On the recordMay 12, 2010
I rise as a cosponsor in support of the Merkley-Klobuchar amendment to prohibit kickbacks to lenders who steer homeowners into bad mortgages. The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations recently completed an 18-month investigation and a series of four hearings looking into some of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis. In our first hearing, the subcommittee examined the high-risk lending practices of Washington Mutual Bank, ``WaMu,'' which led to the largest U.S. bank failure of all time. WaMu was brought to the precipice of collapse, in large part, by irresponsible and abusive home lending practices such as steering homeowners into high-risk and high-cost loans, and failing to even verify borrower income when making those loans. The Merkley-Klobuchar amendment prohibits those practices, and would go a long way towards preventing the irresponsible behavior that led to the financial crisis.
