Chair Brown in Final Committee Hearing: Our Charge is to Put Workers at the Center of Everything We Do
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, held his final hearing titled “Consumer Protection: Protecting Workers’ Money and Fighting for the Dignity of Work.”
Brown joined the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee in 2007 during his first Senate term. He became Ranking Member in 2015 and took over as Chair in 2021.
Sen. Brown’s remarks, as prepared for delivery follow:
When I joined this committee in 2007 it had a reputation as a bit of a sleepy committee.
Much of Washington seemed to have reached a consensus – Wall Street ought to be left largely to its own devices. Big banks knew best.
We all know how that turned out.
Less than two years later, the economy was in freefall. Banks were collapsing. Layoff notices and foreclosure warnings were landing in inboxes and mailboxes, ruining lives around the country.
In the wake of the crisis, we passed the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
It was the first time in 75 years that we reined in Wall Street and its reckless obsession with profits at the expense of everyone and everything else.
That law worked. Nearly 15 years later, our banking system is safer, banks hold more capital, and they’re better prepared to handle a crisis.
Of course, we know Wall Street and its lobbyists don’t give up easy.
After we passed Dodd-Frank, one industry lobbyist said: “now it’s halftime.”
Wall Street was true to its word.
They immediately went to work trying to roll back and water down as many of the protections we put in place as possible.
When I took over as Chair of this committee nearly four years ago, Washington still called it Senate Banking.
It was still pretty much a committee dedicated to protecting Wall Street and the financial industry, and fulfilling their lobbyists’ wish-lists – in particular, tearing down the safeguards that protect Americans’ money, and that protect taxpayers from ever having to bail out Wall Street again.
We changed that.
We put the focus of this committee back where it should be – the people who make this country work.
The stock market doesn’t drive the economy. Workers do. And on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, we have made it our mission to serve them.
That’s why we improved public transit around the country for the millions of workers who depend on the bus or the train to get to work.
Cleveland is finally replacing railcars that date back to the Reagan Administration. Akron Metro is getting a new maintenance facility. Ohioans in Bryan will have a new Amtrak station.
It’s why we came together to crack down on traffickers of deadly fentanyl, which is devastating working people and their communities in Ohio and all over the country. Our law is going after the entire fentanyl supply chain – from the chemical suppliers in China, to the cartels that traffic the drug from Mexico.
It’s why we confirmed dedicated, talented public servants who reflect the vibrant diversity of our country and who serve the public, not the financial industry.
And it’s why we stood up to corporate special interests – whether it’s the big banks or the payday lenders or the shady debt collectors.
We had the first ever legislative win against the payday lending lobby, protecting people from exorbitant interest rates that trap Americans in a cycle of debt.
We successfully pushed to remove medical debt from people’s credit reports, saving them money and protecting them from higher interest rates.
Again and again, we stopped all the corporate interests that tried to prevent the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from protecting the public.
And we began calling the CEOs of the country’s largest Wall Street banks to testify before this committee and before the American people. These CEOs and their banks hold tremendous power over our economy and over people’s lives.
Too often, that power isn’t used wisely.
As important and effective as Wall Street reform was, it was incomplete. We still have an economy where hard work doesn’t pay off like it should.
For decades, Wall Street has rewarded the companies that squeeze their workers the hardest.
When companies raise prices, when they lay people off, when they move jobs overseas, when they bust unions, when they subcontract work to lower-paying companies with fewer benefits, Wall Street analysts yell “buy…buy…buy.”
And look at the result:
For almost a half century now, productivity has gone up, the stock market has soared, executive compensation has exploded…but workers’ wages are largely flat.
It hasn’t always been like this.
When I was growing up, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 20-to-1. That was still good money.
Today, that ratio is 344-to-1.
When the economy fundamentally does not reward work, while Wall Street continues to rake in profits – not just instead of workers, but at the expense of workers – our work is far from over.
And some of the most crucial work happening today to hold corporate special interests accountable, and level the playing field for the rest of America, is at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The consumer protection bureau has been among the most successful parts of Wall Street reform.
Since 2011, the CFPB has returned nearly $21 billion to more than 205 million Americans.
These are real checks that land in people’s mailboxes. Dollars that might mean a little extra breathing room to buy groceries or fill up a tank of gas.
The CFPB has returned more than $363 million to servicemembers and veterans.
That’s money that companies took straight from servicemembers’ and veterans’ pockets.
And over the next four years, the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be more crucial than ever.
The last time the President Trump was in office, the cabinet looked like a Goldman Sachs retreat. He tried to put the CFPB to work for corporations instead of the public.
And from what we have seen from his nominees thus far, corporate special interests won’t just have a seat at the table this time around – they’ll be given free rein to rip off workers and customers.
He’s opening up our government to the highest corporate bidder.
It will be up to all of you in this room to preserve the CFPB as the one place where ordinary Americans can go that will fight for them.
Most people don’t have fancy lawyers. They don’t have high-priced lobbyists. The CFPB is their advocate and their voice. The public servants there fight for the people who make this country work – and so must we.
This committee must ready itself for the fights and challenges ahead:
Rising housing costs, private equity infiltrating more and more of our economy, insurance costs going up, risks building up in the private credit market, new technology that’s increasingly being used in our financial system – from algorithmic prices to AI to crypto.
All these risks have one thing in common: they all have the potential take even money away from working Americans…and funnel it to the same corporate elite that always seem to come out ahead.
Those guys have enough advocates in this town. OUR charge, whether in the Senate or out of it, is to look out for workers and put them at the center of everything we do.
I’m proud of the work we’ve done together on this committee.
I want to thank Senator Scott, Senator Crapo, with whom I also worked closely and successfully as Ranking Member, and all the members of this committee.
I want to thank my talented committee staff . Homer, Beth, Phil, Megan, Elisha and Laura have been with me the entire 10 years I have been Chair or Ranking Member. And Sarah, Jeremy, and Katie in my personal office have also worked for this committee over the last decade.
Jeff, Ann, Sunny, John, Mohammad, Shannon, Emily, Ben, Min, Erika, Jonathan, Shanna, Will, Serena, and Sean have made significant contributions during their time on this staff. I also want to thank the non-designated staff—Pat, Lena, Shelvin, Jason and Sheryl – led by Cameron Ricker – for making this Committee run.
I trust Senator Warren to carry on our mission of standing up for working Americans, and standing up to all the corporate interests that hold far too much influence in this town – and are about to hold a lot more.
The work continues.
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