Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I see two of my colleagues who have been deeply involved. I mentioned them earlier in their absence. I thank Senator Corker and Senator Warner for their hard work. As I said, this goes back months, title I and title II of the bill. I have thanked them a lot already. They put in a tremendous amount of time with an awful lot of people on how best to draft this legislation. Everybody always has ideas and thoughts about all of it. I am grateful to both of them for their tireless efforts, and their staffs. I yield the floor so each can comment.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I thank our colleague, the chairperson of the Agriculture Committee, for her work and the work of her staff and others and for her statement today inviting all of us to be involved in this process. I commend her. I thank her for the fine work. I am going to propose a unanimous consent request that has been cleared by our respective leaders. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:45 p.m. today, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following calendar numbers: 728, 701, and 702; that prior to each vote, there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; that upon confirmation of the nominations, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that the Senate then resume legislative session; that upon resuming legislative session, there be 4 minutes of debate prior to a vote in relation to the Boxer amendment No. 3737; that upon disposition of the Boxer amendment, the Senate then proceed to a vote in relation to the Shelby-Dodd amendment, which is at the desk, with 4 minutes of debate prior to a vote in relation to the amendment, with all time divided in the usual form, with no amendments in order to the amendments covered in this agreement, prior to a vote in relation thereto; further, that the Senate then consider en bloc the Snowe amendments Nos. 3755 and 3757, with no further debate in order with respect to the Snowe amendments and with no amendments in order to the Snowe amendments; that the next amendments in order be one from the Republican leader or his designee regarding consumer protection, and the Tester-Hutchison amendment No. 3749.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. If my colleague will yield.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, before they begin debate on the next amendment, I thank my colleagues. This has been a difficult time even getting to this point. I thank Senator Shelby and his staff and my staff and others. We have had a vote on the Boxer amendment, 96 to 1. We had a vote, 93 to 5, on the Shelby-Dodd amendment. We adopted two Snowe amendments in the last hour. That is a pretty good beginning on this bill. I want to tell my colleagues I have received about 95 amendments to the bill that people will propose. I believe Members ought to be able to be heard on their amendments. This is something that will have to be self-imposed discipline, to some degree, but if Members will restrain themselves on time, more colleagues will get a chance to be a part of the bill and to be heard. If you ask for too much time, it will make it difficult. I just ask people to be considerate of each other. Most times, an amendment can be made--a big amendment--with an hour or two of debate and others less than that, maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes equally divided. Again, I am not suggesting some amendments are more important than others. If you bring the amendments to us for review, perhaps we can adopt some or make them part of a managers' amendment. We will both have to check them out. If we can do that, we can reduce the number significantly. I think we have some smart proposals. I cannot do that alone. My colleague will have to agree with that. It would help us a great deal if we can move this along, and I say that respectfully. I don't know whether we have an agreement on when we might vote on this amendment. I will ask my colleague to give us some idea. I would like you to think about how much time you would like, and keep in mind your fellow colleagues who would like to be heard on their amendments.

Mr. DODD. Yes, I am glad to yield.

Mr. DODD. There isn't one. This amendment will be agreed to. It is not going to require a vote. Other matters will require debate and discussion. That was the only reason to do this--to get it in the queue--and at some point today there will be an agreement to accept that amendment. They just didn't do it yet. I don't have a particular queue lined up. It is my intention to ask Senator Sanders to offer his, once we complete this--to be the next in line. I ask my colleagues to, instead of jumping up one after another trying to get in the queue, come and talk to us and let us orchestrate it in a way that will allow for consideration of various parts of the bill.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Texas, a member of our committee, Senator Hutchison. There are a lot of amendments people will offer that subtract or add provisions to the bill. Her amendment with Senator Tester and others is a very important piece. This could be a separate bill. It could be a freestanding idea. This would qualify as such an idea. Maybe it doesn't sound like much to people, but to consider the liabilities, that really gives a far more accurate picture of the financial condition of a smaller bank. Therefore, the assessments make so much more sense if you have a fuller view of how that institution is doing. It is so painful, on Friday afternoons after 4 or 5 o'clock, every week, 5 banks, 6 banks, 10 banks--I feel so bad when I hear the names-- a lot of them in small towns in our country, maybe small amounts, some of them a little larger--you think about a small town where there might be one lending institution, maybe two but not much more than that--when one closes its doors, what it means to a community to lose that lending institution where everybody knows everybody and you don't have to have a computer printout to know whether Mrs. Hutchison or Mr. Dodd is going to be able to meet that obligation; they have known the family. They know how it works, to be able to help them by reducing the burden financially on them. At the same time, we need to keep up that insurance because you want to protect depositors. However badly you feel--and I do every week when I read the names of the smalltown banks that have to close their doors--you want to make sure those customers can show up Monday morning and handle their finances. Shifting the burden a bit more to larger institutions that can afford to do so is a great idea. As my colleague knows, I was prepared to accept it this afternoon. I don't have the right to do that on my own. If I did, if I were king for a moment, I would say: Let's accept the Hutchison-Tester amendment. I am confident we will. I thank my colleague and Senator Tester for offering a very sound, very worthwhile proposal that will be a help to community banks.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, just on my own time, again, I don't necessarily expect agreement on everything, but I wanted to make the point that 40 pages of our bill deals with rating agencies. This isn't a page or two or a thought or two. There are sections that go in this bill from section 931 to 939, with subtitle C: Improvements on the regulation of credit rating agencies. Forty pages of this book deals specifically with ways in which we try to get greater accountability and reform in the credit rating agencies--a very important issue, one that obviously people have additional ideas about, and I accept that. There might be ideas that even strengthen this; I don't claim perfection. But I want to make sure people have looked at the bill before they get up and suggest there is nothing in this bill about it. Quite the contrary, there is a very strong section on rating agencies. So, again, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. With all due respect to my friend from Mississippi who has unfortunately left the floor, I wish to make the point to him that he might not like what I have written--we have written--but there is very strong language in here on getting that greater accountability out of our rating agencies. With that, Mr. President, I notice at least one additional Member who perhaps is going to come over to be heard, so I note 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. DODD. Mr. President, I will be brief at this point. First, let me thank the leadership and my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, for allowing us to get to this point. Now we are on the bill after all this time. I didn't hear all the comments of my friend from Tennessee, but clearly we are making an effort to reach agreement where we can on some of the critical issues. Senator Shelby and I and our staffs have worked very hard over the weekend to try to come to closure on the resolution title of the bill, title I and title II, that Senator Corker spent so much time working on. We thought we had done a pretty good job, but there is always room for improvement to satisfy the interests people have to make sure taxpayers will never be exposed. My hope is we will be able to present that, Senator Shelby and I, to our colleagues to be able to close that issue and move on to the other areas of the bill that people have interests in. We have a number of amendments that I believe should be relatively noncontroversial--either bipartisan amendments that Senators want to offer dealing with the Federal Trade Commission or dealing with the consumer title. There are a number of amendments on which we have already reached some agreement. My hope is we could have some understanding--obviously, I want to wait until Senator Shelby comes over--that we could enter a time agreement, a brief one, on the Boxer amendment. We have all talked about the Boxer amendment, so maybe, hopefully, we could have that vote when we come back from our respective caucus luncheons. I hope at some point shortly thereafter, Senator Shelby and I will offer a proposal dealing with the resolution titles of the bill to close that. I am told Senator Tester and Senator Hutchison have an amendment, which sounds pretty good to us, dealing with some issues involving assessments on small banks that we agree with. I know Senator Snowe and some others have amendments which we have worked on as well which we think are helpful to agree to. Senators Hutchison and Rockefeller on the Federal Trade Commission, we have reached agreement on that as well. There are a number of issues which I would like to at least deal with here where we have consensus. Then, obviously, there are going to be some areas and amendments that will come up that are controversial, that will require a good debate on the floor--hopefully, not an endless one but debate on those matters. I wish to get to those soon. I know my colleagues who have those ideas wish to be heard, and I certainly wish to give them the opportunity to do so. My hope is we will reach time agreements and have up-or-down votes on them. That is the way this institution is supposed to operate. We can avoid filibusters and those who want to extend the debate, even though they are not happy with the amendment and don't like the outcome. I think we serve our interests well if, with the exception of those that deserve some sort of attention like that, the overwhelming majority of these issues ought to be debated and voted up or down and move on to the next set of issues. In the meantime, we try to work on ones that we know are coming along to see if we can't reach consensus as we have on a number of these items. That is sort of the game plan as I see it, but I obviously am not going to make any unanimous consent requests regarding time agreements until my colleague from Alabama is here in order to agree with that, but my hope is to offer such unanimous consent proposal that on the Boxer amendment we reach a time certain fairly quickly. Again, it is a three-line amendment that I think everyone has had a chance to hear us discuss over the last couple days. That goes to the heart of what Senator Corker was talking about; that is, to emphatically state taxpayers not be exposed to the costs of any institution that fails and is wound down, either through resolution or more likely through bankruptcy--there is not taxpayer exposure. Since we all agree on that and the language is rather clear, my hope is we could spend a few minutes talking about it, making that point and vote and then move on to these other matters, seeking time agreements where appropriate. That is how we will proceed. I have talked to the leader. Obviously, we do not have an endless amount of time for this debate and this subject matter, but my hope is, over the next week or two, to conclude, starting early, staying a little later in the evening than we normally do, even, if necessary, spending some time on the weekend. I know that is not normally done here, but, again, to get to the finish line on this bill is going to take some time, given the numbers of amendments people have on which they would like to be heard, in order to meet the goals of the leadership to complete our work on this bill and move to the other items that must be debated in this Chamber, aside from the financial services reform. We have a lot of work to do in the coming 2 weeks on this matter. My hope is, people will bring their amendments early to us, to Senator Shelby and to myself or our committee members, let us look at them and work on them. Where we can accept or modify them, we will try to do so; where we cannot, provide the time so we can have a debate and vote on your ideas. That is where we stand. I have a number of requests for time. I am not going to make any unanimous consent requests for these, but a number of Members have asked for some time to speak today either on amendments they are going to be proposing or on the bill itself. I have that list. I will try to accommodate those Members, when I can, this afternoon. Again, the first order of business would be on the Boxer amendment. Let me just say about that amendment, that again, the language of the Boxer amendment is rather straightforward. I read it the other day. It is a very brief amendment and very clear. It says: At the end of title II add the following. At the end of the resolution title, which is an elaborate title we spent months working on so as to make sure we would get it right; that is, the presumption is bankruptcy and, in the most painful alternative, a resolution but one that you would not like to take at all. It is bankruptcy, putting these companies out of their misery and the country out of its misery without exposing the taxpayers to the cost. The managers all get fired under our bill. They are gone. Not only do they not get bonuses, they don't have a job having done what they did. The shareholders lose, so shareholders have to pay more attention to what is happening to their companies of which they are owners. Creditors also take tremendous hits in this proposal as well. Senator Boxer has offered some very straightforward language, almost an exclamation point at the end of title II. I will read the amendment because it only takes about a minute to do so. She says: Liquidation Required.--All financial companies put into receivership under this title shall be liquidated. If there was any doubt about the provisions--sentence No. 2. No taxpayer funds shall be used to prevent the liquidation of any financial company under this title. A very clear, declarative sentence. (b) Recovery of Funds.--All funds expended in the liquidation of a financial company under this title shall be recovered from the disposition of assets of such financial company, or shall be the responsibility of the financial sector, through assessments. Then: (c) No Losses to Taxpayers.--Taxpayers shall [again, shall] bear no losses from the exercise of any authority under this title. Again, it is very straightforward, a very clear amendment, one that basically incorporates the views shared by all 100 Members of this body. Maybe there is someone who disagrees. If they do, I don't know who they are. Every Senator I heard address this issue agrees with what Senator Boxer is suggesting with this very important language. It is not a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. This is statutory language in the bill. My hope is, unless people want to have an elaborate discussion about it, it seems pretty straightforward. I would like the first vote to be an amendment on which we can all come together as we begin our debate in this Chamber. Not all amendments are going to end up that way, but on this one I think there is clarity and we ought to get behind it and demonstrate our willingness to say, without any equivocation whatsoever: The taxpayers will not be exposed to the kind of charges and costs that they were in the fall of 2008. I will sit and wait for Senator Shelby to come over and, in the meantime, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, briefly, let me say to my colleague, I appreciate his efforts in this regard. He and Senator Lugar and others have worked on it. They are absolutely right. People ought to have a right to know what their credit scores are. They are critical when it comes to that home mortgage. The interest rate that one pays, the downpayment they are required to meet, are all linked to what the credit score is. We have seen in the past how credit scores can actually be very different than what they should be. When people have had to fight for years to get a credit score restored because of identity theft, all sorts of things can happen. We had a hearing not too many years ago on this issue where the theft of identity requested in a person running wild with some credit cards. The individual who had his credit cards stolen then spent years trying to rehabilitate his own name and reputation because of what had happened and could never get access to his credit scores except that every financial transaction he went to engage in, he paid an awful price because the credit scores were obviously low, in light of the fact that people had stolen his cards and had run up huge debt. So in, everything else he was involved in where an interest rate was involved, his family paid a price for it. Aside from having the knowledge of what it is, the ability to correct it as well is something we have spent a lot of time on. There is hardly an American citizen at one point or another who hasn't run into this difficulty. Today, in an era when so much of our well-being depends upon our credit scores, how we are rated, this becomes a critical point. People ought to know, what is my credit score, so they can either strengthen it or understand why they are being charged the various rates they are. I commend my friend from Colorado and Senator Lugar. He mentioned others who are on the bill with him as well. I thank him for raising it. In the coming days, my hope is we will be able to provide some time to further debate it, if he so desires, and maybe get agreement to adopt the amendment.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, if my colleague will yield.

Mr. DODD. I have read the amendment so many times I could almost recite it verbatim. It is only four sentences. As I understand it, I don't hear any objection to it whatsoever. Someone recently said can't we just accept it. I said I think my friend from California would like to have a vote on it and she has a right to a vote. So, again, my hope is, frankly, we could have an agreement to cast a vote on this at 2:15 when we return from the respective caucus lunches. I am waiting to hear from my Republican friends and colleagues because obviously I can't make a unanimous consent without them being in the room.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I commend my colleague from California who has been patient and has done a good job. I describe her statutory language as sort of the exclamation point in this. As the amendment reads, the very first line--and, again, I don't have to read it--at the end of this title includes the following. So it is at the end of the title. It is complicated to get this right, so we have a winding down and a disposition in receivership and bankruptcy in these institutions. In case anybody had doubts about what the language does, the amendment says the word ``shall'' in every sentence. There are no ``mays.'' The taxpayer ``shall'' not be exposed. There ``shall'' be liquidation. It is very clear what we are trying to achieve. I know nobody objects. We are on the bill. We ought to be able to start on a positive note. We are going to have times of significant division and debate on this bill coming up. I thought it might be worthwhile for the American public to witness a Senate that can actually, as it begins debate, do so with some unanimity. That doesn't happen with great frequency, but to start on that basis makes sense to me. I hope our colleagues will agree with that conclusion and allow this amendment to be voted on as soon as we come back from our caucuses and then move to other amendments, hopefully, where there is agreement, demonstrating again that we are not fighting every single issue with each other. There is a lot of agreement about what ought to be in the bill.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I thank my fellow New Englander and colleague for her two amendments. They are very strong and positive contributions to the bill. She raises very worthwhile points. We have a tendency to think of small businesses all operating the same way, and they obviously don't. Particularly, the seasonal businesses have moments of peak activity and then periods when not much happens, whether we are talking about farming or fishing or tourism, other such industries. It was never our intent that they be adversely affected, but the amendment she has offered makes a huge difference in that regard. I thank her. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency to allow mortgages to be made on the basis of seasonal income is of great value. The second amendment, 3755, on the collection of deposit account data, is a very good suggestion. The last thing we want to do is overburden the regulatory environment. The intentions were sound enough. We have an awful lot of people who go into the sort of nonbank, nontraditional sources of support financially. That was sort of the motivation behind it. Her concern, that this could be burdensome--and the last thing we need is more burdens--is worthwhile. I thank her for her contributions. I support these efforts. I believe, at the appropriate moment, we can adopt these amendments. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, very briefly, let me thank my colleague from Texas. I already commented when Senator Tester of Montana spoke, but I will again thank her and the Senator from Montana and others cosponsoring this amendment. It is a very solid contribution to the bill. Again, I think the idea of considering the total liabilities obviously makes a lot more sense. It alleviates the burden financially on smaller institutions. It adds that larger institutions have a greater capacity to share more equitably in these costs. Whether it is in our State or not, we read accounts of--as we have seen over the last year and a half--small banks having to close their doors. The pressures on the FDIC are mounting. Again, you don't want to keep adding assessments on institutions that are already trying to lend to businesses in their communities, to provide mortgages and the like. This is a very constructive amendment and a very solid idea to add to the bill. I thank the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Montana and the others involved. As soon as we work out time agreements, hopefully we can conclude and give the Senator from Texas a couple of minutes before we vote. It is exactly the way I want to manage this bill, if I can. There is a lot of commonality and many common interests, and too often the public only sees the fights we have and they don't realize how many issues we agree on. We are making the effort to try to reach agreements with each other. Obviously, it is not as interesting a story when we agree. It is not as exciting as when there is a brawl on the floor over some issue. I appreciate the media's appreciation of the brawls, but my intention is to limit that and get us to the point where we have common interests in putting a good bill together. Senator Hutchison's contribution to this amendment does exactly that, just as our colleague from Maine, who talked about her amendment a moment ago. Senator Warner has also been very helpful in this bill. I see Senator Whitehouse here. He is also interested in the subject matter. I thank my colleague from Texas.

Mr. DODD. Madam President, one of the important things about this amendment is this: There will be amendments offered in which we will take things out of the bill or put things in, but this is an idea which has great value as a freestanding idea in many ways. That is why it has great value. This is something we clearly need to do. You can talk about other parts of the bill, but this is an idea that brings value to the bill--significant value, in my view, in light of the economic circumstances we are in. I appreciate this amendment more than kind of a strike something in the bill or modify something. This adds real value to the legislation. I am appreciative of that.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I just wish to say to my friend how much I appreciate his involvement and support and effort over the past many months that we have worked in this area, since the collapse of our economy back in the fall of--well, it began earlier than that, actually, as we witnessed early in 2007 the mortgage crisis occurring across the country. Senator Johnson has been tremendously helpful and valuable. He is my seatmate on the Banking Committee. We have been sitting next to each other on that committee for the past 3 years and working on these issues together. He brought great value to this debate and discussion, contributed significantly to the product before us, and I wished to thank him for that. We have some work to do, obviously, in the next number of days on this bill. But it is a good bill. I appreciate his comments about how it has been a bill crafted not by one member, not by a chairman of a committee but by a group of us on that committee, Democrats as well as Republicans who contributed to this bill. So I thank him for his work. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield before yielding the floor?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I commend my colleague and friend and our colleague from Texas, Senator Hutchison. This is exactly the kind of effort we are trying to achieve in this bill. It is a complicated area of law. I appreciate the work of Senator Tester and others. I didn't hear all. I gather it is Senator Tester, Senator Hutchison, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Harkin--you have a list of Democrats and Republicans here who have worked on this amendment to bring it to this point. I support the amendment. I think this is a strong amendment that will require the FDIC, as I understand it--my colleague will correct me--to change how it charges for deposit insurance, which I think makes a lot of sense--from charging each bank's domestic deposits as it does now, to charging its total liabilities, which makes far more sense. This is a great help to community banks across the country, of which Senator Tester has been a champion since his arrival in the Senate and as a member of our Banking Committee. The change will help ease the burden of FDIC assessments on our community banks by requiring the largest banks in the country to shoulder a little more of the responsibility to rebuild and maintain a sound deposit insurance fund. The amendment is fundamentally about fairness, which I think is one of its most important features. Community banks, as we all know, have been victims of a severe economic recession brought on by the behavior of major Wall Street firms. This has led to a high rate of community bank failures and a sharp increase in premiums necessary to rebuild the FDIC's insurance fund. Meanwhile, the largest banks have been saved by TARP moneys and other government programs that were necessary, obviously, as we all know, to avoid the economic meltdown and catastrophe we were facing in the fall of 2008. The change required by this amendment will lead to a far more equitable distribution of the responsibility to maintain a strong deposit insurance fund. It also will free up new resources for smaller banks to lend to households. So on every front, this amendment is a very positive contribution to this overall bill and one of the real features Members ought to keep in mind as we try to get this bill done. Without this amendment, which I support and want to see included, this will make even additional pressures on our community banks. I thank both our colleagues, from Montana and Texas, as well as our new Senate colleague from Massachusetts, and Senator Harkin as well, for their contribution. As soon as we find a window here to bring this up, we wish to see this amendment get adopted and be part of the bill.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until the hour of 2:15 p.m.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session on May 4, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The President's Proposed Fee on Financial Institutions Regarding TARP: Part 2''.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``ESEA Reauthorization: Improving America's Secondary Schools'' on Tuesday, May 4, 2010. The hearing will commence at 2 p.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on May 4, 2010, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Wall Street Fraud and Fiduciary Duties: Can Jail Time Serve as an Adequate Deterrent for Willful Violations?''

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 4, 2010, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing titled, ``Recruiting and Retaining a Robust Federal Workforce.''