servicemembers, and other borrowers. They refused to answer questions about OneWest loan modifications. I think Ohioans--and I hope enough of my colleagues to constitute a majority--would like to know what they are hiding. It was pretty amazing to sit in the Finance Committee and listen to Secretary Mnuchin and watch Secretary Mnuchin--then-Secretary-Designee Mnuchin--refuse to release information, refuse to disclose information. In fact, he had forgotten about a $100 million investment he had when he testified in front of the committee. We found out later that he had this investment that he forgot to disclose; $100 million is a lot of money. Even to Secretary Mnuchin I think that is a lot of money. Even to this administration, that is a lot of money. What we do know, thanks to important work by our independent press, is not pretty. What we do know about what OneWest did is not pretty. In January, the Columbus Dispatch--the most conservative newspaper in my State, the second largest paper in our State--ran a front-page story on that bank's abuses. Their investigative journalism found that OneWest used so-called robosignings on mortgage documents. According to the Dispatch, in its fine investigative work, under Mr. Otting's watch from 2009 to 2015, nearly 2,000 Ohioans in our six largest counties were foreclosed on by OneWest. The abuses were so bad that Mr. Otting signed an OCC consent order--a legal agreement that a bank and its regulator enter into when illegal practices at the bank force the government to step in. If you are signing an OCC consent order, it is a pretty serious problem. In any other administration, this would have been disqualifying. In any other administration, Mr. Otting--or for that matter, Mr. Mnuchin, who was engaged in the same kind of practices--would have withdrawn their name. In any other administration, if the nominee didn't withdraw their name, the administration would have told them to withdraw their name, but not in this White House. Frankly, when you walk into this White House, it looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives and people like OneWest executives and people who foreclosed on home after home and, frankly, have almost no contrition and paid almost nothing, suffered almost no consequences for their action. The consent order documented OneWest's breathtaking list of foreclosure abuses, gouging borrowers with excessive fees and unfairly evicting servicemembers on Active Duty. Think about that. They not only evicted servicemembers, they evicted servicemembers on Active Duty. In some cases, I assume the wife was serving overseas and the husband was evicted because he couldn't make the payments, partly because his wife is paid so little as a member of the Armed Forces. Mr. Otting was held accountable for one of the major abuses, robosigning, by the bank's regulator in 2014. But during his Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing, he continued to deny wrongdoing, even when faced with a legal document proving otherwise. One of the things that amazes the American public is that nobody went to jail for what they caused in the last decade, what they caused in 2007, 2008, and 2009--the pain and the hardship, the pain of plant closings and lost jobs, the hardship of losing your home, the terrible consequences of losing much of your retirement savings. The people who caused this suffered almost no consequence. The American public, first of all, can't believe none of them went to jail. Maybe they are not so surprised anymore that there is no contrition. Then, we reward these people by making them Secretary of the Treasury or Comptroller of the Currency. Mr. Otting was held accountable. In all of these legal proceedings-- and I am not a lawyer so maybe I don't exactly understand this, but these people signed some document, but they never really admitted they did anything wrong. Mr. Otting followed that process. Even though we had this documentation, he continued to deny wrongdoing, even when we presented him with that legal document. Instead of helping families recover from the financial crisis as CEO of Secretary Mnuchin's--not Secretary then--OneWest Bank, Mr. Otting contributed to devastation. So this administration has chosen him to be in charge of one of the key agencies protecting ordinary Americans from Wall Street. I will say that again. He was a big part of the problem, as CEO of OneWest Bank. He has committed wrongdoing; we presented him with a legal document proving that. Yet the administration chooses him to be Comptroller of the Currency. It is a job most of America doesn't know much about. I didn't either until I came here. I acknowledge that. It is a job that most Americans don't think much about. It is a job that most Americans don't think has a great impact in their lives, but Americans know what happened 10 years ago. I live in ZIP Code 44105, Cleveland, OH. My ZIP Code in 2007 had more foreclosures than any ZIP Code in the United States of America. I can't leave my house, if I go more than about 300 yards, without seeing the devastation caused by people like Mr. Otting--people who lost their homes, people who lost their jobs, people who have suffered and lost their life savings because of Wall Street malfeasance, because of companies like OneWest. I am guessing that Mr. Otting doesn't think about this, and I am guessing that most people here don't think about this. Pope Francis, soon after assuming the Papacy, admonished parish priests to go out and smell like the flock. It wouldn't hurt all of us to do that a little more around here, to talk to somebody who has lost a job. It typically happened, in my neighborhood near Slavic Village, Cleveland, OH, where the spouse lost her job, and then the husband's plant closed, and then they couldn't keep up with the payments. Then they had to tell their teenage daughter: Honey, we are going to lose our home. First, they had to give away their family dog, probably, because owning a dog costs money, and they were squeezed. They knew they were in trouble. Then they had to explain to their daughter that she is going to go to a different school district--and all the things of life have turned upside down. Your life turns upside down if you are foreclosed on or if you are evicted. I am guessing Mr. Otting doesn't think a lot about that. I am guessing Secretary Mnuchin doesn't think a lot about that, as he travels on private planes and his wife brags about her expensive clothes. I am guessing very few in this White House think about that, but maybe they should. If he is confirmed--and I assume he will be because the Republicans in this body generally do whatever Wall Street and whatever companies like OneWest want them to do in confirming nominees like Mr. Otting, but I wish Mr. Otting would think about a little bit more about the devastation to which he contributed. Right now at the OCC, Keith Noreika--previously, a big bank lawyer-- has spent his time rolling back rules to protect Americans from predatory payday lenders. He has worked against a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule that would have allowed customers to take their banks to court when they were cheated. Mr. Noreika has done all this as Acting Comptroller. He wasn't confirmed by this body. Get this: His temporary role as a special government employee means he doesn't have to live up to the same ethics or conflicts of interest rules as everyone else. He takes this job as Acting Comptroller while we wait for Mr. Otting; he takes this job as Acting Comptroller, and he does the bidding of all of these financial service interest groups, all of the payday lenders, and all of the people who are preying on working families and preying on low-income people. He leaves and joins some of these companies, and he is very amply rewarded, and he doesn't have to live under any ethics rules. The people who run watchdog agencies are supposed to be independent voices who protect workers in the economy from financial crisis, not banking industry lapdogs who help their former boardroom buddies on Wall Street. If his record is any guide, certainly Mr. Noreika didn't serve the public. He served as a lapdog. He served the banking industry. If his records are any guide, I am concerned that Mr. Otting will be no different, that the OCC's independence will be compromised under his leadership. He worked side by side with Secretary Mnuchin at OneWest Bank. Mr. Mnuchin hand-picked Mr. Otting for this job. We are already seeing signs of Wall Street influence at some of the agencies, consistent with Secretary Mnuchin's agenda. They have pulled back on Wall Street reforms. They have attacked other agencies for doing their jobs. For wealthy bank executives and private investors like Mr. Otting, the crisis wasn't a life-changing event. Think about that. The crisis for Mr. Otting wasn't a life-changing event, but those people who live in ZIP Code 441, in Slavic Village in Cleveland, for those people whose homes I drive by every day, people who lost jobs because of the financial crisis, people who lost homes because of the financial crisis, people who lost their life savings because of the financial crisis, those weren't just life-changing; those were life-destroying kinds of events. Yet Mr. Otting and Mr. Mnuchin go forward, and they pocket their tens of millions of dollars, and then they are appointed by the President of the United States to watch over these financial watchdogs. They saw the crisis. The crisis was life-changing to my neighbors. They saw a crisis as an opportunity to profit by flipping failing banks bought at rock-bottom prices, but not before foreclosing, as the Columbus Dispatch said, all while raking in taxpayer dollars. If confirmed, Mr. Otting will be in charge of ensuring that all national banks, including Wells Fargo--we certainly heard about Wells Fargo's abuse of millions of its customers. His job will be to ensure that all national banks, including banks like Wells Fargo, are complying with the law, that they operate in a safe and sound manner, and that they protect customers. To be real, do we think we can trust him to do that after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the financial crisis that devastated Ohio, Colorado, and Massachusetts families? After people lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings, Mr. Otting clearly isn't the right person for this job. Yesterday, the Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Marty Gruenberg, said: I confess to having a certain sense of deja vu. Banking conditions today are strong and the possibility of a serious downturn anytime soon is generally viewed as remote. That was certainly true during the pre-crisis years as well. If I have one key point to make today, it is that we should guard against the temptation to become complacent about the risks facing the financial system. I would comment on Mr. Gruenberg's comments that 11 years ago or so-- 10, 11, 12 years ago--it didn't seem all that likely to many, at least to those in the Bush administration, that there would be an implosion of the economy and an implosion of the banking system, a crisis; that there was, in fact, the new head of supervision at the Federal Reserve who pretty much said, as late as 2007: We really shouldn't be concerned about a housing crisis. It is only going to hit the higher, upper end of homeowners, and it will not affect the economy. Those are the people this President has put in charge to be the watchdogs of our financial system. Again, Mr. Gruenberg said: If I have one key point, it is this. We should guard against the temptation to become complacent about the risks facing our financial system. We need to take Chair Gruenberg's warning seriously. Confirming a banker to the OCC--a banker who will give Wall Street its wish list--is a high price for working families to pay who are still feeling the impact of the last financial crisis. I urge my colleagues to vote no on Mr. Otting.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, today I wish to honor a great Ohioan, Dave Dilly. Dave is here in Washington this week to fight for the pensions he and thousands of Ohioans earned over a lifetime of hard work. You may have even seen him and his union brothers and sisters donning the camouflage t-shirts that have become the trademark of their cause. Dave is a member of the United Mine Workers of America. He has served as the president of his own UMWA Local 1188 in Coshocton County and for several years has represented his fellow miners from all over our State and Nation to lobby for permanent healthcare and retirement security for our miners. That is how I came to know Dave well, through his many trips here to stand up for these workers. This May, the Senate passed a bill to finally give our miners permanent healthcare. No doubt, Dave and his fellow miners were responsible for that victory. If we have the same success this year in securing their pensions, we will owe it once again to Dave and hundreds of workers from around the country. Dave's service on behalf of our miners would be enough to earn him all of our respect and gratitude, but that is not why I rise to honor him today. His UMWA shirt is not the first time he has worn camo attire. Like many of our miners, Dave is also a veteran. This past weekend, Dave was inducted into the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame. If you know Dave, it comes as no surprise to learn that service runs deep in his family. It is just who they are. Dave had four older brothers who served in the Korean war and inspired him to serve. Dave signed up for the Air Force, where he was a weapons mechanic and systems specialist from 1965 to 1968. He served in Thailand and South Vietnam. For part of Dave's service, he was in Da Nang, known as Rocket City, for the number of times it was attacked during the war. Dave received many military honors and carried on his service by working on behalf of his fellow veterans in so many ways. He served as a veterans service officer for Coshocton County. He is active in local veterans organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans. Every Memorial Day since 2000, Dave has helped lay flags on the graves of veterans. Right now, he is the vice president of the Coshocton County Veterans Service Commission. Dave has helped organize and chaperone Honor Flight trips to Washington, DC, so other veterans can see the memorials built in their honor. There seems to be no limit to what Dave will do for his fellow veterans, fellow workers, and fellow Ohioans. Dave, thank you for your service to our country, to your fellow veterans, and to our State. So many of us are proud of you and honored to call you a friend. Congratulations, Dave, on your induction to the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame.