There are no provisions in here that substantially affect or advantage the big Wall Street bankers. That is a misstatement and highly unfortunate. As it relates to discrimination, I can tell you that less than 4 percent of all the data that’s collected is going to be affected by this amendment to HMDA. What we’re basically looking at is reducing the compliance burdens for small institutions that make less than 500 loans a year. So there is an exaggeration to the statement about discrimination, there’s been exaggeration to the statement about this being about a Wall Street bailout. The reality is this is a bill that advantages and makes more competitive our Main Street lending institutions.

Berman: Given all the talk about Elizabeth Warren and 2020, do you see her critique of this bill as being on the level, or do you see her as trying to rev up opposition on the left to bolster her credentials ahead of a possible presidential run?

Heitkamp: Unlike some people here, I never ascribe motivation to what people say. I’m assuming that Elizabeth feels strongly about this. She did during the discussions about this when we drafted the Democratic bill in the last Congress. This is no surprise to me that she’s in opposition. She and I see it differently. In fact, completely differently, and I think that’s a result of the perspective that I have coming from a rural community.

Berman: Do you think her coming out against this will actually help you sell this bill to people in North Dakota given how different North Dakota is from Massachusetts?

Heitkamp: I think people in North Dakota don’t care what Elizabeth Warren thinks.

Berman: You said she was involved in some of the discussions. Have you talked to her in recent days? Did she give you any heads up about her plans to rally so aggressively against this?

Heitkamp: I think we all at the end of the day as United States senators have to make decisions that are best for our constituency and we have to call it the way we see it. Obviously Elizabeth and I do not see this bill at all the same way. I intend to correct the record. I think she has misstated the facts of this legislation, and I intend to make sure the record is corrected before we go to final passage.

Berman: One of the big criticisms of the bill, from Barney Frank and others, is that if this was solely about helping small and community banks, they’d be on board, but that it goes far beyond that and that it’s ridiculous to call banks with holdings of up to $250 billion, which get relief from this bill, as small. How do you respond to that?

Heitkamp: Nothing in this bill in any way weakens the prohibition about making shaky loans, loans to people with weak credit and packaging them within a security. I think we have to be clear in what former Congressman Frank has said about this bill. The first thing I would like to clarify is we moved an assumption: The assumption was any bank over $50 billion could be systemically risky, right? So now we have to pick a number. The number that we picked that would create the presumption was $250 billion. But remember this: There’s a couple of really important caveats.First off, it does not take away from the fact that those institutions will continue to be stress-tested. They’re going to be regulated so that they aren’t taking unnecessary risks. Those institutions still have to comply with qualified mortgage standards. The only QM changes that we made were for institutions under $10 billion and then only if they kept those mortgages in portfolio. So all the qualifying mortgage standards that Dodd-Frank adopted continue to be part of the overall regulatory scheme. And we did not change capital or liquidity requirements for those institutions. And so that one change simply changes an assumption with allowing the regulators to continue to regulate them if in fact they find that those institutions present systemic risk.