José Serrano

Mr. SERRANO

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chair, you know, it is amazing. Many of us--and I am not suggesting you--get elected to Congress, and we are in awe of the fact that we come from where we come when we get to Congress. I am in that category. I am very blessed. There are others who come to Congress, and it seems that they come to Congress to undo Congress and undo the government. We are the greatest nation on Earth. How did we get that? Obviously, the fighting and the working spirit of the American people. But it was also the protections placed on the American people; the fact that children were told you have to go to school, the fact that we try to get the best water. We spoke before about an immigration issue. I don't call it a problem. Why does it exist? Because people still know that we are the greatest country on Earth, and they want to come here. So a lot of what you see as government intrusion, a lot of what you see as government being a pain could actually be some of the reasons that we became the great country we are. We just didn't let people go on their own and hurt each other, and so on. We had people elected by the people to say: Hey, hold on. Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? Why don't we curtail this? Why don't we grow that? And we continue to do that. So we disagree. I think we are great because we have certain rules to follow. And we follow them well. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. It would repeal a requirement that companies show just how much more the CEO is paid compared to the company's median worker. Why are Republicans so scared about reporting this number? I imagine my Republicans colleagues will describe the alleged costs to industry. Indeed, industry has offered wildly exaggerated estimates of the SEC's initial proposal, 10 times what the SEC economists estimated. However, none of these estimates are credible. There is no indication that industry has yet to come up with any credible estimate for the cost of the final rule. In fact, no one has, as the House Financial Services Committee has failed to convene a hearing on the final rule and the flexibility provided by the SEC. Worse, the committee has failed to hold a hearing on the bill, itself, this Congress. Rather, the Republicans are rushing this bill through the House and once again seek to repeal outright this provision in Dodd- Frank. In the past, and before the SEC finalized its flexible rule, Democrats offered amendments to ease burdens on businesses, but Republicans weren't interested then and are apparently worried that the American public and investors will finally see that not all public companies pay their employees the same. In fact, some companies pay their CEO 400 times the median employee. My Republican colleagues aren't concerned that CEOs and the rest of the 1 percent continue to take most of the income and wealth of this country. My colleagues aren't concerned that minorities and low-income Americans haven't seen a raise in decades. The SEC has provided industry with as much flexibility as it could while still being consistent with the congressional mandate. I will also note that the requirement doesn't affect small businesses or emerging growth companies, but it is targeted to companies that retail investors overwhelmingly choose to invest in. I know that industry, especially the global manufacturers, oppose the SEC rule, but I think that the information provided by this number matters. It will go a long way to identify the disparity between the top 1 percent and the everyday worker. It will go a long way towards enabling everyday investors to fund companies that properly compensate their employees, or punish those that inappropriately compensate their CEO. I urge my colleagues to think seriously about this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I have never seen a corporation tell you that studying their business practices is well-spent money. Everybody wants to keep everybody in the dark as to what is going on. The American people have a sense of what is going on. We have heard enough, especially during this last campaign, about the 1 percent and the 99 percent. We have heard enough about how on Wall Street, in my city of New York, part of the problem was the lack of supervision by the FCC and by the SEC. And part of the problem--a large part--was the bonuses that these folks were getting. A $50 million bonus in some cases and a $25 million bonus in some cases was not something unheard of. So I think that every so often the American people need to know and get information that may seem like a waste of money to some people, but actually can get at a problem. We need to know in this capitalist society that we have--and we are not about to change that. We all like it. I like it. I want to keep it. But I think we have to try to look for ways to balance so that 99 percent of the people are not in danger of hurting while 1 percent of the folks are in great shape. To find out that CEOs sometimes get 400 times the salary of one of their workers is totally outrageous, and the American people should know that and should know--especially in the cases of stockholders too, there are a lot of stockholders who are small stockholders--and they want to know what company they are investing in. So I think that this rule or this approach is good, and I think your amendment just tries to--I am not saying you do--but your amendment, the final result will be to try to cover up the truth, and that is not a good thing. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I don't, as you can see, have much to say on this because it is really an interesting situation. It is an amendment looking for a problem that doesn't exist. It is an amendment looking for the possibility that the President--there we go again, the gentleman in the White House--that the President may do something he hasn't said anything about doing. The Treasury Department says that there are no current plans to amend the regulation and that flexibility is not at issue at this point because no one is discussing this. The second part to this amendment is the underlying feeling by some Members still that the deal with Iran was a bad deal, that that deal won't work, and that somehow we will be left holding the bag. Well, giving peace a chance, as the song says, is never a bad thing to do. I would hope that in the future we deal only with amendments that speak to an existing problem and not to an amendment that simply speaks about: What if? We have too many what-ifs in amendments. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment and would hope that our colleagues would vote against it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to note that we speak about it, and it is not directed at any one President. But we have a unique system. We only have one President at a time. So it is directed at one President. I suspect that if we were going to stay in session--which we are not--for every week from now until the end of the year, we would see more and more and more bills--up to December 31--bills that would try to limit the power of the office of the Presidency because of who occupies it right now and the disdain that the other side, so many Members, have for our President. I see it differently. I see the Iran deal as a possibility for peace. Maybe history will say that I was naive. But I know the alternative, and the alternative is war. So any time that I can take a chance on evading and not having war, let's go for it. Secondly, to legislate by suggesting that something could happen and therefore we have to head it off at the pass is not the way to legislate. I would hope that we could vote against this amendment. I urge opposition to it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I won't speak in Spanish. I will only speak in English. The gentleman is a person that we all know well. He can't pass up the opportunity to say something about immigrants and say something about English as the official language. Let me start off by saying this: I don't speak for any community, and I certainly don't know what other communities go through. But I can tell you that in the Hispanic/Latino community, when people sit around the dinner table and the issue of language comes up, it is not a plot against the English language. It is usually a conversation about how the children and the grandchildren no longer speak Spanish; they speak only English. That is just a fact. Number two, this assimilation issue, do you really think that someone would leave all their small belongings behind, leave in many cases their wife and their children to come into this country undocumented-- assuming we are talking about undocumented people--before they can find a way to bring the rest of the family, to not learn English, to purposely keep themselves away from immigrating into the American society? On the contrary, some of the jokes are that some of the better--not better, but stronger-feeling Americans, the ones who want to vote, the ones who want to wave the flag strongly and proudly, are people who came from other countries. Just about everybody has somebody that came from another country, either now or a long time ago. The reason that President Clinton and so many of us have supported the issue--and I am speaking about the first President Clinton, not the next one--the fact that we support the issue of giving service is because in many ways this could be a constitutional question. I will give you an example. I am not a lawyer, but it says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that is what we are promised. Well, life could be a paramedic being able to speak to you in a language that you understand. Liberty could be you in a trial getting an interpreter so what you have to say to that judge and to that jury can be understood. And the pursuit of happiness, of course, is a separate issue, but it allows you to grow two cultures at the same time. I speak Spanish, I speak English, and I am a Member of the U.S. Congress. I don't think the fact that I speak Spanish has made me a worse Congressman or a worse American. I was born in an American territory that speaks a lot of Spanish. I grew up speaking Spanish and English at the same time. I am still working on both to be better at them every day, but I am a living example that there is nothing wrong with speaking more than one language. We in this country have a couple of fears that set us apart from the rest of the world and make us less than the rest of the world, and that is the fear of languages. In some other countries, in Europe and so on, children at the age of 10 speak two, three, or four languages; grownups speak a couple of languages. It doesn't hurt them in any way. What is wrong if you speak another language? But here we are talking about services, going to the Department of Motor Vehicles and getting someone who can understand what you are saying until you learn to speak English. But trust me, the big line here is ``until you speak English,'' because no one wants to come here and remain only speaking Spanish or their own country's language and forgetting English. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I have been informed that the gentleman picked the wrong example--Israel--because they have more than one official language, but that is okay. The more the merrier. The fact of life is that the gentleman picked the example of someone who learned English. Well, everybody wants to learn to speak English. If you go to my community in the South Bronx, you see small-business owners. Those are the best examples. Some of them speak what we would call broken English. Some of them speak perfect English. Their children, half of them no longer speak Spanish; they speak English. Their children are attending Fordham University or a university down South. They are not going to be bodega owners when they grow up, or cab drivers. They most likely will go work on Wall Street or somewhere else or teach. In other words, we have a pattern in this country that hasn't been broken. What made us great is the fact that people come here, they adapt, they become part of this country, and then they defend this country with everything they have got, including their blood. That happens all the time, it happens all the time, and it is not going to stop happening. So if you have a worry--and I have heard you for years--that somehow speaking Spanish is going to wreck this country, on the contrary. Just learn to speak Spanish and you will feel much better. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment prohibits funds from the CFPB to commence any administrative adjudication or civil action beyond the 3- year statute of limitation in Dodd-Frank. In doing so, it would limit the board's ability to bring enforcement action against wrongdoers. This represents a free pass for bad actors who have swindled borrowers on a host of practices and products under the Bureau's jurisdiction--credit cards, student loans, mortgages, auto loans, debt collection practices, and payday loans, just to name a few. Title X of Dodd-Frank does provide a 3-year statute of limitations for claims being brought by the Bureau under that title. However, the Bureau has argued in court that the statute of limitations does not govern claims brought under the enumerated consumer protection laws transferred to the Bureau--laws like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Truth in Lending Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. While some of these enumerated statutes have their own statutes of limitations, others do not. The board has argued in court that, even under those laws that do have statutes of limitation, they do not apply to the Bureau, but instead only apply to private litigation. Of the enumerated laws that do not have statutes of limitation, the Bureau has argued in court that no statute of limitation applies. When it comes to administrative law judge proceedings, rather than those brought in court, the Bureau also contends the statute of limitation does not apply. In the final analysis, this is currently being adjudicated by the Bureau and defendants in the courts. It would be premature and disruptive for Congress to step in with this amendment, which tilts the playing field in court toward the side of special interests. Moreover, both the House and Senate authorizing committees of jurisdiction have not even considered this issue during hearings or markups. At the very least, it would be premature to adopt this amendment, which significantly alters existing law and throws into flux cases pending before the courts, without any regard for regular order. Finally, this amendment creates uncertainty and complications as to how our regulatory agencies can enforce the law. The Wall Street Reform Act transferred enforcement authority to the Bureau for a host of consumer protection statutes. Yet banking and other market regulators have retained authority on a number of those laws, thereby creating two sets of standards: one for banking and market regulators, where the statute of limitations would still be being interpreted by the courts, and one for our lead consumer regulator, the Bureau. This will only serve to confuse the industry. That is the main reason why I oppose the amendment and urge a ``no'' vote. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, what I would ask the gentleman to do is to consider the fact that this is being still dealt with in the courts, and this is not the right time for us--or any time--to get involved before the court has decided. That is one of the problems that we have on many of these issues, that we get involved and we try to get our will, our way on an issue, before the courts have decided what to do with it. This is a big issue for them to decide, and I would hope that we can see our way to letting those decisions be made before we set a tone that kind of sways what the final outcome might be, and that is not the right thing to do. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Very briefly, Mr. Chairman, there are other parts covered by the Bureau that have their own statute of limitations. That is why these questions are being asked. While the gentleman is correct that Dodd-Frank says 3 years, in other areas it is not 3 years. It is being settled, and we should stay out of it until then. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the amendment. This amendment would, once again, overreach into the District of Columbia's local affairs by prohibiting funds for D.C.'s local law, the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014. The D.C. law this amendment would vacate prohibits discrimination based on reproductive health decisions. This amendment would allow workplace discrimination if the employer disagrees with the employee's use of contraception, in vitro fertilization, and even perhaps a medically necessary abortion. D.C. is attempting to protect workers from losing their jobs because their supervisors may or may not agree with their personal decisions. This amendment offered today would strip those protections from D.C. workers. In addition to being bad policy, this amendment goes around the law which states that Congress has 30 days to review bills passed by the D.C. Council. The 30 days are up, and the Republican-controlled Congress did not legally stop these laws from going into effect. The House passed a resolution disapproving the D.C. bill on reproductive health, and the Republican-controlled Senate did not. The Congress had time to act on these issues, and it failed to do so. D.C. residents should not be subject to endless efforts to overturn its laws. It continues to be part of what I always complain about, this desire that we have on the other side to tell the District of Columbia what to do. In this case, there was actually protection for the Congress if the Congress had acted within 30 days. But it didn't, and now we want to, in this bill, get around that lack of action by putting in new action to overturn their law. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, very carefully let me say that there are many instances where people have disagreements, but the law prevails. Not every employer agrees with everything that the employee does and vice versa, but if there is a law in place, then the law prevails. Here there is a law in place, number one. Number two, we should continue to try not to meddle in the District of Columbia's issues. Number three, I repeat, we had a period, a legal period for us to act--some would say a constitutional period for us to act--and we didn't act. Now we want to get around that by using this bill improperly to undo what the people in the District of Columbia, through their representatives, found to be correct for them, just like other States, other communities throughout this country, maybe communities even in the gentleman's and many of the gentlemen and gentlewomen on the other side's districts. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.