August 2, 2012 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S5959 

the Wounded Warrior Project, the 

American Legion, Disabled American 

Veterans, and Veterans of Foreign 

Wars are also calling on us to ratify 

this treaty. President George H.W. 

Bush, who signed the ADA into law, 

and former Senator Bob Dole, a lifelong advocate for disability rights, are 

strong proponents of this treaty. 

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a humanrights treaty that seeks to ensure that 

people living with disabilities are afforded the same opportunities available to others. Thanks to the ADA and 

similar laws, the United States has 

been so successful providing opportunities, increasing accessibility, and protecting the rights of those living with 

disabilities that our Nation is already 

in full compliance with all terms of the 

treaty. 

Before transmitting this treaty, the 

Obama administration conducted an 

exhaustive comparison of the treaty’s 

requirements to current U.S. law. It 

concluded that the United States does 

not need to pass any new laws or regulations in order to meet the terms of 

the treaty. The fact that we already 

meet or exceed the treaty’s requirements is a testament to our nation’s 

commitment to equality and opportunity for those living with disabilities. There are, nevertheless, very important reasons to ratify this treaty. 

Disabled Veterans and Other Americans Traveling Abroad—There are 

more than 5.5 million veterans living 

with disabilities. They and thousands 

of other Americans living with disabilities travel, study, work, and serve 

overseas, often with their families. 

Ratifying the treaty will ensure they 

enjoy the same accessibility and opportunity abroad that they have here at 

home. 

Accessibility in Other Countries— 

ratifying this treaty will give the 

United States a seat at the international table, so that the U.S. can 

provide its guidance and expertise to 

other countries working to adopt laws, 

upgrade infrastructure, and modernize 

facilities to meet the very high standards we have set. 

Leveling the Playing field for American Businesses—American businesses 

have invested time and resources to 

comply with the ADA. Businesses in 

some countries are not required to 

comply with similar standards. Compliance with the treaty levels the playing field by requiring foreign businesses to meet accessibility standards 

similar to those in the U.S. 

New Markets for American Businesses—we lead the world in developing 

accessible products and technology. As 

other countries comply with the treaty, American businesses will be able to 

export their expertise and products to 

the new markets serving the more than 

1 billion people living with disabilities 

around the world. 

While this treaty will ensure inclusion and access for those living with 

disabilities, it is also important that 

we note what the treaty will not do. 

The treaty will not change any U.S. 

law or compromise U.S. sovereignty in 

any way. 

The treaty will not lead to new law 

suits because its terms do not create 

any new rights and it cannot be enforced in any U.S. Court. 

For families that choose to educate 

their children at home, the treaty will 

not change any current rights or obligations. 

The treaty will not require the U.S. 

to appropriate any new funding or resources to comply with its terms—not 

a single dime. 

Leading pro life groups, like the National Right to Life Committee, confirm that the treaty does not promote, 

expand access, or create a right to an 

abortion. 

Thanks to decades of bipartisan cooperation, our country embodies the 

worldwide gold standard for those living with disabilities. 

When the Senate ratifies the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we can be proud that our coworkers, friends, family members, and 

courageous veterans will soon enjoy 

the same access and opportunity when 

they travel abroad that they have 

come to expect here at home. 

f 

REMEMBERING SHELBY HARRIS 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise 

today to celebrate the life of Mr. 

Shelby Harris, from Rock Island, IL. 

When he passed away on July 25, 2012, 

at the age of 111, he was the oldest man 

in the country and the third oldest 

man in the world. 

Mr. Harris was born in Indiana on 

March 31, 1901. That same year President William McKinley was assassinated and Vice President Theodore 

Roosevelt took over the White House, 

there were only 45 stars on the American flag, and the life expectancy in 

this country was just 47 years of age. 

Throughout his 111 years, Mr. Harris 

lived a varied and rich life. In Indiana, 

he worked at a coal mine. He moved to 

the Quad Cities in 1942 where he enlisted in the Army during World War 

II. He also worked for the former Union 

Malleable and the John Deere Foundry 

in East Moline. He outlived two wives 

and three daughters. His oldest grandchild is 57 years old, and he was a 

great-great-great-great grandfather. 

Mr. Harris was a lifelong Democrat and 

credited his longevity to his faith in 

God. 

Age did not slow him down. Mr. Harris served as a deacon of Second Baptist Church until he was 102 years old 

and had a bucket list that included getting remarried and playing baseball. A 

month after his 111th birthday, Mr. 

Harris was able to cross baseball off his 

list after he threw out the first pitch at 

a Quad Cities River Bandits minor 

league baseball game. 

Living beyond the age of 110 made 

Mr. Harris a supercentenarian. This 

designation is particularly rare for a 

man because women typically live the 

longest all over the world. The oldest 

person in the world today is a woman 

who has reached age 115. 

Mr. Harris will be missed by the staff 

at the Rock Island Nursing and Rehabilitation Center where he lived since 

he was 105 years of age. For the past 5 

years the nursing home has thrown a 

big party on his birthday, and the staff 

there plan to hold a remembrance for 

him next year on the date. 

It is my honor to recognize the long 

and full life of Mr. Shelby Harris. 

f 

LIBOR 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, It was 

recently revealed that at least one 

bank—Barclays Bank of Great Britain—attempted to manipulate LIBOR 

over a 4-year period beginning in 2005. 

LIBOR stands for the London InterBank Offered Rate. This rate is a 

benchmark used by industries all over 

the world to set interest rates for nearly $800 trillion worth of financial instruments. 

LIBOR determines how much people 

across the world pay for student loans, 

mortgages, and credit card fees. The 

higher LIBOR is, the more it costs a 

college student to borrow money for 

school or a business to obtain a line of 

credit. 

This means that people across the 

world with student loans, mortgages 

and credit cards, and municipalities 

selling bonds may have paid more to 

borrow money because of Barclays’ actions. 

Barclays settled with U.S. and British authorities and paid over $450 million in penalties to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. 

Department of Justice, and British regulators. 

Now, as many as 20 megabanks, including several U.S. banks, are under 

investigation or named in lawsuits alleging they also rigged LIBOR. 

Over the next several weeks and 

months we will learn more details 

about exactly what happened. 

But it seems clear we are facing a 

scenario that is all too familiar: the 

largest banks have once again put 

greed and profit above the best interests of their customers and the economies of at least six nations, including 

the United States. 

At the same time—nearly 4 years 

after the worst financial crisis in our 

lifetime and 2 years since the Democratic-majority Congress passed Wall 

Street reform—my Republican colleagues continue to undermine the financial regulators by cutting their 

funding and spending countless hours 

in the House of Representatives debating and passing bills to roll back the 

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. 

This is not good for our financial system and it certainly isn’t good for the 

American people. 

But let me back up. What is LIBOR? 

It is a benchmark used by industries 

all over the world to set interest rates 

LIBOR impacts—directly or indirectly—nearly every person in the 

world. 


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S5960 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE August 2, 2012 

Here is how it works. 

LIBOR is calculated for 10 currencies 

and 15 maturities. For example, one of 

the most important LIBOR rates is the 

3-month dollar LIBOR. 

A select panel of 18 major banks report how much they believe it would 

cost to borrow money in dollars for 3 

months at 11 a.m. on a particular day. 

The top four estimates and bottom 

four estimates are discarded, and the 

remaining rates are averaged to calculate LIBOR. LIBOR is published 

every day at 11 a.m., and companies 

across the world use this rate to set interest rates for consumers. 

So why would the major banks want 

to manipulate LIBOR? 

The simple answer is profit. And 

greed. 

Many of the major banks that help 

set LIBOR stand to lose or gain millions of dollars each day based on the 

smallest change in LIBOR. 

As the leading trader of derivatives 

in 2007, it has been estimated that 

Barclays stood to lose or gain $40 million per day. 

The settlement between regulators 

and Barclays lays bare a scenario 

where traders not only regularly attempted to manipulate LIBOR, but 

they didn’t even try to hide it. 

Once the financial crisis hit in 2008, 

manipulating LIBOR was also about 

survival. 

Banks were under intense scrutiny. If 

it cost a bank more to borrow money, 

it could be an indicator that other 

banks thought lending to the bank was 

risky. 

In Barclays’ settlement with regulators the bank admitted that it underreported the cost of borrowing during 

the financial crisis to mislead regulators and the public about the true financial health of the firm. 

Unfortunately, it seems as if the 

Barclays settlement is just the tip of 

the iceberg. 

Lawsuits worth billions of dollars 

have been filed against banks alleging 

wrongdoing. Regulators in the U.S., 

Canada, Japan, EU, Switzerland, and 

Britain are reportedly investigating. 

U.S. regulators should be fully engaged in investigating the LIBOR process and any wrongdoing by U.S. banks. 

However, U.S. financial regulators 

can’t conduct the necessary investigations into claims of wrongdoing or enforce new laws meant to rein in Wall 

Street if they don’t have the people, 

software, and resources necessary to do 

the work. 

Congress passed Wall Street reform 

because the largest financial institutions in this country took advantage of 

loopholes and the unregulated swap 

markets. 

They drove our country into the 

worst economic recession in our lifetime. 

In the aftermath, we said we are not 

going down that road again. No more 

too big to fail, no more bailouts. We 

are going to have transparency and accountability when it comes to swaps. 

We gave the job to the Commodity 

Futures Trading Commission and the 

Securities and Exchange Commission. 

With the recent approval of final 

rules defining swaps, the CFTC and the 

SEC have now triggered the implementation of an array of other rules to finally bring the swaps market out of 

the shadows and into the light. 

This is a huge step forward. 

But now, just when the financial regulators have the rules in place to oversee the $300 trillion market that nearly 

destroyed our economy, the Republicans are trying to cut the agencies off 

at the knees. 

Their philosophy is if you can’t repeal reforms by passing legislation, 

you can undermine the agency’s ability 

to enforce the law. 

Let me put this in perspective. The 

$37 trillion futures market has historically been policed by the CFTC. That is 

an enormous market to oversee, by 

anyone’s calculation. 

But it pales in comparison to the 

complex and previously unregulated 

$300 trillion swaps market now under 

CFTC’s purview because of DoddFrank. That is eight times the size of 

the futures markets. 

Common sense tells you that it is impossible for an agency to increase its 

responsibility eight-fold while its resources are cut by 41 percent. 

Yet, that hasn’t stopped the Republicans in the House. They recently reported out of Committee a bill that 

cuts funding requested in the President’s fiscal 2013 budget by $195 million 

for the SEC and $128 million for the 

CFTC. 

That’s a 41 percent cut for the CFTC 

and a 12 percent cut for the SEC—from 

the President’s request. 

Keep in mind that while Congress 

sets the level of funding for the SEC, it 

is largely funded through fees on trading volumes. So the cuts to the SEC 

aren’t about concern for saving taxpayer dollars—it is simply a way to remove the regulators’ ability to properly function. 

When financial tragedies befall people—think of missing customer funds 

at MF Global or Peregrine—we want 

investigators to find out what happened and seek recovery of money to 

the families and farmers who trusted 

those companies. Those are the jobs 

the Republicans want to cut. 

This tells firms such as Peregrine 

that while we have laws on the books 

they must follow, we aren’t going to 

give the regulators the resources to enforce them. 

The funding levels for the CFTC and 

SEC reported out of the House promises we will face another situation like 

MF Global or Peregrine in the future 

because we won’t have enough cops on 

the beat. 

A mere 4 years after the worst financial crisis in our lifetime and just several weeks after the latest scandal 

where farmers lost their hard earned 

money, this is simply irresponsible. 

We are still struggling to dig our way 

out of a recession that resulted in millions of jobs lost and $17 trillion of lost 

retirement, personal and household 

wealth. 

Yet, instead of working together to 

ensure that never happens again, Republicans are doing everything they 

can to stop the regulators from implementing laws that would have prevented that crisis and could prevent 

the next crisis. 

f 

DODD-FRANK ANNIVERSARY 

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on July 

21, we marked the 2-year anniversary 

of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform 

and Consumer Protection Act. 

This landmark law has taken important steps to rein in the Wall Street 

abuses that nearly drove our economy 

off the cliff in 2008. 

Two of its reforms were particularly 

important to me. One was the creation 

of the Consumer Financial Protection 

Bureau- the only agency in the Federal 

Government solely dedicated to looking out for consumers’ financial interests. 

This agency has already been a gamechanger when it comes to curbing the 

tricks in consumer financial products. 

It is bringing transparency and fairness 

to mortgages, private student loans, 

and credit cards. 

Last week, the CFPB announced its 

first ever enforcement action. It directed Capital One to pay about $150 

million to more than 2 million consumers who had purchased deceptively 

marketed add-on products to their 

credit cards. 

This is a big step forward. It shows 

there is a real cop on the beat when it 

comes to consumer protection. 

I am proud of what this agency has 

accomplished so far, and I look forward 

to seeing it continue its important 

work for years to come. 

Another important provision in the 

Wall Street Reform bill was the provision I drafted to reform debit card 

swipe fees. 

The swipe fee is a fee that a bank receives from a merchant when the merchant accepts a credit or debit card 

that the bank issued. This fee is taken 

as a cut of the transaction amount. 

Now, the vast majority of bank fees 

are set in a transparent and competitive market environment, with each 

bank setting their own fee rate and 

competing over them. That is not the 

case with swipe fees. 

With swipe fees, the big banks decided they would designate the two 

giant card companies, Visa and 

MasterCard, to set fees for all of them. 

That way each bank could get the same 

high fee on a card transaction without 

having to worry about competition. 

And swipe fees are anything but 

transparent. Most consumers and even 

most merchants have no idea what 

kind of swipe fee is being charged when 

they use a debit or credit card. 

The swipe fee system became an 

enormous money-maker for Visa, 

MasterCard, and the banks. They were 


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