On the recordMay 7, 2025
I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote no on S.J. Res. 13. President Trump promised that he would lower costs for American families on day one. He promised to cap interest rates on credit cards at 10 percent, and so what is it that the Senate is prioritizing today? Making it easier for banks to merge, raising the cost of credit for small businesses and households, and eroding banking services in local communities. This resolution would undo commonsense provisions and improvements to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency bank merger review framework after decades of that office rubberstamping deals that have reduced competition in the banking sector and put community banks all across this country out of business. Now, we have witnessed small banks just vanishing from our local communities over the past several decades. These are the banks that are deeply rooted in our neighborhoods, that do the painstaking local lending that many small businesses rely on. Regulators' long record of rubberstamping bank mergers has resulted in scores of branch closures, leaving consumers with fewer choices when it comes to whom to trust with their money. Between 2006 and 2021, the Federal Reserve approved more than 3,500 consecutive mergers without denying a single one--not even one single no. With the regulators completely asleep at the switch since 1990, the number of banks in the United States has declined from more than 18,000 to fewer than 5,000.…
