Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 520, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I want to share a few thoughts, if I may, for a minute or so on the pending matter before us. But before I do that--and at a later time I will speak at greater length about this--I want to express my regrets over the decision made in Utah over the weekend regarding Bob Bennett, our colleague. I have served with Bob for 18 years. We have been on the Banking Committee together during that time. Obviously, we have differences of opinion on a lot of policy questions. In fact, the majority of policy questions we have had our differences on. But at critical moments, Bob Bennett was always someone you could talk to, someone you could approach with an idea or an issue. He went through a tough battle over the last number of weeks and did not prevail in his convention over the weekend in Utah. But I want to express to him and Joyce how much this institution will miss them in the coming year. He is a thoughtful, considerate individual. He is deliberate in his views and accessible when it comes to others' ideas. In my view, it will be a loss for the institution that he will not be back. That is coming from a Democrat on this side of the aisle. I realize there is a contest coming up, but I didn't want the day to begin or end without expressing my disappointment over the results in Utah. I know that is probably not appropriate for Democrats, making comments about Republican races, but Bob Bennett is one fine U.S. Senator, and he has played an invaluable role, a critical role at critical junctures over the last number of years that I have served with him. Now, Mr. President, I want to make some comments about the bill before us. It has been nearly 7 weeks since the Banking Committee approved legislation to reform Wall Street. It has been more than 3 years since our committee began work on this very important topic. It was in January or early February of 2007 that I became chairman of the Banking Committee for the first time, and, obviously, the news even at that early date was about the mortgage foreclosure issue. A lot of work has gone on in the Banking Committee. We have literally had dozens and dozens of hearings and meetings with people on how best to address this economic decline that we have suffered--with 8\1/2\ million jobs being lost and 7 million homes in foreclosure. In fact, over the weekend there was a report that nearly 4 million households are severely delinquent on their mortgages, and 250,000 homes have been seized--are in foreclosure--since the first 3 months of this. Even though we have 4 million homes delinquent on their mortgages, which is the largest backlog since the crisis began, there is some positive news on job creation--290,000 jobs in the month of April, which is 121,000 more jobs created in the first few months of the year than were anticipated. We are clearly seeing an economy that seems to be improving. But when we have 4 million homes that are underwater, we also realize we are far from out of this difficulty, particularly if you are a working family. We also, of course, saw last Thursday a market decline of 1,000 points in almost 17 minutes. The Presiding Officer and I, in fact, talked about this over the weekend, and I appreciate his insights and observations on the matter as someone who spent time working in this field before getting involved in public life. There are a number of ideas emerging as to how this happened, and my hope is that as early as next week our Banking Committee will have an informal meeting with people from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as well as others, to hear what they think happened and what steps they are taking to minimize that event from occurring again. Then, of course, over the weekend we had the stories emerging about Europe and the Euro and what was occurring in Greece and other nations in danger of going to default because of the huge debt problems that exist. Tomorrow morning, our committee will be briefed by the Federal Reserve as well as the Secretary of the Treasury on exactly what plans have been put in place in Europe. I do not want to dwell on either of those points at this juncture except to make this point. Here we have an event totally unrelated to mismanagement of investment banks or financial institutions in the case of a market decline as precipitous as we saw Thursday and events that are beyond the borders of our own nation that will have an impact at home. We are told this is not going to have any kind of severe impact-- at least we don't believe it will at this juncture. But we do live in a highly sophisticated, computerized world with this flash trading, as it is called--``high frequency trading,'' as it is referred to--where literally within microseconds buyers and sellers are matched up. What the system doesn't accommodate for is panic, unfortunately, and apparently the circuit breakers necessary in market-wide exchanges to minimize these kinds of events when they occur and also events that occur in a small country in the Mediterranean--such as Greece or Portugal or Spain or other countries--where their debt situations pose risks globally. So what is critically important, in my view, is, while our legislation before us it not going to stop crises from occurring, what we try to do is provide our government with the necessary tools so we can respond when crises occur. No one can stop the rain from coming. It will happen. It will happen again and again. What you can do, however, is make sure the roof is going to be solid enough so it doesn't leak or that you are not going to be in a situation where, when things break down in the next crisis, no matter how modest it may be, it endangers the job creation as we saw in this country--as we are today seeing massive losses occurring, retirement accounts declining. The value of homes has gone down some 30 percent in the last several years. Again, there are some indications that things are improving here at home, and we welcome that news. But if you are one of those 8.5 million who lost a job or home or if you are a retiree who watched your savings disappear overnight, as many did in this country, then this positive news, while it is welcome, is hardly any relief to you. So it is critically important because we are in no better shape today despite advances and the progress we have made on this bill. If something were to happen tonight or tomorrow in our own country or something happened elsewhere that would have the contagion effect, it is called, to spread here or elsewhere, we have not yet passed this legislation. We don't have any more provisions in place than we did in the fall of 2008 when the problems exploded. While we have written strong provisions in this bill that never would allow an institution to become too big to fail, the fact is that has only been adopted in a bill that has yet to be passed in this body, yet to be reconciled with the language from the other Chamber in this Congress and to be signed into law by the President. It is important that we get this job done. We have had a good debate up until now. With the guidance of our leadership, we will begin tomorrow to consider some amendments, allowing for some adequate debate--hopefully not too long on each of these ideas. And there are a lot of ideas we have, both Democrats and Republicans. We can have our votes on these matters and either include them or exclude them on the legislation. But we need to get this job done, I hope this week--at the very latest, the end of this week--so we can work with the other body and resolve the differences and get this legislation to the President. I would be the last one to suggest that what we have written here takes care of every imaginable situation. It doesn't at all. What it does is it ends too big to fail and puts in place a consumer protection bureau that has never existed before in our Nation so that average citizens might have some redress when a mortgage broker or company takes advantage of them. We try to put in place an early warning system so when matters like those that happened in Europe or other places occur, we can respond to them early and adequately so they don't explode and expand to affect everyone else in economy. We also deal with some of these exotic instruments that were totally unregulated and operated in the shadow economy of our Nation. There are other provisions in the bill, but those are the four at least major goals. As I said a moment ago, I know there are other circumstances people wanted to accommodate in this legislation. But, as my colleague from New Hampshire pointed out the other day, some of these other issues are so complex, they will need adequate study, and trying to sort of hurl them into this bill or eliminate things without any alternative being proposed is not exactly the wise way to be dealing with matters as important as the financial sector of our Nation. I am grateful to our colleagues for what they have done already. As many have pointed out, this has been a worthwhile process. It has taken a long time considering the implications--none of us, obviously, want to have the so-called unintended consequences. No matter how good we think our ideas are, we need to make sure what we are doing is not going to provoke its own set of difficulties. We have to finish our work on this legislation, not just in recognition of what has happened but in preparation for what may happen next. As we have seen in recent days, the shocks to our system are as inevitable as rainfall. Throughout Europe, as we have seen, countries are bracing for the effects of the Greek crisis, effects which respect no boundaries and offer no safe haven for anyone. Right here at home, our market stumbled, as we saw last week with our stock market tumbling hundreds of points before righting itself. Again, as I made reference to a moment ago, the rain is coming, but we need to fix our roof so we don't all suffer as a result of the inevitability of rain. The issues raised by the crisis in Greece and last week's stock market scare require our attention--and they have it. I have asked Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who chairs the subcommittee dealing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, to prepare for hearings on the stock market issue so we can get to the bottom of what happened. As I mentioned, our staff is working to ensure our government does its part to help contain the crisis in Europe--at least to watch it and determine whether there are any spillover effects. But these events are reminders that our work on this legislation must look through the windshield at the crises to come, not just in the rearview mirror at the one from which we are now just emerging. They are a further reminder that our work does not end with this legislation. I urge my colleagues to join us in making a final push to get this bill done so we can move on to those other emerging issues. When we do, we can face these challenges with the knowledge that we have strengthened our financial system; that although we cannot prevent crises from occurring, we can prepare for them so their effects are not felt by ordinary Americans to the extent they have been in the last number of years. That is all we are really trying to do. I always get uneasy when I hear authors of bills claim they are going to solve every problem known to mankind in that issue area. We are not, unfortunately. We do the best we can under the circumstances. Again, last Thursday's and the weekend's events are a constant reminder that we live in an ever-shrinking world and we are affected by events far beyond our shores. It is not just because some company did something wrong. It can happen far away and yet have implications here. But we need to make sure the next generation will have tools on hand so they can spot problems early on and take steps to minimize their effects here at home when they occur. That is the goal of this bill. It is not an insignificant one; it is an important one. I thank my colleagues. They have been extremely constructive and thoughtful over the last week or so. We had a good weekend. A lot of people stepped forward, and we were able to work out some language that I think will allow various provisions to be adopted. More work needs to be done, but I am confident we can achieve that goal. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge once again my thanks to the Presiding Officer, a new Member of this body and the banking committee but he has made invaluable contributions to this product. While not a chairman of even a subcommittee yet, he has acted as a very senior Member in many ways because of the knowledge he has brought to this discussion and debate. That has been, as I said, invaluable to this chairman of the committee, and I thank him personally for his efforts in that regard. I see my friend and colleague from Maine, and I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. Before my friend and fellow New Englander leaves the floor, let me thank her for her comments, but also let me thank her for this whole notion of leverage and capital standards as well. It is something we feel equally strongly about. We have provisions in the bill, but anything can be strengthened. We are very interested in the idea that the Senator from Maine and Senator Shaheen have brought to the table, and invite, at this moment, their staff and others to get with ours and take a look and see if we cannot--and I will talk to Senator Shelby as well because it is important. There has been some debate, and I go back and forth in this regard. I have always resisted the idea that the Senate should set accounting standards. We have had some times in the past on stock options--I recall a few years ago the debate was whether we would set the accounting standard on stock options. I thought there was a very persuasive argument made by the industry that pointed out that we should probably consider them as a tool to attract, particularly, startup companies. But as attracted as I was to their ideas, I did not want to open the box of beginning to set accounting standards in Congress. We have competency here, but sometimes we get beyond our competency. The issue was sort of the same on capital leverage, that we have to have stronger leverage and capital standards. The debate is, should we actually set the leverage here or do we say we want strong standards and defer to our regulators to determine exactly what that standard ought to be? Clearly, we need to have better leverage and better capital standards. If we do not, these large institutions--my colleague from Maine is absolutely correct in this regard, that we will end up then having these institutions that are interconnected. If we do not demand greater accountability through that requirement, then we expose ourselves to the very kinds of things we are seeing elsewhere. So I thank her for this, and over the next day or so let's see if we can take a look at the Senator's amendment and adopt it as well. I thank her for her ideas as well on the oversight council we have crafted. Actually, many of us like the idea of having an independent chair. We had this debate. The Secretary of the Treasury was not my first choice, the independent chair--but as my colleague from Maine knows, having chaired committees, when you are trying to get a committee to agree on something, the idea is the one that prevailed--having the Secretary of the Treasury was the one that prevailed, as the Presiding Officer will recall in those discussions. But, clearly, as to the idea of having the credit unions, the Senator makes a lot of sense. It is a major part of our economy, and having the State regulators at least represented at that table makes sense to me as well. So maybe before this is over we can accommodate some of those additional ideas. But I thank the Senator immensely for her contribution, and I appreciate, as well, that she understands how long and arduous this has been to get to the best we can. When we have 100 of us here dealing with something of this magnitude, it is harder to put that together. But we are getting there. And I agree with her that we ought to be able to finish. It does not mean we are going to satisfy everyone, and it cannot go on forever, but we certainly ought to accommodate as many different ideas as we can and make our judgments on them to include them in the bill. I thank her immensely for her contribution. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes, if I may. I listened with some interest this afternoon, as I did last week, to my colleague and friend from Arizona talk about his amendment regarding government-sponsored enterprises, specifically Fannie and Freddie. I wish to respond to some of those comments and some comments today about these two agencies and their value, their present condition, and what needs to be done. First, there is a little revisionist history in all of this that seems to be important. In 2005, the House Financial Services Committee, under the leadership of Mike Oxley, a Republican from Ohio, chairman of the committee, passed bipartisan legislation dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Senate Democrats picked up that proposal. It stalled in the committee over here despite support for it. The Republican- controlled committee then passed a bill. They never filed it, never brought it up for a vote on the floor of the Senate in 2005. I became chairman of the Banking Committee in 2007. As the Presiding Officer will recall, when he arrived in 2008, we had a significant number of hearings and discussions about Fannie and Freddie. In the summer of 2008, the Banking Committee passed a comprehensive overhaul of the regulations of Fannie and Freddie, including establishment of a tough new regulator, the FHFA, limited portfolio holdings of Fannie and Freddie, and we increased their capital requirements. The authority to put Fannie and Freddie into receivership was also adopted. We required internal controls and risk management and reviving and approving new products. The committee voted 19 to 2 on a very strong bipartisan basis in the summer of 2008, and overwhelmingly on the floor, this body supported those efforts by a vote of 72 to 13. That was in the summer and fall of 2008. When I hear the comments being made that nothing has been done about Fannie and Freddie--Mike Oxley tried and failed. I cannot repeat on the floor of the Chamber the words Mike Oxley used to describe the minority's handling of reform when he was accused later of not having an effective reform package. The Republican chairman of that committee had very strong language to describe the failure of our Republican friends to pick up his efforts, his bipartisan efforts, in 2005. As I say, in 2008, by a vote of 72 to 13, this body adopted the committee's recommendations--adopted 19 to 2 in the Banking Committee--to put strong regulations over Fannie and Freddie. So that is as a backdrop. I will be the first to recognize that more needs to be done, clearly, in terms of coming up with a whole new financing structure for the housing market. There is no doubt about that. But as my colleague from New Hampshire has pointed out--and while it wasn't part of the whole reform package included in this 1,400-page bill because it probably would have doubled the size of this legislation--the issue is far too complex at this juncture to include those kinds of reforms in this bill. That is not to suggest they do not need to be done, but it will take a separate undertaking, it seems to me and most who have looked at it, to decide what is that alternative idea. So when we have the McCain amendment, as in the Ensign amendment the other night, I would urge my colleagues to vote against it. All their amendments do is to get rid of Fannie and Freddie. There is no alternative idea here. The McCain amendment says that in 24 months you have to get rid of Fannie and Freddie. Well, that is a nice idea, but what are the implications if we get rid of it? Today, 97 percent of all mortgages are backed by Fannie and Freddie. If you want to see interest rates go up, if you get rid of the only entity that is purchasing these mortgages today--and that is Fannie and Freddie, by and large--who will purchase them? If they are not purchased, what happens to interest rates and home values? If you think the market took a plunge last Thursday, adopt the McCain amendment. It is a reckless amendment. There is no alternative whatsoever included in that proposal. Let me identify the three major problems with it, aside from the fact it doesn't offer any alternative whatsoever as to how we end up with a financing mechanism for housing in this country. Remember, we are the only Nation on the face of the planet today that provides a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage for homeowners. It is the reason why we have had a relatively high percentage of our population in home ownership. It also is the single largest wealth creator for most families--home ownership--not to mention the value it is to a family, a neighborhood, a community. When people have an equity interest--when they can accrue equity over time--it leads to long-term financial security, retirement security, and it has made a difference in how middle-income families have been able to afford a higher education for their children. All these benefits accrue. No other Nation on Earth provides that kind of stability and long-term security that we have in the housing market, and it doesn't happen miraculously. It happens because we have had a financing mechanism that has provided for that kind of assurance at a relatively low cost. So when you look at the amendment, it severs all Federal involvement with these mortgage securitization, government-sponsored enterprises within 24 months. That is the McCain amendment. Before people jump on board with what a great idea this is, consider the implications and then be prepared to explain them when they happen. There is no reform here. It just gets rids of something without replacing it with anything, except somehow the private market is going to pick up. There is no private market for that today, and we need an alternative idea. Some have mentioned a public utility concept, others have mentioned various other ideas, all of which we have listened to. But, frankly, there is a lot of debate about what that alternative ought to be. So to draft a bill to take in all these other ideas for housing, frankly, as the Senator from New Hampshire has said, was far too complex, given all the other challenges we are faced with in this legislation, to try to deal with too big to fail, consumer protection, finally getting some clarity and regulation over exotic instruments, providing some long-term radar system, as we describe it, to identify problems as they emerge, whether in Greece or someplace else, not to mention all the other provisions, dealing with underwriting standards, capital requirements, leverage, and all the rest. This bill is 1,400 pages, not to mention the bill passed out of the Agriculture Committee, which adds, of course, a whole other title VII to the bill. So when you consider what is in here, I hope my colleagues will be careful before they jump on what is a politically charged issue and understand what the implications may be if it is adopted. The McCain amendment, as I said, is reckless, it is poorly thought out, it poses significant risk to the housing markets that have only recently begun to stabilize, by the way. We are seeing just in the last few weeks that finally prices are beginning to move up in the housing area, new stakeholders are occurring, and things are beginning to move in the right direction. You can say a lot of things, but if you don't have stability in the housing market, this recovery will not occur. It is a critical component of recovery and to pull the rug out from underneath this particular effort right now would be a major blow to our economy and I think would set us back on our heels at the worst possible moment. As I said earlier, major reforms to the housing financing system are clearly necessary. I will be the first to acknowledge that--all should. As we can't go back to the system of the past and the status quo of the GSEs under Federal conservatorship--by the way, Fannie and Freddie are under conservatorship because of our 2008 legislation--it is untenable. We can't continue with that, and we need to replace it, but such changes must be thoughtful and deliberate. In the near term, we must ensure that changes affecting the Federal role in Fannie and Freddie do not jeopardize the fragile economic recovery. Over the long term, we must be careful in structuring the housing financing system in a way that guarantees continued mortgage liquidity with minimum economic disruptions. The McCain amendment falls short in several respects. First of all, it imposes significant risk to our economic recovery. Some 95 to 97 percent of mortgage originations are currently backed by the Federal Government--95 to 97 percent, the vast majority of this coming through Fannie and Freddie. The McCain amendment would cause significant uncertainty among investors and GSE-issued mortgage-backed securities, threatening the primary source of mortgage credit that we have at this time. Pull away the credit we have, what replaces it? In this amendment, nothing, without offering any alternative sources of liquidity. Such a precipitous drop in mortgage liquidity could severely threaten this fragile recovery we are presently feeling. Second, the McCain amendment fails to ensure sufficient mortgage credit would be available in the future. Private securitization of the GSEs account for, as I said, some $9 trillion of the $14 trillion in total outstanding mortgages in the United States today. With the future of private securitization highly uncertain--in fact, that is a mild statement given the present economic circumstances--policymakers seeking to reform the housing financing system must ensure that the system of the future will provide sufficient liquidity to meet the mortgage needs of all Americans. The McCain amendment would eliminate existing sources of mortgage liquidity while remaining silent on the more difficult question of how to replace them. So you may not like what you have here, but you are replacing it with nothing. What are the alternatives to go to in the housing market? Thirdly, the McCain amendment neglects to replace the public purposes served by GSEs. The GSEs were poorly run, but they clearly served a number of public purposes, such as making the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage broadly available for American home buyers. This does not go to the question of the underwriting standards. That was a disaster with unregulated brokers and mortgage companies. But putting aside that question, which we address--and there are other ideas on how to further address the underwriting requirements--there is the idea that the average family in this country could purchase and have a chance to get in that starter home, to put them on the pathway to home ownership and all that means to families--what it has meant to our country to make that available, not just to the affluent and the well-heeled but to families even at the lower end of the economic spectrum--to have that kind of job that could provide that income to support a mortgage; what it means to be able to say to your family: We own our home. This is where we live. We have a vested interest in our community, in our neighborhood. You can talk to anyone about social policy and home equity interest in a neighborhood, and it changes a neighborhood. It makes a difference. So when you start stripping away, pulling out the rug from underneath the financing scheme for doing this today, the mechanism for doing it, then you undermine the very ability to have that long-term, stable mortgage that a family can count on. Watching their equity grow, under normal circumstances, makes such a difference. It is why this economic disaster we have been through over the last couple years is so harmful. I said earlier there are 4 million homes today that are underwater--4 million of them underwater--and 250,000 homes in the first 3 months of this year have been seized because of the economic conditions. So housing is critical. It is where this crisis began because of the shoddy underwriting requirements that are out there and luring people into subprime mortgages. By the way, that is the alternative. When you strip away the financing mechanism, what you are left with is subprime lending. That is what goes on, luring people into those circumstances. So, Mr. President, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts in this debate. The fact is, there was an effort in 2005, led by a Republican chairman in the housing committee in the House, and he has some very choice words for those who suggest that effort wasn't real to make a change here. I regret deeply that Mr. Oxley didn't prevail in his ideas here in the Senate. He passed it in the House, but it was squashed over here. Then, in 2008, as I said, by votes of 19 to 2 and 72 to 13 on the floor of this Chamber, we did pass legislation that provided for a comprehensive overhaul of the regulation of Fannie and Freddie. It made a substantial change, but far more needs to be done. I acknowledge that, clearly. But let's not, in the face of that acknowledgment, strip away that ability in this bill, within 24 months, without replacing it with anything, putting our economic recovery at great risk. I predict to you, as certain as I am standing here, if the McCain amendment were to pass, that is the outcome, count on it, in my view. So I caution my colleagues, despite the political mantra associated with all this, we are in a very delicate time. It is very important that we use our heads and carefully deliberate on how we are moving. By a vote of 59 to 35, we rejected the Ensign amendment last week. It was the right outcome. If we reverse that vote tomorrow or in the next day--whenever the McCain amendment comes up--and we will have a side- by-side amendment, by the way, to explain what the committee is doing further and what needs to be done to get us on the right track so people can be supportive of some alternative ideas here--then I think we will set ourselves back. In light of what has happened in Europe over the weekend, still may unfold here, right now we don't need to be sending messages to the markets without any alternative ideas in place as to how to come up with a housing finance system that is as worthy of the very people who counted on that ability to have that fixed-rate mortgage, to watch their family prosper and grow and become stable, as this has over the years. I know others want to be heard on probably other matters, but this is a very important issue, and my hope is my colleagues will pay careful attention to this and not succumb to the temporary temptation to follow because there are some groups out there that have never liked this anyway. They have never liked the idea of this program. Clearly, as I say, reforms are needed. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday, May 11, after any leader time, the Senate resume consideration of S. 3217, and debate concurrently the pending Sanders amendment No. 3738 and the Vitter amendment No. 3760; that prior to a vote in relation to each amendment, there be a total debate limit of 80 minutes, with 20 minutes each under the control of Senators Sanders, Vitter, Shelby, and Dodd, or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of all time, the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Sanders amendment, followed by a vote in relation to the Vitter amendment, with no amendment in order to either amendment.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, Senators should expect two rollcall votes to begin at approximately 11:30 a.m. tomorrow. The votes will be in relation to the Sanders and Vitter amendments to the Wall Street reform bill.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, the Senate resume consideration of S. 3217, Wall Street reform, as provided for under the previous order; and finally I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess from 12:30 until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus luncheons.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, let me commend our two colleagues, Senator Tester and Senator Hutchison, for this proposal. As I said several times yesterday, I think this is a very sound contribution to this bill for the very reasons outlined this morning by Senator Hutchison and Senator Tester earlier--reducing the cost to our community banks at a time when obviously they are all feeling tremendous pressures under this economy. So I am a strong and ardent supporter of their proposal, and I am confident it will be overwhelmingly supported by our colleagues. Let me quickly add we are going to be moving on after that vote to the Shelby, et al., amendment regarding consumer protection and complete replacement for the title. My colleague from Texas has written to me along with Jay Rockefeller regarding the Federal Trade Commission's interests, and we have worked that out, I believe, to the satisfaction of my colleagues on the Commerce Committee. But I draw to the attention of Members the amendment we will be voting on does great damage to the FDIC's rulings and abilities in this legislation. I urge people to take a good look at what we are going to be asked to support, as it deprives the FDIC of some of the very authority and rulemaking that I think we want to preserve in our legislation. So I will address the Shelby amendment after the Hutchison-Tester amendment is disposed of. But let me say in response to the minority leader, one of the strongest features of what has happened to our country over the last several years is we have had seven different Federal agencies that have divisions on consumer protection. They have been around for a long time. The reality is, most of them were asleep at the switch and were treated as second-class operations within their prudential regulator to such a degree that even though we mandated legislatively to protect home mortgages and people, they never even promulgated a single regulation in this area. Small businesses watched credit card rates go through the ceiling. Many people who rely on that ability are watching their rates jump from 5 percent to 22 percent, which is not uncommon. So the idea that this has been a division between bureaucracy in Washington and what happens on Main Street is a complete aberration. We have seen 7 million people lose their homes, many of them because they were lured into deals they never could afford at the fully indexed price. We saw the outrage expressed by consumers and we saw consumer credit cards again where rates exploded, making it difficult. There are all sorts of features. This bill covers only financial products and financial services. That dentists and butchers and retailers on the street are going to be affected by this is a complete myth, totally so, and the provisions of the bill couldn't be more clear about it. There are no new regulations. We are taking existing consumer laws, things such as truth in lending, fair credit. Some legislation goes back 50 years to protect consumers and others from the kind of activities people have to worry about every day, in terms of making sure they are not going to be abused by people who would take advantage of them. The question is whether anybody is going to enforce any of this. So by setting up this agency in the Federal Reserve, we are giving them independent rulemaking authority, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate as an operation, and then working in consultation with prudential regulators so we don't end up with a conflict between the safety and soundness requirements of our financial institutions and the consumer protection issues. In the absence of this, what we are confronted with every year is having to draft legislation to deal with one consumer problem after another, and we all know how long that can take, if it ever gets done at all. In the meantime, we see what happens to average citizens who have paid dearly. As to the whole shadow economy, community banks are right to be annoyed. Here they are located on one street corner, and they have a payday lender on the other corner completely unregulated. Here they are as a community bank having to go through a regulatory process to make sure things are working right and yet the shadow economy operating maybe 100 yards away and no protections. Under this proposed amendment, we require assessments of community banks to pay for the regulation of the nonbanks. Here they go again. Another cost. Our bill does none of that. The cost of the consumer protection agency comes out of Fed money; no assessment, no appropriations to support it. This one requires an assessment. Here we are going to adopt an amendment, the Hutchison-Tester amendment, which reduces the cost to 98 percent of consumer banks, and the next amendment adds an assessment onto them. We have to be a little bit consistent about this. So that is what the Shelby amendment does. There is an assessment in his bill on community banks, on the nonbank community. So while nonbanks will pay some, the other ones do. We don't do that in our bill. I think there are so many assessments out there already. That shouldn't be the case. We consolidate so you get clarity, not seven agencies telling you what consumer regulation you ought to follow or not. They deserve clarity in thought so there is a consistent line of what is occurring out there and that consultation and cooperation with prudential regulation so we don't have the conflicts. We spent a lot of time going through this. This amendment, the provision of the bill, is one that was worked on, by the way, on a bipartisan basis as we were drafting it so we could have this feature of the bill. Again, I am willing to listen to ideas on how we can strengthen this and make it more clear against some of the accusations that we are reaching into Main Street on this legislation. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not reaching into it at all. Obviously, any proposal deserves to be looked at again and other ideas that can tweak it and make it look better. But the idea that we are going to level assessments--the FTC gets damaged, in my view, as it is presently written. I think people need to read carefully what they are going to be asked to vote on in the Shelby amendment and then walk away from it. It is worse than the status quo in many ways. It takes a huge step back. If there is anything we have learned in the last 2 years, it is those small businesses, those people out there who rely on the flow of credit, the access to capital, to see to it there is going to be someone watching out on a consistent basis to what happens to them, we believe we have a very strong provision in our legislation. Senator Tester is here to close on the amendment. I apologize for drifting off into this other area. I see my colleague and friend from Massachusetts. But I know Senator Tester wishes to be heard on the Hutchison amendment. So I apologize to my colleagues. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, first of all, if I may, let me acknowledge the contribution of the Presiding Officer, my colleague from New York. Everyone brings value to this Chamber from time to time based on what they have done in their earlier lives. I thank her immensely for bringing her background and experience to this critical debate we are having. She spent a lot of years working in this area of the law, knows it well, and I have come to appreciate her counsel and advice and thoughts on all of this, and I want to acknowledge that, if I may. Madam President, as I said at the outset, there are four major pieces of this bill of ours, and I will add a fifth, obviously, dealing with the derivative section that was worked on by the Presiding Officer as a member of the Agriculture Committee, Blanche Lincoln being the chairman of the Agriculture Committee. Title VII of this bill deals with that section. The Banking Committee side deals with the four other major parts of this bill, and they are, No. 1, end too big to fail; No. 2, set up an early warning system--and I am being simplistic in describing these--deal with the derivatives and the so-called exotic instruments; and have a strong consumer protection feature to this bill. Those are the four points. We have resolved, I believe to virtually all of our satisfaction, the too-big-to-fail argument. We did that yesterday. And again, I thank my colleagues, particularly Senator Shelby and others, for helping us work through that to come to a conclusion that ends the debate as to whether the bill before us ends too big to fail. I think that in itself would be justification for supporting the legislation--knowing that if we adopt this legislation, as I am hopeful we will, and Lord forbid we are confronted with another major economic crisis, we will not be faced with the choices we were in the fall of 2008 where the American taxpayer wrote out a check for $700 billion to bail out major financial institutions that were on the verge of collapse. We were told that if they did so, the financial system of our country, and possibly globally, would melt down, to use their words. What we wanted to avoid was ever being put in that position again, where you had the implicit guarantee that the Federal Government would write that kind of check. We have done that now in this bill, so let's check that box. Too big to fail is over with, and this bill takes care of that. We need to pass the bill, and we need the President to sign it so that it becomes law. But as of right now, we are far closer to resolving that issue than ever before. The derivative section of the bill and so forth--I know people are working on this and working with Senator Lincoln and others on that section of the bill. I respect immensely their efforts to make sure we can arrive at a compromise. We think we have good provisions in the bill, but I think all of us recognize other ideas and thoughts are always welcome. So that is being worked on. The sort of radar, the look-ahead approach to our legislation, I don't think there is any debate about, so that box has sort of been checked. Maybe someone has some amendments on what they would like to do to strengthen it but not the idea that we have an early warning system so that we pick up these problems far earlier than we did or were willing to acknowledge as they were developing within the residential mortgage market as early as 2005 and 2006, beginning to explode in 2007, and then, of course, watching the events of 2008, culminating in the fall with the decisions we had to make in order to stabilize the financial system in our country. Had we had that early warning system--more than just one set of eyes at the Federal Reserve, which did, to put it mildly, a very inadequate job of picking up what was occurring in the real estate bubble--we would never have found ourselves in the situation we did in our country in the fall of 2008. We believe the early warning system will be a major step in limiting the kinds of problems we have seen in the last couple of years. It does not stop the next economic problem. There will be another economic crisis. Future generations will deal with that. There is nothing in this bill that prohibits us or guarantees us that we have once and for all avoided economic crises. First of all, we are no longer in total control of that within our own country. How many more headlines do we have to read about Greece and what is occurring there--the riots in the streets today because of the economic decisions they are making to stabilize their country. These are already having an effect globally. So while we can do a lot to minimize what happens here, we recognize today that we live in a far more interconnected world that poses its own set of risks. Nonetheless, I think the fact that we have established, on a bipartisan basis--and again, our colleagues Mark Warner and Bob Corker, along with other Members, did a great job, in my view, in crafting that part of our bill. So I think we have done a good job there, and I see very little dissent about it. The fourth piece, the consumer protection, is the one in which we are now engaged. This is a debate that I believe is worth having over the next hour or two and then vote. Let me say to my friend from Alabama, the author of the amendment, and his cosponsors that we have to come and debate this stuff. I am here and will be glad to engage in the debate, but I have one other colleague here right now involved in this question. This is a major part of the bill. People have told me over and over again that this is a big issue for them. I am willing to accept their determination. I think it is a big issue too. But we have about 100 amendments people want to offer, and we have about 39 legislative days between now and the end of this Congress, with an awful lot to do. Now, I can't get there for you. I can't get your amendments up if others insist upon elongated times on the consideration of their amendments. We have all been debating consumer protection for years now, particularly over the last 18 months. There is no reason to have a protracted debate on this question. My Republican friends have offered a substitute to my bill on this issue, and I welcome that substitute. We need to now debate it and then vote on it and move on to the next issue. Madam President, I am delighted to see my good friend, who just arrived to engage in this discussion. So let me address this issue of consumer protections in terms of both what we have in the bill, reading the language of it, and what the alternative would do. Let me first of all say that I listened to my friend from Nebraska, Senator Johanns, a wonderful member of our committee and a person I have come to respect very much. He has been very productive and very helpful in the Banking Committee. But the idea, to use his language, that we are covering florists and accountants and lawyers and dentists--nothing could be further from the truth. I guess the old adage is, if you say something often enough and repeat it often enough and if it goes unchallenged, it becomes a fact. It is not a fact. In fact, it is anything but a fact. I know they wish to use that argument to try to pass their amendment or to defeat the sections of the bill I have included, but I cannot say it any more clearly to my colleagues. I believe it is section 1027 of the bill. You have all got copies of the bill on your desk. Read section 1027 when you come to the floor. It is not complicated legislative language. It says specifically the only reason you would be covered by the consumer protection language in this bill is if you are significantly involved in financial services or financial products. I realize the word ``significantly'' is what people want to work on, and I am willing to listen to some ideas as to how we can define that word ``significantly.'' That is not a bad point. I understand that. But don't tell me it covers a florist under any definition of the words ``significantly involved in financial services and products.'' It excludes retailers and merchants across the country. Again, I am willing to debate all sorts of language here but don't make me debate completely false allegations about what is in the bill. At any rate, we have been working on our bill for a long time. My compliments and thanks to my colleague from Alabama for the efforts yesterday and so forth. But this is a very important part of the bill. We have worked to create an early warning system, as I mentioned, and of course too big to fail, but consumer protection is critical because it goes to the very heart of what we are trying to do. In fact, it was consumers, small businesses, families, individuals, farms that were adversely affected. Wall Street did fine, as we have seen. Some people lost some jobs along the way. A couple of these large institutions did collapse. But we have heard about the bonuses that went to top executives. The buildings are still there. They have been making record profits over the last couple of years. But what happened to those millions of people who had a home that now is gone? What happened to those 8.5 million jobs? Gone. What happened to those retirees in our country who watched 20 percent of their retirement evaporate? What happened to those people who still have a house but the value of that home has declined by 30 percent in the last year and a half? I don't know what you call them; I call them consumers, the average person in our country who did not do anything except try to hold body and soul together, got lured into a bad deal by people who were unregulated and were willing to convince them they could buy a home they never could afford, knowing that the fully indexed adjustable rate mortgage was going to wipe them out. I talked about Dolores King, who was the first witness I brought to our committee 3 years ago, in January or February of 2007. She was a retiree in Chicago who worked as a librarian for 30 or 40 years. Her husband had died. She had about a $30,000 or $40,000 credit card debt and some unscrupulous broker came in and convinced her she needed to rewrite her mortgage and an adjustable rate mortgage would work for her. She lost everything. She lost her home--70 percent of her fixed retirement income went to pay that mortgage. So when people tell me you cannot get consumer protection, when that automobile company a few weeks ago had to recall its cars because the accelerator got stuck, they got recalled. Did Dolores King get her mortgage recalled because it was faulty, when she lost her home? That is what consumer protection does. If you are in the business of financial services and products, having someone watch out for the average citizen ought not be such a radical idea when we talk about financial reform. We have this in a way, on a bipartisan basis, I might add, that sets up an independent consumer protection agency housed at the Federal Reserve. Its director is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. It has the authority to write rules on consumer protection in the financial services area where financial products are involved. Then of course it has examination and enforcement authority--only for those institutions that have assets more than $10 billion--for enforcement; otherwise, it is done at the local level. The rules are the same. We don't write any more rules. The rules are there. They have been around in some cases for 50 years--truth in lending, fair credit, RESPA--all of these laws in place. All we are saying, can someone enforce them and examine institutions and determine whether they are living up to them? Right now there are seven agencies that have a consumer protection division. For a huge part of our economy, no one is watching them. One of the very legitimate complaints our community banks make: We get regulated but that guy down the street, that payday lender, no one is watching out what he is doing every day, and we are disadvantaged. Our bill stops that. If you are a payday lender, you are under the same rules that banks would be under--at least have someone watching out there. That is a major step forward. We recognize a major part of our economy's collapse or near collapse was in the shadow area of our economy. Our legislation fills those gaps. We understand, or should understand, how important having an independent agency with rulemaking authority is. Again, the issue is-- wait a minute, you have to be careful, Senator, because you have safety and soundness and the prudential regulators have to be considered in all this. That is a legitimate point. I don't disagree with that, although I think sometimes the accusation that there is this great conflict is exaggerated. Our bill says the prudential regulators have to examine and look at the rules coming out. If they vote, two-thirds of them, and say that rule creates a conflict or some problem, it does not go into effect. There is not another agency in government that can have its own regulations or rules vetoed by another group of regulators. That was a suggestion, again, by Republican colleagues to include in our bill, to provide the kind of safeguards against potential conflicts of interest between safety and soundness and consumer protection. Again, that today with seven agencies tasked with consumer protection, not one of which did the job to anyone's satisfaction in the lead-up to this crisis, ought to be justification alone for what we are trying to do. Our legislation will have an independent director appointed by the President and confirmed by this body, as I said. They will have a dedicated independent budget paid for by the Federal Reserve Board. The proposal we are being asked to vote on adds additional assessments to banks and to nonbanks. We just got through adopting the Tester-Hutchison amendment regarding assessments, to reduce the assessments on community banks. If you adopt the Shelby amendment, you are going to add assessments on again. Here we vote on one hand to take them away, and now with an amendment--this asks to put them back on and is asking our community banks for additional assessments to cover the activities of nonbanks. I thought I heard my colleagues say around here we ought to be more sensitive to what is happening at the community bank level. Yet this amendment my colleagues are going to be asked to vote for does the opposite. So be very careful when you get up and vote for this amendment to explain why, later, if in fact it gets adopted, this bill does, why we are adding assessments to those banks. Our bill will have an office of financial literacy to ensure consumers are able to understand the products and services being offered, which was a major problem in the last crisis, and a national toll-free consumer complaint hotline so Americans have somewhere to go when they need to report a problem. Our bill will make us empowered to write consumer protection rules governing any institution, bank, or payday lender that offers consumer financial services or products, and only those businesses that do that. In short, we are ending the alphabet soup of distracted and ineffective regulators and replacing it with one single, empowered, focused cop on the consumer protection beat. Again, a complaint, I think legitimately, is when you have seven agencies with consumer protection jurisdiction--I think the lack of clarity is important. My colleagues should understand that. My colleague from Alabama has come out with a Republican substitute for the consumer protection bureau. I am surprised. I know my friends were not going to agree with the consumer protection provisions as strongly as some of the ones in my bill, and in some of my more pessimistic moments I thought they might want to maintain the status quo, but this is worse than the status quo. This is a major step back. This substitute actually goes backward, making it easier for unscrupulous lenders to rip off the American public, businesses, and families. It is a stimulus package for scam artists, that is what it is, this amendment; nothing short of that. For the life of me, I cannot understand, after months of hearings, months of analysis, months of discussion regarding the fact this financial crisis started with a failure of consumer protection, anyone would think that the right solution is less consumer protection. Yet that is exactly what this amendment does. It is as though we are in a deep hole and we spent a full year debating how to get out and our Republican friends' solution is: Keep digging. I am going to walk through the provisions of their substitute but, in short, here is why it is simply unacceptable. First, when it comes to writing new consumer protection rules, the Wall Street substitute--and that is what it is--relies on the same regulators who screwed up the country in the first place. Why would you ask them to do it again? Second, when it comes to enforcing rules, their plan actually makes things worse, reducing regulators' ability to stop rip-offs and leaving American families even more vulnerable. Third, the Republicans' substitute wants to raise taxes on community banks and credit unions to pay for the regulation that will not even happen. Fourth, they want to make it easier to sell Americans mortgages they cannot afford which, if you have been paying any attention at all to what has been going on in the last 18 months, is the very reason we got into this mess in the first place, making it easier to sell Americans mortgages they cannot afford. Fifth, to top it all off, this substitute eliminates the provision of any consumer protection proposal that targets discrimination in lending. How on Earth could anyone be against ending discrimination in lending? Yet that is also a part of this substitute. If you look at how we got into the crisis and you conclude that the answer is to weaken consumer protection, you are doing it all wrong. Let me go into a bit more detail, and then I see my colleagues want to be heard as well. The first important change in the Republican substitute is, instead of having an independent agency write consumer protection rules, it puts the task in the hands of the same distracted and ineffective regulators who failed so badly in the first place. What would that mean for the consumers? Here is a preview. One of those regulators has already demonstrated itself to be anticonsumer, opposing proposed rules to keep credit card companies from retroactively raising interest rates on outstanding balances. I can speak firsthand. I am the guy who wrote the credit card bill. The agency that fought me on it now is going to be tasked with the job of protecting people from it. For the life of me, of all the agencies you could have picked to run this in your bill, you picked the one agency that has fought us on credit card reform. It is stunning to me that someone would actually write a substitute tasking this agency, knowing this was the agency that did so much damage, was opposed to the idea that we put limits on interest rates to be charged on outstanding balances. That is not putting consumer protection at the heart of our financial system, that is putting consumer protection in the backseat, where it has been for far too long. That is not the worst of it. The Republican substitute limits enforcement powers to ``large nonbank mortgage originators.'' Large nonbank mortgage originators--other finance companies will avoid enforcement unless they demonstrate a ``pattern or practice'' of consumer abuses. In other words, their version of the consumer protection agency will not be allowed to prevent abuses committed by commercial--or banks, or payday lenders, check cashers, credit card companies, debt collectors, car dealers who are involved in the finance business, and a wide range of the worst actors in the subprime mortgage industry, until it is already too late for potentially thousands of consumers to be protected. It is as though they want to create a police department that is allowed to enforce laws against littering. Maybe they will cut down on littering, but to leave the same regulators to deal with the rest of the financial sector, they are essentially turning a blind eye to every other kind of crime out there. In fact, it is like legalizing those crimes by eliminating the Federal Trade Commission authority to police unfair and deceptive financial practices in these other sectors. The substitute is worse than the status quo, and the status quo is very bad indeed. Meanwhile, the substitute raises taxes on potentially any nonbank financial services company. It allows the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to raise assessments on banks, including community banks and credit unions. In fact, their plan would ask credit unions to pay for the regulation of their nonbank competitors--the same competitors who will be getting a free ride, exempted from any Federal oversight whatsoever. Our plan is to have the Federal Reserve pay for enforcement. Their plan is to have community banks pay for enforcement, and then do not have the enforcement, of course. That is a tax increase they don't need and one that our depository institutions, so critical to rebuilding our economy, cannot afford. The amendment also prohibits the establishment of strong mortgage underwriting standards. We all know how important it is to establish better underwriting standards. If we had rules in place 2 years ago that required banks and mortgage lenders to make loans only to people who could show that they have the ability to repay them, we would not be in this mess--if that had been the case. The amendment before us would prohibit the new division we have proposed to create from issuing commonsense rules like these. If you had to pick one thing in this bill to undermine and ensure that we have another financial crisis, in my view, this would be it. The substitute also eliminates as an objective of the new consumer division the goal of eliminating discrimination. I believe this goal is essential to restoring America's faith in our markets. In short, I find it impossible to work with this proposal. There are ideas I am willing to listen to, that we might define ``significantly'' and things like that. That is fine. I understand that. But this approach does more damage than you can imagine. Again, to go back to what I said at the outset, we have spent a lot of time talking about what happened to the big firms on Wall Street and what happened to large institutions and large manufacturers. The root cause of the problem we are in began because there was a total disregard for small businesses and families and individuals out there; that they could take advantage of them, as they did, because they could sell off--they could get paid immediately, they securitized these crummy mortgages out there, leaving that home owner in a situation they could never afford to sustain, and the house of cards came tumbling down. And it all began--it all began--with that problem. I say, respectfully, this proposal goes right at the heart of the very issue we must address in this bill, in addition to all of the other aspects we are talking about. There is no more very important vote we will cast, in my view, in this debate than this one. If we walk away from providing the safeguards for the average American--I do not care what their politics are, what their ideology is, anything else, they deserve to know in this debate, at long last, they are being considered, that watching out for them is part of this. The outrageous case that this somehow reaches into retailers and merchants is highly offensive to me. It is the last thing I would ever suggest to my colleagues, that we somehow get into the business as Federal regulators of poring over florists and dentists and butchers and accountants and lawyers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This goes after those businesses involved in financial services and products. It does so in a way that provides clarity, provides an opportunity for those institutions to be regulated, to know what rules they have to follow, and who is in charge of insisting that they meet those obligations. So with that, I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. My hope is we will vote fairly soon. Again, we have hundreds of amendments that people want to be heard on, and we do not have all of the time in the world to deal with it. So we have to move on on these issues. I think people understand the debate. They can read the amendment. I urge you to read 1027 in our bill, the section dealing with consumer protection, dealing with who is covered. Then we will have a vote.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, before turning to my colleague from New York, let me say how fortunate I have been as chairman of the committee to have Senator Bennet as a member of our committee. I want to thank him immensely. He is a new member of the committee, but, again--like the Presiding Officer, like my other colleague from New York--I cannot tell you how valuable it has been having people who understand this issue and who bring to this Chamber a previous life rich with the experience of understanding these issues. So let me thank the people of Colorado for having the Senator here. What a difference the Senator has made in the consideration of this legislation. Some of the newest members of the committee--and I think my colleague, the senior Senator from New York, would acknowledge this-- some of the newest members of our committee made some of the most valuable contributions to this product, which is further evidence that you do not have to be here that long. In fact, sometimes maybe the shorter time you are here, you bring that kind of fresh experience from our States and across the country. So I did not want the moment to pass without expressing to Michael Bennet of Colorado my deep, deep appreciation. I say to the Senator, I thank you for your leadership, your thoughtfulness, and the contributions you have made not only to this product but to others during your tenure.

Mr. DODD. Thank you.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by our colleague from Maryland, which would protect whistleblowers. We have all learned, over the many months of discussions since the collapse and fall in 2008, of the culpability of the credit rating agencies--in terms of what was sold in the market place, relying on the reputation of the credit rating agencies and their classification of these bundled mortgages. We have had a lot of discussion about how best to do this, to rein in the credit rating agencies so we get far greater reliability and due diligence out of them. One thing for certain that would clearly help is the Cardin amendment. It may not solve all the problems with the credit rating agencies, but it is going to be a major opportunity for us to be able to break down the bales that exist. A significant part of our bill improves, we think, regulation. This bill contains several provisions that will make rating agencies more transparent, accountable, and accurate. That will increase the SEC's regulatory performance, and that will reduce investors' reliance on ratings issued by nationally recognized statistical rating organizations. Senator Cardin's amendment complements this provision in the bill, and I commend him for it. It adds employees of nationally recognized statistical rating organizations to a list of already protected whistleblowers. It is a valuable contribution to this bill, and I thank him for it.

Mr. DODD. I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DODD. I yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, a member of the Banking Committee.

Mr. DODD. I don't think I have any time left, do I?

Mr. DODD. I yield it back.

Mr. DODD. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President: We are voting first on the Ensign amendment, is that correct?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 3733