Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I wish to thank the chairman for his leadership on this important issue and so many others before the Banking Committee.

Since September 2008, we have learned many hard lessons about the factors that contributed to the financial crisis. To address systemic risks and to fix the system, we passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. One of the most important reforms we made in that legislation was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the CFPB. The CFPB is charged with stopping abusive mortgage originators, stopping abusive credit card companies, and stopping abusive private student loan lenders.

For years we have had organizations whose purpose was to protect the banking system and, indirectly, consumers. We need to provide a balance. Frankly, if we had this balance in place prior to 2008, we might have avoided some of the incredible costs we have seen not only to consumers but to the entire banking system as a result of predatory behavior by many different financial institutions.

Unfortunately, many of my Republican colleagues are trying not to correct deficiencies in the Dodd-Frank act or improve it. They want to gut it. One of the things they want to take out is consumer protection, and they want to do that by denying a nominee to head up this important agency.

It certainly is a prerogative of my colleagues to work on improving any piece of legislation, but effectively to say: We will not let legislation that has passed this body by 60 votes and that has ample precedent in the law to take effect because we won't put a person in charge is, I think, abusing the process.

We have worked on this issue, and we know consumers need these types of protections. We know that daily there are scams targeting the elderly. There are unscrupulous mortgage lenders and abusive payday lenders. Most financial firms are not like this--in fact, these individuals probably represent a very small minority of the financial community, but they are abusive predators, particularly to the most vulnerable people in our society.

There has been a lot of discussion about the 1 percent and the 99 percent. Well, guess what, the 99 percent are consumers, and the 1 percent are probably those people who are running some of these financial institutions, some of them fairly and scrupulously, but others who are not.

We want to protect consumers in this country--all of us--certainly the 99 percent, but because of Republican opposition of this nominee, we are running into a real problem. If we do not have a head of this organization, then it cannot effectively implement regulations and effectively enforce the laws it has been given the task to oversee and implement.

We have to have rules that apply across the country that get at the shadow banking system, that provide the kinds of protections consumers can rely on, and that, in fact, improve the operation of the marketplace. Again, I think some of the people who regret what happened the most in the 2007, 2008, 2009 time period are financial leaders looking around and saying: Why wasn't anyone checking the behavior of some of the financial companies out there that have ruined my marketplace and ruined my reputation? Well, we have to do that.

The longer Richard Cordray is blocked, the longer such disreputable practices in the financial marketplace can continue. And Richard Cordray is entirely qualified: as former treasurer of the State of Ohio, he knows the financial business and worked closely with banks at the Treasury, as former attorney general of Ohio, he worked to protect consumers, and as an individual, he has the intellect and the character to do an outstanding job. We have to get him in place.

Who suffers if we don't do this? Well, among those who are suffering are military personnel. I had the privilege of commanding a paratrooper company in the 82nd Airborne Division in the 1970s. I was an executive officer, and I handled all the complaints, all the dunning, all the letters that were coming in from my soldiers. It has gotten worse.

Holly Petraeus, who is the head of the Office of Servicemember Affairs at the CFPB, testified before the committee. She talked about Internet lenders who target military personnel--vulnerable soldiers and their families--who are about to deploy or who just came back from Afghanistan. They will give loans of up to 40 percent of a soldier's pay. Of course, the interest rate can be as high as 584 percent APR. We can't stop that until we get somebody such as Richard Cordray in charge of this organization.

She also talked about the dunning calls, 20 times a day, threatening them: We will go to your commander. We will have you court-martialed. We will take away your security clearance. We will ruin your career.

We have to stop that. This is about real people, real consumers. We have to confirm Richard Cordray.

With that, I yield the floor.

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