Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, there is a substitute amendment at the desk submitted by Senators Frist, Jeffords, and Kennedy. I ask for its consideration.

Mr. GRAMM. I ask unanimous consent the substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill be read a third time and passed as amended, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent there be a period for the transaction of routine morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 185 and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I join Senator Sarbanes in urging Senators who want to speak on the bill, and I know there will be many, to be here. The clock will run. We will have to take a break right before 12 o'clock to swear in Senator Chafee, but except for that period of time where we will be off this bill, it will be my intention, and I know it is the intention of the leadership on both sides of the aisle, to stay on the bill until we finish it. Today we are bringing to the floor a bill that has been a long time in the making. When Glass-Steagall was adopted, Franklin Roosevelt called it the most important and far-reaching legislation ever enacted by the American Congress. In fact, Time magazine just yesterday called it the defining financial legislation of the 20th century. Yet, while it is both of those, or has become both of those, Senator Glass almost immediately after the adoption of the Act bearing his name began to have second thoughts and started the process of overturning Glass- Steagall. We are here today with a bill which I believe will prove to be the most important banking bill in 60 years. It does overturn the key provision of Glass-Steagall that basically divided the American financial system into securities and banking halves. In the process an unnatural competitive environment was created, and over time, the market and the regulators have through a variety of innovations sought to undo this separation. This bill we bring to the floor of the Senate basically knocks down the barriers in American law that separate banking from insurance and banking from securities. These walls, over time, because of innovative regulators and because of the pressure of the market system, have come to look like very thin slices of Swiss cheese. As a result, we already have substantial competition occurring, but it is competition that is largely inefficient and costly, it is unstable, and it is not in the public interest for this situation to continue. The Financial Services Modernization Act strikes down these walls and opens up new competition. It will create wholly new financial services organizations in America. It will literally bring to every city and town in America the financial services supermarket. Americans today spend about $350 billion on financial services--on fees and charges and interest. Most people who have looked at the capacity for our markets under a more rational system believe, as I believe, that there are tens of billions of dollars of savings for the American consumer that will be produced by the reforms of this bill. This bill will allow Dicky Flatt, a printer in Mexia, Texas, to go to the bank and take the checks he has received in his print shop that day and do his banking, deal with his insurance business, work on the retirement program that he and his wife and his employees have, all in one location with all the efficiencies and synergies that come from that. This is a dramatic bill that will produce new products. It will produce a diversity of financial services and products that we have never seen before. Because of the competition in allowing these three major industries to compete head on, these products will be produced and these services will be provided at lower prices than we have ever seen. There has been great debate in the media, and it will go on until the facts are in, as it should. That is what happens in a free society. But when people ask me who benefits from this bill, I answer, everybody who uses financial services will benefit from this bill: Everybody who borrows money, everybody who has a checking account or a credit card, everybody who buys insurance or securities, everybody who is engaged in modern financial transactions. When you sum all that up, that is everybody in America, for all practical purposes. Once we had decided to tear down these barriers, the logical question was, in providing these new financial services and these new products, how were they going to be provided? Were they going to be provided within the bank itself, or were they going to be provided in a holding company, separated from the bank? We had a very heated debate and, I believe, a debate with very high intellectual content on that subject on the floor of the Senate. It was decided in the Senate by a relatively close vote. It is one of these issues on which everybody's eyes glaze over, but it is an issue that has profound importance. What we have produced in this bill, which is what is always produced in the legislative process, is a compromise. I think the compromise on the question of whether banks should provide these new services within the bank or outside the bank is a good compromise, and I strongly support it. I want to congratulate Larry Summers, the Secretary of the Treasury, and Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, for working out this compromise. I very strongly support it. The compromise allows banks, under very limited circumstances, to provide some of these expanded services within the bank. Basically, those circumstances try to deal with two problems about which many have been concerned. I have been concerned about them, Alan Greenspan was concerned about them, and others were as well. We were concerned about safety and soundness and concentration of financial activities within a bank, driven by the potential for a bank benefiting from a subsidy because deposits are insured by the taxpayer, because the bank has access to the Fed window in borrowing money at lower rates than anybody else, and because of the bank's access to the Fed wire, and transferring funds risk free. I believe the compromise deals with that by very severely limiting what banks can do within the bank, requiring that banks, in order to provide even limited financial services within the bank, be extremely well managed and well capitalized. That is, they have to have at least an A rating on their subordinated debt. Subordinated debt is the last debt to be paid, so if you are a bank and you have outstanding subordinated debt, that obligation is paid after the depositors, after the creditors, after everybody. For a bank to have an A or an AA or an AAA rating, it has to be extraordinarily well managed and well capitalized, and banks will not be able to engage in activities within the bank unless they meet that test. We eliminate the double counting of assets that is inherent in providing these services within the bank. If you provide securities activities and services within the bank by setting up a securities operating subsidiary in the bank, you put capital into that securities business, but because it is under the umbrella of the bank, it counts as part of the capital of the bank even though it is committed to capitalizing the securities business. What we require in this compromise--and I think wisely require--is that we eliminate this double counting by saying the capital that is invested in the subsidiary cannot count as part of the capital of the bank. We limit all subsidiaries that banks can engage in, and the investments they can make within the bank itself, to no more than 20 percent of the capital of the bank. So these are very strict limitations. We have an outright prohibition on many activities. In terms of where we started and in terms of the legitimate concerns that were raised on both sides, I think this is a very strong and a very good compromise. The second major feature of the bill is that we promote and strengthen functional regulation. Under the bill, the general rule is that if you are a bank and you are in the securities business, you are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. If you are a bank and you are in the insurance business, you are regulated by the state insurance commissioner in the area where you are engaged in the insurance business. If you are a bank and you are engaged in banking, you are regulated by the bank regulator. By opting for functional regulation, we preserve consumer protection, we lower costs. One of the issues on which an extraordinary amount of time was spent and which for 99.99 percent of the American people would be meaningless is the whole issue about swaps and derivatives. We currently have literally trillions of dollars of swaps and derivatives in the global economy that have become the underpinnings of the financial structure of the country. They are used by sophisticated parties. We went to great lengths in this bill not to upset the current regulatory environment for these products, to see that we did not create any new law giving anybody any new, or removing any existing, jurisdiction over swaps or derivatives. I thank Chairman Levitt and Chairman Greenspan for their help on this issue. Probably the most contentious issue in the bill, as it turned out, was not the decision to repeal Glass-Steagall but what to do with the so-called Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA. The CRA was a bill created in 1977, that started out as a very small program, but over the years it has grown to be a very large program with increased enforcement and with greater impact due to the tremendous mergers taking place among financial institutions in America. CRA has literally become bigger than General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler combined. It has evolved in such a way that it not only involves loans but cash payments. Concerns were raised--and I as chairman of the committee raised many of those concerns--that we needed to begin to see a reform process. We have two changes in the bill that are related to reforming CRA. By far the most important is the sunshine provision. The sunshine provision is very important because it recognizes that banks are making CRA payments as part of compliance practices, that while these payments are made with private funds, they are made under public direction. As a result, this money takes on a very clear government tint because it is paid substantially in part as a way of complying with a Federal mandate that has become a cost of business for people who are engaged in commercial banking in America. Because of the fact that these funds are paid as a result of a Federal mandate and a Federal law and a Federal regulatory process, these funds do take on the characteristic of public funds. A decision was made in this bill to make two fundamental changes that I believe will change CRA's operation in America. The first was a decision to require a public disclosure and reporting of CRA agreements. I believe this is fundamentally important. If I am a community activist and I am paid $175,000 in cash by a bank to promote objectives within the community, if people who live in the community don't know that I received the $175,000, purportedly to serve the needs of the community, how can they hold me accountable as to how I used the money? Second, we require on an annual basis both the bank and the recipient of money and things of value under the Community Reinvestment Act to disclose in a report what was done with the money. The language of the bill is very precise and quite demanding on this subject. While we have made a strong effort to give the regulators the ability within this language to reduce regulatory burden and paperwork, the language of the law is very clear, and regulators are given no power to decide to negate or refuse to implement this law as it is written. The language is very clear. The language says in setting out the reporting requirement: ``The accounting referred to in [the report] shall include a detailed, itemized list of the uses to which such funds have been made, including compensation, administrative expenses, travel, entertainment, consulting and professional fees paid, and such other categories, as determined by regulation by the appropriate Federal banking agency with supervisory responsibility over insured depository institution.'' It is our intent that the regulators clearly have the authority within reason to try to minimize regulatory burden. If some of this information is included in someone's tax return and they want to submit their tax return in lieu of the report, clearly the regulator has the power to allow that to be done and to make the tax return public. If the tax return did not include this information, it could not be accepted in lieu of this information. The flexibility is flexibility in a reasonable enforcement of the law; it is not flexibility on the part of the regulator to decide to negate the law. As chairman, I say when we wrote ``detailed'' and ``itemized,'' we meant it. As I have discussed with other Members, if one is talking about taking somebody to lunch at McDonald's--we are talking about de minimus amounts--obviously the regulator has the ability to set rules of reason. If one is talking about expenditures of substantial amounts of money either in individual expenditures or the aggregate of those expenditures, or talking about reporting items specifically listed in the law when we wrote it, we meant it. This is critically important. If one is a CRA activist in a city, and they go to Atlanta to a CRA conference, that is a legitimate expenditure to be reported. People expect to see that on their report. If they went to Hawaii for 3 weeks, that should be reported, and people at the local newspaper would have a right, and I think a responsibility, to ask what they were doing with that expenditure. What we are trying to do is reasonable. I urge the regulators to comply with the law and enforce it as it has been written. The second reform of CRA we undertake is regulatory relief. Our ranking member and I got a good laugh out of my arithmetic. Senator Byrd objected to people bringing calculators or computers on the floor, so without the aid of my trusty calculator, I estimated the cost of compliance with CRA was $1 trillion when I meant to say $1 billion. The point is, for small banks, many of whom have fewer than 10 employees, $1 billion is a lot of money. What we have done in regulatory relief is this. We said that every bank in America with less than $250 million in assets will be audited for CRA compliance once every 4 years as the normal audit process if they had a satisfactory rating on their last CRA evaluation. If they had the highest CRA rating, an outstanding, then they would be audited every 5 years. People who work hard to get an outstanding rating would thereby be rewarded. We put into the language the flexibility, for reasonable cause, that the regulators could go back on a case-by-case basis and reduce or increase the intervals at which such audits would occur. By reasonable cause, we mean based on the actions of the bank, the record of the bank. We are not here giving or intending to give, nor can it be reasonably construed to give to the regulators, any kind of blank check to alter the intention of this law. If they have a finding on a factual basis that something has changed, they have the right, as anyone would expect, to go in and to audit more or less frequently. However, they have to have a finding based on facts. When this bill came to the floor of the Senate about a year ago, it had two provisions expanding CRA. One was a provision that said that being out of compliance with CRA was a violation of banking law and could have, in extreme circumstances, subjected a bank officer or director to fines of up to $1 million, and could have given the regulator the ability to impose strong sanctions against the bank as well. That provision is not present in this bill. The second provision of the old bill required a maintenance of a CRA rating in order for a bank to conduct certain activities. That provision is not in this bill. That is critically important, because that would literally have given the regulator the ability to force a financial services holding company, that might have hundreds of billions of dollars in assets in the holding company, to unwind investments as a result of literally one branch being out of compliance with CRA. This bill is very simple and, again, the language is very precise, and meant to be. It says that on the day you become a financial services holding company, you have to have been in compliance with your last CRA report. In other words, with the last audit that was done, you have to have had one of those two ratings, satisfactory or outstanding. This would be in the last CRA report that was filed, and if you had that rating, you are automatically qualified. Once a company becomes a financial services holding company, they can invest any amount of their money and grow any activity already in engaged in within the financial services holding company, without regard to CRA. If they want to commence a new activity, on the date they make that undertaking they have to have been in compliance with CRA as certified on their last CRA report. This does not trigger a new audit. This does not entertain any new protest. It simply is a verification by the regulator that on that day of commencing their new activity, their most recent evaluation will have shown that they had at least a satisfactory CRA rating. The next issue we dealt with was financial privacy. When we dealt with the bill in the Senate, this had not yet become an issue that had inflamed the public's consciousness. We adopted the provisions of the minority substitute related to privacy, and it basically had to do with people who willfully misrepresent themselves to get financial data. We come down on them like a ton of bricks, as we should. But by the time the House acted, financial privacy had become a substantial issue, and the House included very extensive privacy provisions. We have made changes to those privacy provisions, and I believe we have strengthened them, and we have made the bill better. I want to very briefly say a couple of things about privacy. Obviously, in the new world in which we live, we have become accustomed to people knowing a great deal about us. The day I turned 50, I got a kit from AARP with all kinds of applications for AARP and a tube of Preparation H. One might say my privacy was invaded, that somehow AARP found out I was 50 years old. My children got a great laugh out of the Preparation H. One could say that somehow my privacy had been breached, but do we really want a society where an organization such as AARP cannot get access to information about when we turn 50 and invite us to join? I chose not to join because 50 sounded younger every minute to me; 57 sounds younger than it used to. I have hunting dogs, and like many people who have enlightened habits, I subscribe to Gun Dog magazine. I guess because I subscribe to Gun Dog magazine, I get every hunting catalog, every fishing catalog, every dog food catalog, every dog accessory catalog on the planet. I literally get two or three of them a week. Quite frankly, I love getting them. Did Gun Dog magazine violate my most intimate secrets by selling the list so that I get, every once in a while, free samples of dog food or dog bones or a dried pig's ear? I get a lot of things in the mail. I do not think my privacy is being violated. Maybe some people object to that, but I do not. What I have tried to do, and what I think we have done in this bill, is we tried to set a rule of reason. Above the archway going into Delphi, the ancient Greeks wrote: Moderation in all things. It is a hard thing for somebody who feels as strongly about things as I do to remember, but everyone should remember it. We did not want to kill off the information age before it was ever born. We are not writing the final word on privacy. This is something we want to watch and follow and see where abuses are and, when they occur, try to fix them. But, on the other hand, we all benefit. Some people could say we lose. I do not get a Neiman Marcus catalog. One might ask: How come I do not? Neiman Marcus catalogs cost a lot of money to print and mail, and they have somehow figured out enough about me to figure that I do not buy luxury items, so they do not send me a Neiman Marcus catalog. Again, is that an invasion of my privacy? Is my freedom somehow diminished? I do not think so. The point is, if Neiman Marcus can get the catalog to people who are likely to buy something, they can sell it at a lower price, so society benefits. This is what we did on privacy: The most important thing we did was not in the House bill. It was an amendment that was offered by Senator Grams and Senator Santorum that put into the bill for the first time a full disclosure requirement. It requires every bank in America, when you open your account, to tell you precisely what their policy is: Do they share personal financial information within the bank? Do they share it outside the bank? We have a comprehensive listing of the conditions they have to meet. Do they disclose nonpublic information once you are no longer a customer? And what do they do to protect information? Why is this important? This is important because this is the ultimate protection of privacy. If I do not believe a bank protects my privacy, I do not want to bank with them. I can bank with somebody else. If millions of people feel the way I do, you will get banks that will set out policies of not sharing information, and they will attract customers. For example, I am proud to have an American Express card. American Express is a great American company. And I am proud I have been a member since 1970 something. They say that they do not share my information on that card with anybody. I do not get that same guarantee from another card, but I get that guarantee from American Express. I happen to have a variety of credit cards. Obviously, I am not very worried about it, but if I were worried about it, I could just use my American Express Card. So I have an opt- in when people give me full information. If I do not like their policy, I do not become their customer. I can opt out. That is the basic freedom. I just add, freedom is based on knowledge and the right to choose, not based on government. I believe that we are guaranteeing that with full disclosure. Second, we adopted the House provision that said if the bank was going to use, or the financial services holding company was going to let people outside the bank have access to, the information, they have to give you the right to opt out. That provision was adopted. Finally, we have a provision in the language which will allow financial institutions to partner with other financial services providers. This will give flexibility that we hope will be implemented to allow, in particular, small banks to share information with their business partners in a manner so that they can compete with a larger corporation that does a variety of activities within the corporation or among its affiliates. Let me talk about one other issue, and then I want to say some thanks and stop, because I know Senator Sarbanes wants to speak, and we want to go home. This is not the end of the process. I believe this is the most important banking bill in 60 years. But there will be another banking bill within 10 years, and it will deal with commerce. Banking and commerce is already a reality. This bill is a pause, and it is only a pause, and it is not going to last very long. One of the things that is in this bill, which I am opposed to--it was adopted by a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and here we live by majority rule, by and large--but basically this was a provision that said if you went in and invested money as a commercial company, in a thrift--and many people did when many thrifts were in trouble and we did not have money enough to shut them down--that now you cannot sell your charter unless the charter is broken apart into its component parts. I do not believe this provision and other prohibitions against commerce and banking will last very long. It is just my opinion. I do not view with any great horror the possibility of going to Wal-Mart and having them sell financial services. In fact, I view it as something that would be good. They now do it all over America in partnership with city banks in those towns, but they can only get partners where they have enough customers to make it worthwhile to the bank. The idea they might someday be able to provide the service as part of the overall functioning of Wal-Mart, through a thrift charter or through a credit union charter or a banking charter, I see that as a positive thing. I suspect that a very substantial number of Wal-Mart employees do not have a banking relationship with a credit union or an S&L or a bank. Many of their customers do not. And taking services to them, I would view as a public good, not a public evil. But other people see it differently. What we are doing in this bill is agreeing that we have a pause. I do not believe it will last long. I think in 10 years we will have widespread commerce and banking in America. I want to just say some thanks. I thank Al D'Amato. I do not want people to forget that this bill did not start on my watch as chairman. This bill started when Al D'Amato was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. And while that bill did not become law, and while in some ways this bill is very different from that bill, in other ways the two bills are very similar. Al D'Amato did probably his best legislative work in his career in helping to move this process forward. When we started, we started where Al D'Amato left off. So I think the former chairman of this committee is due a substantial amount of the credit. I wanted to be sure that I began with that, and I did not want to forget to say that. I thank Senator Lott for his strong, committed support. I think it is clear, without his support, with the long and difficult negotiations we have had, that this bill would be very different from what it is today. I can assure you, as every Member of the Senate knows, when you have your leadership's support, it is like having a good stone wall to your back in a gun fight. It does not keep you from getting killed, but at least nobody shoots you in the back. It has been a very important thing to me as we have negotiated out this bill, very important in a difficult process. I thank Senator Sarbanes, who is very knowledgeable and experienced on these issues. I thank him for his input, and that has been input that has varied, from issues to issues themselves, to advice on how, as a brand new chairman, I was conducting my part of the conference. I would have to say that more often than not I think he was right in the comments he made. I believe I have learned from that process. I thank Senator Johnson, the first Democrat who signed the conference report. I thank Senators Dodd and Edwards and Schumer and Bayh. They were real catalysts in getting the administration together with us to push the ball over the goal line. I think they contributed significantly in doing that. I thank Chairman Leach, the chairman of the House Banking Committee, who also served as the chairman of the conference. There have been people in the media who tried to portray this conference as a contest somehow between Congressman Leach and me. I do not think that is fair to me or to Congressman Leach. I think Chairman Leach did a great job. I think he contributed to the process. I would have to say there were difficult times in trying to work things out. Our approaches were very different. But in the end, it worked. And the great thing about success is, it has a thousand parents, and we can all claim credit; and we would have all rightly gotten blamed had we failed. I thank Chairman Bliley. I knew Tom much better than I knew Congressman Leach when we started the process. I thank him for his leadership on securities issues and on the bill itself. I thank Congressmen LaFalce and Vento, the ranking Democrat members of the House Banking Committee, for their input and their knowledge and their leadership. I thank Congressman Richard Baker, who I believe is a very talented young man, and certainly one of the most knowledgeable people in the House of Representatives on banking issues. I thank Larry Summers and Gene Sperling. I had many hours of negotiating with them and others, and alone with them. If you could make a living selling them something or buying something from them to resell, you would be pretty good. They negotiated hard. They were totally honorable in their negotiations. I am glad that we reached a product that they have enthusiastically endorsed and I have endorsed. I thank Arthur Levitt, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Chairman Levitt raised legitimate security concerns that I thought should be addressed. I and others sat down with Chairman Levitt and heard him out, and he had a substantial impact on the bill. I thank Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. I have said it on many occasions--and I am always happy to say it again--Alan Greenspan is the greatest central banker in American history; therefore by definition, the greatest central banker in the history of the world. He probably had as much impact on this bill as any non-Member did. His input and impact were always positive. And from the operating subsidiary issue, to virtually hundreds of other issues, his input was critically important. And his general counsel, Virgil Mattingly, is one of these indispensable people who the public never knows about--thinks of them as faceless bureaucrats--but the reality is, his institutional knowledge and good sense had a substantial impact on this bill. I thank all of my Republican colleagues on the conference. We had, at least in my opinion, an effort on the part of some on the House side to try to satisfy everybody. As a result, we got all sorts of amendments that came over to our side of the conference which basically were in conflict with the underlying logic of the bill, many of them popular, as various interest groups tried to go back and recut their deal once more or gain some special privilege or special advantage. I thank Senator Shelby, Senator Mack, Senator Bennett, Senator Grams, Senator Allard, Senator Hagel, Senator Enzi, Senator Santorum, Senator Bunning, and Senator Crapo for consistently and courageously voting down every one of those amendments. We have one of the cleanest pieces of major legislation I have seen and, I believe, one of the cleanest bills that has passed Congress in the last 20 years, in large part because these Members knew what they wanted to do. They took a position, and they stuck with it consistently throughout the process. I thank Senator Bennett, who was chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, the subcommittee with jurisdiction over major portions of this bill. I thank Senator Hagel for his leadership on Federal Home Loan Bank issues. I thank Senators Grams and Santorum on privacy issues. Finally, I want to thank some people on my staff. I thank Dina Ellis, who has done all the hard work on CRA. She is a very sweet lady with a very soft voice, but she is a very serious, tough person. Much of our success in bringing sunshine to CRA and regulatory relief to smaller banks has been due to her great work. I thank Christi Harlan, who has taken the dullest of issues that are totally incomprehensible to most people and done an excellent job in trying to communicate to the media in a form they could understand what was going on and why it mattered. I thank Steve McMillin, who is an indispensable staff member to me. He came to work for me right out of college from the University of Texas. I am from Texas A&M, so I didn't start with any kind of overwhelming expectations. But Steve McMillin has become an indispensable person to me as a legislator. It would be virtually impossible to run my office and do what I do without him. I thank Geoff Gray for his legal work in burrowing in on the issues that didn't seem important until he spoke up. But when he spoke up, they became very important. I thank Linda Lord. Linda Lord, throughout this process, has known more about this bill and more about the underlying law that it changed than all the staff members of all the Members of the House and Senate, of all the staff members of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and all of the outside lawyers who were hired by people to represent their interests, all combined. Her knowledge and the force with which she has presented it have had a dramatic impact on this bill. In fact, the words of this bill are largely her words. She has been an indispensable person in doing this bill. I thank Joe Kolinski, who organized the conferences. It was a nightmare, moving from place to place. He was able to do it all. The mikes always worked. There was plenty of water. It was always crowded, which made people uncomfortable and got them to move on, which was very helpful. Finally, I thank our staff director, Wayne Abernathy. Wayne started on the Banking Committee as an intern and is now the staff director. He knows everything about these issues. I trust his judgment as well as I trust my own judgment. I think I can sum up his contribution--the way I feel about him--by simply quoting a great philosopher who once said: In no way can you get a keener insight into the true nature of a leader than by looking at the people with whom he surrounds himself. I would be very proud to have anybody on Earth judge me by Wayne Abernathy. I think they would be giving me mercy and not justice by doing it. I thank everybody for their contribution, and I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that under the previous agreement I call up the conference report to accompany S. 900, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I thank Senator Sarbanes for his kind remarks and for remembering Bob Rubin, who was a very major contributor to this bill. Let me also say that I think it would be helpful if in the morning everyone will come over so we do not have long pauses. My concern is that we do have a lot of people who are going to want to speak on this bill. We are going to be forced to try to stay with the schedule because the House wants to vote on this tomorrow afternoon. So I hope people will come over and speak so we do not end up with this problem where people are given 1 or 2 minutes when they have something they need to say. I think that can be avoided if people come over early.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, in case any of our colleagues are watching, let me try to outline what we were going to do tonight. Senator Sarbanes and I are going to make opening statements tonight. It is our understanding that no one else wishes to speak tonight. Then it would be our objective to reserve the remainder of our time for the debate tomorrow. Then the Senate would begin the process of shutting down for the evening.

Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we both want to reserve the remainder of our time for use tomorrow.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I can't help but lament that we have an administration that has prosecuted fewer people for gun violations than any administration in modern history. That is something that could be done today. It could have started this afternoon; It could have begun 7 years ago; but it was not.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 309, S. 1232.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, Senators Cochran and Akaka have a substitute amendment at the desk, and I ask for its consideration.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 219, submitted earlier by Senators Fitzgerald, Durbin, Lott, Cochran, and Helms.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and, finally, any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of H.R. 3194, the D.C. appropriations bill. I further ask consent that a substitute amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record. I further ask consent that the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House, and the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. For the information of all Senators, at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, the Senate will immediately resume debate on the conference report to accompany the financial services modernization bill. At that point, Senator Wellstone will be recognized. He has an hour under the unanimous consent agreement. There are approximately 6 hours of debate remaining under the order. Therefore, Senators can expect a vote on the adoption of the conference report tomorrow afternoon. I remind my colleagues of the ceremony to swear in the newest Member of the Senate, Senator Lincoln Chafee. I encourage all Senators to be in the Senate Chamber at 11:30 a.m. to give him a warm senatorial welcome. For the rest of the day and week, the Senate may be ready to consider any available appropriations conference reports or may begin consideration of the bankruptcy reform bill.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of calendar No. 77, S. 688.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 4. I further ask consent that on Thursday, immediately following the prayer, 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, and the Senate then resume consideration of the conference report to accompany S. 900, the financial services modernization bill.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the amendment be agreed to, the committee substitute be agreed to, the bill be read a third time and passed as amended, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statement relating to the bill be printed in the Record.