Paul Sarbanes

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. I understand there are amendments pending. I ask unanimous consent the pending amendments be laid aside so it will be in order for me to offer an amendment.

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SARBANES. That is the basic thrust of it. I am not sure the economic counselor is the right example because I don't think that is covered right now. But currently, as I understand it, you couldn't become a chief of mission or deputy chief of mission.

Mr. SARBANES. Which is, of course, a very important stepping stone on the career of a Foreign Service officer. I take it that currently, the DCM is regarded as a ``management official.'' Even though the deputy chief of mission is not involved in labor-management negotiations, or in developing department-wide personnel policies, he or she does administer an Embassy. So the question then is, should you keep someone who has been an officer in the Foreign Service Association from being able to accept such a position? I don't think we should. I do think they should be prohibited from becoming involved with labor-management negotiations.

Mr. SARBANES. Go ahead.

Mr. SARBANES. No.

Mr. SARBANES. I will yield to the chairman, obviously.

Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator will yield further, in fact, in some of those instances, while we wanted the activity done, we were unwilling to commit our own forces directly in order to do it, and the problem was then resolved by the willingness of other countries to commit their forces in order to carry out these important activities; was that not the case?

Mr. SARBANES. Can I make a 30-second statement, and then I will yield the floor. Mr. President, I simply commend the Senator from Indiana for sounding the alarm in the night, and I very much hope that Members will carefully read through the actual provisions of this legislation. It is very important that they do that. This is a very important issue. I thank the chairman.

Mr. SARBANES. I thank the manager of the bill for his courtesy. I yield the floor. Mr. LUGAR addressed the Chair.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. SARBANES. I commend the very able Senator from Indiana for offering this amendment and for, in effect, crystallizing this issue on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I share his view that this is an extremely serious matter and that the American commitment to the United Nations, despite various assertions we are hearing to the contrary, in fact may be in the process of being seriously eroded. This is a very important amendment. It is my own strongly held view that the interests of the United States have been served by our Nation's active participation in the United Nations and the U.N. system. Over the years, since the end of World War II, the U.N. often has been an effective means of promoting U.S. foreign policy interests. When we work with and through the United Nations, we can leverage our resources and our influence in order to achieve a much greater impact than we could unilaterally. Why do we go to the U.N. and seek these resolutions to sanction various actions we take around the world to serve and protect our national security interests? Because it gives us an international mandate to pursue a course of action, and frequently elicits contributions from other countries. Sometimes, in fact, the other countries are the ones who put their troops on the line, not the United States, in order to accomplish objectives that we regard as important. Now, in the last decade, our status as the U.N.'s biggest debtor has affected our credibility and undermined our leadership with our allies and within the international community. The United States owes over $1 billion to the U.N. for regular activities and peacekeeping, more by far than any other country. Our arrearages are nearly two-thirds of the total amount owed by all countries to the United Nations. There has been a misperception that the U.N. can somehow dictate policies to the United States and force us to undertake actions that do not serve American interests. This is simply not the case. Nothing could be further from the truth. U.N. peacekeeping operations cannot be established without the concurrence of the United States. Of all of these various peacekeeping operations, none of them could have happened without American concurrence in their going forward. As a key member of the Security Council, we are one of five countries with veto power over all resolutions that are considered by the council. We have a veto power that, in effect, can prevent any action of which we disapprove from taking place. As a country, we pride ourselves for following the rule of law and holding our citizens responsible for meeting various legal obligations. In fact, we try to get other countries to follow our example and live up to those standards, both domestically and internationally. It is frequently a tremendous challenge to get countries to respect the basic rights of their citizens and to act in accordance with international law. We ourselves are not now meeting those high standards, as they relate to the United Nations. We undertook commitments under the U.N. Charter, and we have a responsibility to make good on them. The starting point here must be a recognition that this is an obligation that we freely undertook, upon which we have defaulted. We have not met our responsibilities. Now, this legislation, first of all, does not provide money to meet all of our arrears. There has been a negotiating process between Members of the Congress and the administration. The United Nations says, well, this is what we think the United States owes--$1.3 billion and some. The administration says, no, we think we owe just over $1.0 billion. This legislation has in it just over $800 million. It does not even have the figure which the administration states is what we owe to the United Nations, let alone the figure which the United Nations asserts that we owe. The gap between the United Nation's assertion and the administration's position is largely the consequence of a unilateral action by the United States lowering its peacekeeping assessment from 31 percent to 25 percent. We just came along and said to the organization, well, we are going to cut it, just like we are doing here now on regular assessments. This is an organization with clear procedures for working out these responsibilities, and we are simply telling them what the situation is going to be. Now, I have no doubt that if some other country, delinquent in meeting its obligations, showed up with the demands that we have put in this legislation, we would be absolutely outraged. We would say, who do they think they are and what do they think they are doing? They had these obligations and now they are coming in and rewriting them unilaterally and imposing these conditions. These are conditions on past obligations. This is not looking to the future. This isn't saying, well, we rethought the matter and we don't really want to be part of this organization, unless it does such and such and so and so in the future. These are past obligations. These are instances in which many countries have gone out and have put their people at risk, at our encouragement as a matter of fact, and now we come along and we refuse to pay the bill. We are refusing, in effect, to reimburse other countries for sending their troops on peacekeeping missions that we have voted for. Many countries have done that. They have gone and sent their troops, put their troops' lives on the line in order to accomplish these objectives. Our responsibility in most of those instances was to provide the money to cover the activities, activities they were performing for us and for the entire world. Those missions have been accomplished. The bill has not been paid. The approach taken by Senator Lugar would seek to address our previous obligations in a very straightforward manner, and he also, as I understand it, has a proposal to fully meet current obligations, thereby enabling us to break out of the cycle of growing debts and waning influence. Now, it is asserted here that we are not trying to micromanage the United Nations. We just went through this tremendous struggle at the United Nations to get a new Secretary General. The United States was a moving force in that effort and, from all indications, was happy with the change that took place. Now we are throwing a burden on the new Secretary General which I have serious concerns that he can sustain. I want to go through just a few of the kinds of conditions that are going to be imposed here. I urge my colleagues to take a copy of S. 903 and go through it to see the kind of regime it establishes. Ask yourselves whether this is consistent with our Nation's participation in the U.N. for over 50 years now, as governed by the charter. First of all, we say that $80 million can only be made available semiannually every year on a certification that the United Nations hasn't taken any actions that raise their budget over what had been projected. What happens if we get a new peacekeeping responsibility? What happens if there is an outbreak of hostilities somewhere, and finally to help bring it under control the United Nations takes action, as it has done in other places, and there are costs associated with that action? Well, I take it, if they do that without finding an offset--even with our support--we must withhold the money. Twenty percent of the funds made available each fiscal year are going to be withheld to comply with a certification that is contained on pages 158 and 159; $50 million is going to be withheld from disbursement until the Secretary of State certifies that they have cut a thousand posts from the United Nations--995 won't do it; you have to have 1,000. Then the following fiscal year we will withhold $50 million from disbursement until there is a certification that the United Nations is running a vacancy rate of not less than 5 percent. Now, this isn't negotiated with the United Nations. This is not the outcome of extended discussions as to what the United Nations is going to do. This is the Congress telling the United Nations that this is what it must do. So, in effect, we are saying that we are going to run your organization and all you other countries who pay the bulk of the cost will have to live with it. I would note that even with our large assessments, we are still a minority payor in the U.N. overall. Then there is a provision, which I hope to address later, that provides for our withdrawal from the United Nations. We have finally come to the point in this legislation where there is a serious proposition for withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations--not an argument about how much we ought to pay, not an argument about how fast we pay the arrearages, but provisions that set out a process for withdrawal. I am frank to tell you that I never thought I would see the day we would be facing this. We ought to confront this challenge head on. If that is the agenda that is behind all of this, we ought to fight it out on the floor of the U.S. Senate. There are additional conditions that appear in different places throughout this legislation. It is not until you identify them all and look at them all--they are not all in one place--and go through them that you begin to appreciate how heavy a burden is being created here. This bill provides, as the newspaper stories explain today, that if the U.N. does not meet all the benchmarks, they don't get the money. There was a press conference up in New York where some suggested that these ``benchmarks'' were only guidelines. But, clearly, they are not simply guidelines. In fact, they are written as binding conditions which, if adopted by the full Congress, will become U.S. law. So this legislation moves beyond suggestions, recommendations, or proposals. These conditions would be mandatory elements of U.S. law, and would have to be carried out. Now, there is another provision here that, in the next fiscal year, in order to release the money, there has to be a certification by the Secretary of State that the assessed contributions of the United States for the regular budget of the United Nations have been cut from 25 to 22 percent and the following year from 22 to 20 percent. Now, I think trying to negotiate such a reduction is acceptable as a goal or an objective of U.S. policy. But this isn't negotiating a reduction, this is a unilateral condition on which the payment of our arrearages depends. Here is what we are doing. We are coming along and we are saying we are not going to pay all of our arrearages. We are not even going to pay the amount that our own Government has said we owe. We are going to fall short on that score. Moreover, we are going to create new arrearages. So it is not as though we come in and say, yes, we are going to pay all of our arrearages, we will pay our current assessment in full. We do neither of those two things. Then we provide those partial repayments under a whole set of conditions, including that the United Nations reduces our assessment--a matter which, under the U.N. process, needs to be negotiated and arrived at by consensus. I ask Members again to stop and think what their reaction would be if another country showed up in this heavy-handed way and started insisting that this is what would have to be done in order for them to pay up the obligations which they owe. I daresay we would not give them the time of day. So we fall short on meeting the arrearages, we fall short on the current payment, and then we tie these payments to a whole set of conditions. In effect, we say to the United Nations: Well, if you want to get any of this money, you have to do all of this. Now, I think we must proceed on the basis of careful consideration of the United Nations and its role and its importance. If there are those who don't think we ought to stay in the United Nations, we ought to have that debate. As I have indicated, I think the United Nations overall has served our interests. That doesn't mean we agree with every single thing they have done or we necessarily think that it has been run in an exemplary fashion. It has had its ups and downs, no question about it. But the real question is: How did the United States approach the U.N.? How is the United States going to exercise its international leadership in the post-cold war-period? Is the United States simply going to dictate, to simply throw its weight around, and say, ``Well, we are going to make these unilateral judgments. Congress discussed this; now we are going to bring it to the United Nations, and you had better take it, or else?'' They held a press conference in New York the other day. Our Ambassador and one of our colleagues at the outset of this press conference tried in effect to portray the benchmarks as mere suggestions. But that portrayal comes at odds with what Senator Helms said in introducing the bill. He said, and I quote from his statement, ``Most importantly, this bill would prohibit the payment by the American taxpayers of any so-called U.N. arrears until''-- with the ``until'' underlined--``these congressionally mandated benchmarks have been met by the U.N.'' He continues, ``The message to the United Nations is simple but clear: no reform, no American taxpayer money for arrears.'' That doesn't sound like a suggestion. So that is where we find ourselves. I mean we are now at the point where we are going to dictate these conditions. I think it is going to cause us great difficulty at the United Nations. In fact, I think the committee's approach of seeking unilaterally to impose an American position on the United Nations may well alter the very nature of our relationship with the U.N. to our own detriment, let alone to our relationship with some of the major actors at the U.N. Many of them are our closest allies over the years and are very much interested in how the United States revolves this matter. So I commend the Senator from Indiana for bringing this issue forward. The U.N. has been a favorite target of criticism and abuse. But it has done good work over the years, and I think we certainly need it. We need it to continue to function, hopefully in a strengthened position. The benchmarks or preconditions in this legislation--there are close to 40 of them of one sort or another in this legislation, not all in the same place--will not accomplish that. The decision to join the United Nations made at the end of World War II was one of the most significant and momentous decisions made in this century. It came on the basis of a great deal of history which had concluded that the American failure to participate in the League of Nations was a very serious error, and that World War II might have been prevented had the United States undertaken an active international role. The effective workings of the United Nations, as it was envisioned by those who planned it during World War II and in the immediate aftermath, were in effect brought to a standstill by the cold war and the consistent exercise by the Soviet Union of its veto at the security council. The veto, of course, as I have indicated, the United States also has, and has had from the very inception of the United Nations. With the implosion of the Soviet Union and a change in the whole nature of the international arena, the opportunities for the United Nations to carry forward and carry out many of the responsibilities which had been envisioned for it at the time of its founding reemerged in this decade. It is difficult because many of the problems they try to contend with are extremely complex involving enmities and hostilities of long standing. Neither the U.N. nor anyone else has a magic wand they can wave over those conflicts. But there is an opportunity for the United States, working through the United Nations and with the United Nations, to make a major contribution to world peace and to world prosperity. But to do that we need to be full members of the organization. And we need to step up and assume our responsibilities. We are not doing that in this legislation. I am very concerned at what the reaction will be over time. Will they simply swallow it with great resentment? Will they feel when all the certifications can't be made that they really have not been dealt with fairly? Will we be up there managing it in a very detailed way because condition 21 or condition 32 has not been complied with? What do we do when we try to get nations to work with us in a particular direction? We can't compel them to do it. We exercise our leadership in a sense by developing a consensus to support our position because we think it is the right position. And here we are taking a position which is the wrong position because we are failing to do a very basic thing, and that is simply meet our obligations. These are past responsibilities--not future responsibilities. We are using the fact that we failed to meet past responsibilities, and now are talking about meeting some but not all of them to impose a whole string of conditions and requirements on the United Nations. Otherwise you say, ``Well, we simply won't abide by what our obligations were.'' I am frank to tell you that I don't think that is the way a great power ought to behave. The United States is a great power. The United States is the great power in the world today. And with that role come important responsibilities in how we exercise that power. In my judgment, we are failing here to exercise those responsibilities in a manner that will strengthen our posture in the international community. I hope but I fear we may find that this effort has in the end altered the nature of our relationship with the U.N. to the detriment of the United States. Mr. President, I yield the the floor. Mr. HELMS addressed the Chair.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SARBANES. Madam President, this amendment would delete section 1145 in the bill, the section which purports to clarify the remedial authority of the Foreign Service Grievance Board, but which in effect limits the remedial authority of the Foreign Service Grievance Board. I am frank to say I hope we will not do that. The section in question would expressly limit the remedial authority of the Foreign Service Grievance Board to those actions specified in section 1107(b) of the Foreign Service Act. Now, as I understand the Department's thinking in this matter, they believe it is necessary to prevent the Board from relying on other statutes as authority for directing remedies that are not contained within section 1107(b) of the act. Those would include the award of liquidated damages in cases that fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and compensatory damages in discrimination cases. Section 1101(a) of the Foreign Service Act provides the Grievance Board with jurisdiction in cases alleging the violation, misinterpretation, or misapplication of applicable law. Thus Congress has given the Foreign Service Grievance Board the authority to decide grievances under other laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act and the equal employment opportunity laws. It would seem to me that if we have given them the authority to decide grievances under these other laws, that it was our intention that the Board would have the authority to provide the remedies available under those laws. And those remedies, in particular, are the liquidated damages available under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the compensatory damages under the EEO laws. In other words, the Grievance Board ought to retain the authority to provide remedies under the laws over which it has jurisdiction. Of course, first a grievant must be successful in pressing a claim. The question is, having won the grievance, what remedies are available? Now, the Foreign Service Grievance Board's own regulations provide broad remedial authority. If the Board finds that a grievance is meritorious, the Board is authorized to ``take any corrective action'' it deems appropriate that is not contrary to law or the applicable collective bargaining agreement. Furthermore, the act requires the Foreign Service Grievance Board to apply the substantive law that would be applied by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for all grievances alleging a violation of the equal employment opportunity laws. If the Grievance Board is directed to apply the substantive law that would be applied by the EEOC, I see no reason in the world why it would not be able to apply the remedy that would be available to an EEO action. In other words, I am just trying to ensure that the Grievance Board is able to provide appropriate remedies. These remedies, liquidated damages and compensatory damages, are available under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the EEO laws, and those laws have no exemption in them for the Department of State or other foreign affairs agencies. Nor do they provide any rationale for excluding the foreign affairs agencies from laws with which that every other Federal agency must comply. I am fearful that by denying or limiting the remedial authority of the Foreign Service Grievance Board, the effect of section 1145 would be to require those with grievances to go into court, or through the EEOC, rather than through the grievance procedure, because the grievance procedure would not be able to provide them full relief. I can't believe that this is the kind of arrangement we want to have. It seems to me that it makes eminent good sense that the Grievance Board, which has the authority to apply these other statutes in its substantive determinations, ought to have the authority to provide remedies to correct violations. The limitation that is sought to be placed on the remedial authority of the Board would unfairly disadvantage foreign service officers with grievances, whose cases may be quite legitimate. This is an important issue for people with grievances, and I think we must be careful in working out the statutory arrangements by which they have their grievances resolved. For the life of me, I don't understand why we would deny to the Board the remedial authorities that I have outlined here. I hope that the managers of the bill will find this amendment acceptable.

Mr. SARBANES. I appreciate that.

Mr. SARBANES. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. SARBANES. I thank the Senator.

Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator will yield on that very point, it was my very strongly held impression that obtaining the resolution of the Security Council, in effect, gave legitimacy to the strongly driven U.S. action, in terms of international approval that otherwise would have been lacking or missing in the situation. We treat these U.N. participations as though they don't count for very much. Yet, around the world, the fact that the United States has gone to the United Nations and gotten the United Nations to approve it, gives a legitimacy to the activity that might not be there, at least in the eyes of some countries, if the United States were simply to undertake it directly, without this approbation from the international community.

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator will yield further, in fact, if we cannot continue to work this way, I take it that if confronted with a crisis abroad, our choices would either be to do nothing or to become involved unilaterally and directly, by ourselves. We would lose what, it seems to me, has been a very effective weapon for serving U.S. interests without necessarily committing the United States directly in the activity. Would that be correct?

Mr. SARBANES. Are these obligations to our friends, to which the Senator has referred, those instances in which our allies undertook actions under the umbrella authority of the United Nations, often with the use of their own troops, to carry out activities which the United States supported, which the United States made the judgment served our own national security interests? Would that be correct?

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, this week we mark the second anniversary of the National Home Ownership Week. I rise to join with my constituents and citizens across the Nation to celebrate the efforts to promote and expand the rate of home ownership in this country. It is my view that home ownership activities foster and encourage the revitalization of neighborhoods. Home ownership stabilizes local communities by providing families with a renewed sense of civic responsibility and commitment to the well-being of their neighborhoods. In addition, home ownership is one of the single most important vehicles for personal financial growth and wealth accumulation. New home ownership encourages investment and job growth in areas where such investment has been lacking. While a majority of Americans today are homeowners, many moderate and low income families are unable to overcome the economic barriers to owning a home. The National Home Ownership Week is part of the national strategy to make the dream of home ownership a reality for these families. Study after study has demonstrated that many families with high enough incomes to buy homes and who may, in fact, be paying as much in rent as they would be in mortgage payments, are locked out of home ownership because they cannot generate the down payment or closing costs necessary. Helping families to surmount those barriers, and then providing them with mortgages at affordable rates so that they can become home owners, means moving those families toward long-term economic security. Therefore, it is imperative that we work to increase the availability of credit and affordable mortgages for moderate and low income families who labor to own their piece of the American dream. The number of local events being held across the country to celebrate National Home Ownership Week now exceeds 600. In my state of Maryland, I had the privilege of attending an event in Wheaton, MD, to announce the ``Home Ownership Montgomery'' initiative as part of this week's celebration of home ownership activities. I was proud to stand with representatives from the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, the county government, Fannie Mae and other dedicated housing advocates. As part of the strategy to increase the number of Maryland home owners, Montgomery County has partnered with Fannie Mae to make millions of dollars of low interest loans available to low income families who need assistance with closing costs and mortgage payments. It is my hope that these efforts and numerous others will increase the current home ownership rate in Maryland from 65.9 percent to 67.5 percent, the national goal set by the National Partners in Home Ownership. The success of National Home Ownership Week is made possible by many innovative public-private partnerships. In this age of shrinking Federal resources, partnerships have leveraged funds to support millions of dollars in home ownership activities. National organizations such as the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the Enterprise Foundation, local nonprofits and for-profits such as Interfaith Housing of Western Maryland, and local governments have developed thousands of homes for low income families. I salute these combined efforts to rebuild local communities. At the same time, we must not forget that federal funding for affordable housing assistance and homeless individuals has been on the decline. The dream of home ownership is a dream that many families of varied incomes desire. It is my hope that National Home Ownership Week will not only help to raise the awareness of the need for increased home ownership, but at the same time, heighten the public's consciousness of the benefits of providing affordable housing for all families.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, the amendment that I have offered together with Chairman D'Amato to H.R. 1306 would make three changes in the legislation. First, it would make the title of the legislation the Riegle-Neal Amendments Act of 1997. This reflects the fact that this legislation makes significant substantive changes to current law, and is not merely a clarification or technical change. Second, the amendment requires that no provision of subsection 24(j) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, as amended by H.R. 1306, shall be construed as affecting the applicability of Federal law to State banks and State bank branches in the home State or the host State. There was a concern that subsection 24(j)(1), as amended by H.R. 1306, could have the unintended result of Federal law not applying to a branch in a host State of an out-of-State State bank that would apply to the bank in its home State. Third, the amendment would require the Comptroller of the Currency to conduct an annual review of the actions it has taken with regard to the applicability of State law to national banks or their branches during the preceding year, and include in its annual report to Congress the results of the review and the reasons for each action. The first such review and report after the enactment of this legislation shall encompass all such actions taken on or after January 1, 1992. There are a couple of reasons for the inclusion of this reporting requirement in this amendment. First, under current law, actions by the Comptroller preempting State law only benefit branches of national banks in the affected State. H.R. 1306 would expand the applicability of those preemption decisions to branches of out-of-State State banks. Given this significant expansion of the consequences of the Comptroller's preemption decisions, it seems reasonable and important to require the Comptroller to include in its annual report to Congress a review and explanation of these decisions. In addition, when Congress enacted the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act in 1994, it specifically provided that State laws regarding consumer protection, community reinvestment, fair lending, and intrastate branching apply to the branches of State and national banks. The act provided that this set of State laws would not apply if Federal law preempts the application of such State laws to a national bank, or if the Comptroller of the Currency determines that the application of such State laws would have a discriminatory effect on the branch in comparison with the effect the application of such State laws would have with respect to branches of a bank chartered by the host State. Concerns have been raised by consumer groups, both before and since the enactment of Riegle-Neal, that the Comptroller has undertaken preemptive actions which were unnecessarily expansive. The conference report which accompanied the enactment of the Riegle-Neal Act specifically addressed this point. The report stated: The Conferees have been made aware of certain circumstances in which the Federal banking agencies have applied traditional preemption principles in a manner the Conferees believe is inappropriately aggressive, resulting in preemption of state law in situations which the federal interest did not warrant that result. One illustration is OCC Interpretive letter No. 572, dated January 15, 1992, from the OCC to Robert M. Jaworski, Assistant Commissioner, State of New Jersey Department of Banking, concluding that national banks in New Jersey are not required to comply with the New Jersey Consumer Checking Account. It is of utmost concern to the Conferees that the agencies issue opinion letters and interpretive rules concluding that Federal law preempts state law regarding community reinvestment, consumer protection, fair lending, or establishment of intrastate branches only when the agency has determined that the Federal policy interest in preemption is clear. In the case of Interpretive Letter No. 572, it is the sense of the Conferees that the fact the Congress has acknowledged the benefits of more widespread use of lifeline accounts through the enactment of the Bank Enterprise Act did not indicate that Congress intended to override State basic banking laws, or occupy the area of basic banking services to such an extent as to displace State laws, or that the existence of State basic banking laws frustrated the purpose of the Congress. The ruling referred to in the conference report has been under review by the OCC but has not been changed. Other actions have been taken by the Comptroller since the enactment of Riegle-Neal which have raised similar concerns. For example, in 1996 the OCC finalized a regulation exempting national banks from State laws protecting consumers from high credit card fees. Given these concerns, and the more expansive application the OCC's rulings will have as a result of H.R. 1306, it is important for the Comptroller to report to the Congress annually on its preemption actions, if any, and the rationale for the preemptions.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield for one further question?

Mr. SARBANES. I recall the Senator's own State was struck with a disaster.