[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 104 (Wednesday, July 14, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5814-S5822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FINANCIAL REGULATORY REFORM

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have been fighting hard for a Wall 
Street reform bill that protects my State's families, holds Wall Street 
accountable, and includes a guarantee that American taxpayers will 
never again have to pay to bail out Wall Street or to clean up after 
big banks' messes. I am proud to say that, finally, after months of 
hard work, we are so close now to passing legislation that does exactly 
that.
  This should not be a partisan issue. It should not be about right 
versus left or Republican versus Democrat. It should be about doing 
what is right for our families and small business owners in my State of 
Washington and across the country. It should be about who it is we 
choose to stand up for and who we think needs our support right now.
  Some people have spent the last few months standing up for Wall 
Street and big banks, trying to water down this reform, and fighting 
against any changes that would prevent the big banks from going back to 
their ``bonus as usual'' mentality.
  I have been proud to stand with so many others to fight against the 
Wall Street lobbyists and special interest groups and stand up for the 
families I represent in Washington--families who want us to pass strong 
reform that cannot be ignored or sidestepped in the future, who want us 
to end bailouts and make sure Wall Street is held accountable for 
cleaning up their own messes, and who want us to put into place strong 
consumer protections to make sure big banks can never again take 
advantage of our families, our students, or our seniors.
  For most Americans, this debate is not complex; it is pretty simple. 
It is not about derivatives or credit default swaps; it is about 
fundamental fairness. It is about making sure that we have good 
commonsense rules that work for our families and our small business 
owners. It is about the person

[[Page S5815]]

who walks into a bank to sign up for a mortgage, or applies for a 
credit card, or starts planning their retirement. We want to make sure 
the rules are now on their side and not with the big banks on Wall 
Street.
  For far too long the financial rules of the road have not favored the 
American people. Instead, they have favored big banks, credit card 
companies, and Wall Street. For too long, those people have abused the 
rules.
  As we now approach this vote, I think it is important for all of us 
to be clear about who it is we are fighting for. I am fighting for 
people such as Devin Glaser, a school aide in Seattle, who told me that 
he had worked and saved his money and bought a condo before the 
recession began. He told me he put 20 percent down on a traditional 
mortgage and was making his payments. However, like a lot of people who 
found themselves underemployed as a result of this recession, Devin has 
been unable to find work for more than 25 hours a week. He told me he 
is now unable to pay his mortgage. He will be foreclosed on any day 
now.
  I am also fighting for people such as Rob Hays, a Washington State 
student whose parents have put their retirement on hold and gone back 
to work in order to send him to school. A few short years ago, Rob's 
parents were in the process of selling their home and preparing to 
retire. But then the foreclosure crisis took hold and they could no 
longer find a buyer. As a result, they were forced to pay two mortgages 
with the money they had saved for Rob's school, and retirement was put 
on hold.
  I am fighting for people such as Jude LaRene, a small business owner 
in Washington State, who told me that when the financial crisis hit, 
his line of credit was pulled. That forced him to lay off employees, go 
deep into debt on his personal credit card, and cut back on inventory--
despite the fact that his toy stores were more popular than ever.
  I am fighting for people such as Devon and Rob and Jude because they 
are the ones being forced to pay the price now for Wall Street's greed 
and irresponsibility.
  Whether it was gambling with borrowed money from our pension funds, 
making bets they could not cover, or peddling mortgages to people they 
knew could never pay, Wall Street made reckless choices that have 
devastated a lot of working families.
  In my home State of Washington, Wall Street's mistakes cost us over 
150,000 jobs. They cost average families thousands of dollars in lost 
income.
  They cost small businesses the access to credit they need to expand 
and hire and, in many cases, caused them to close.
  They cost workers their retirement accounts they were counting on to 
carry them through their golden years and students the college savings 
that would help launch their college careers.
  They cost homeowners the value of their most important financial 
asset as neighborhoods have been decimated by foreclosures.
  They cost our schoolteachers and our police officers and all of our 
communities. And they cost our workers, such as Devon, our students, 
such as Rob, and our small business owners, such as Jude.
  We owe it to people like them all across the country to reform this 
system that puts Wall Street before Main Street. We owe it to them to 
put their families back in control of their own finances. We owe it to 
them to make sure the rules that protect families sitting around the 
dinner table at night, balancing their checkbooks and finding ways to 
save for the future, not those sitting around the board room table 
finding ways to increase profits at the expense of hard-working 
Americans. To do that, we have to pass this strong Wall Street reform 
legislation.
  It is important for families to understand what this bill does and 
what exactly opponents of this legislation are fighting against.
  This bill contains explicit language guaranteeing that taxpayers will 
never again be responsible for bailing out Wall Street. It creates a 
brandnew Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will protect our 
consumers from big bank ripoffs, end unfair fees, curb out-of-control 
credit card and mortgage rates, and be a new cop on the beat to 
safeguard consumers and protect their families.
  It puts in place new restrictions for small businesses from unfair 
transaction fees that are imposed by credit card companies. It enforces 
limitations on excessive compensation for Wall Street executives. And 
it offers new tools to promote financial literacy and make sure our 
families have the knowledge to protect themselves and take personal 
responsibility for their finances.
  I have heard so many stories from people across Washington State who 
have scrimped and saved and made the best with what they had but were 
devastated, through no fault of their own--people who played by the 
rules but who are now paying the price for those on Wall Street who did 
not. These are the people for whom we have to stand up, the people 
whose Main Street values I and so many others fight for every day.
  With all of the new protections and reforms this bill contains for 
families and small businesses, one has to ask: Who are the opponents 
fighting for and who are they standing up to protect?
  I grew up working at my dad's five-and-dime store on Main Street in 
Bothell, WA--actually on Main Street. Like a lot of people in the 
country, Main Street is where I got my values. I was taught by my dad 
that the product of your work was not just about the dollars in the 
till at the end of the day. I learned that a good transaction was one 
that was good for your business and good for your customer. I learned 
that strong customer service and lasting relationships often made your 
business much stronger; that personal responsibility meant owning up to 
your mistakes and making them right. I learned that one business relied 
on all the others on the same street.
  I was taught that customers were not prey and businesses were not 
predators, and that an honest business was a successful one.
  It is time for us to bring those Main Street values back to our 
financial system, to bring back an approach that puts Main Street and 
families over Wall Street and profits; that protects consumers, holds 
big banks accountable for their actions, and makes sure people such as 
Devon and Rob and Jude are never again forced to bear the burden for 
big banks' mistakes.
  I urge my colleagues today to stand with us against the status quo 
and for this strong Wall Street reform bill that families and small 
businesses in Washington State and across the country desperately need.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the financial 
overregulation bill. The so-called financial reform bill before us is 
being sold to the American people as holding Wall Street accountable 
for the economic crisis that hurt every American family and business in 
every community across the Nation. We are told this bill will end ``too 
big to fail'' and prevent future bailouts.
  Unfortunately, just as the stimulus bill was supposed to reduce 
unemployment and the health care bill was supposed to lower health 
costs and reduce the deficit, this bill, too, will do the opposite of 
what is advertised. It will not prevent future bailouts. It will create 
another huge Federal bureaucracy; and instead of punishing Wall Street, 
it will punish Main Street and the families who suffered--not caused--
the financial meltdown.
  This bill was meant to rein in Wall Street. Yet the biggest 
supporters are Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and the biggest opponents 
are community banks and small businesses in every city and town and 
community in the Nation. I think that tells us all we need to know 
about this bill. I urge my colleagues to listen to the folks at home, 
the people who have to make a living who are going to be burdened by 
it.
  I strongly oppose cloture on this bill. Yes, there have been 
improvements made, and I worked with my colleague, Senator Dodd, to 
make sure we did not devastate the venture capital area. Unfortunately, 
that is coming in another bill. But despite some of the progress we 
have made, the provisions most harmful to taxpayers, families, and 
small businesses still remain.
  As a matter of fact, new provisions have been airdropped into the 
conference report that are so problematic

[[Page S5816]]

that neither Chamber could agree to include them in either version. If 
we are truly committed to enacting real bipartisan reform, then the 
majority would never allow items that were never debated and voted on 
to be included in the bill.
  I hope my Democratic colleagues will stand up for these principles 
about which they have talked so loudly and say no to this backroom 
practice of airdropping totally new concepts into the bill.
  I wish to talk now about some of the most egregious provisions in the 
bill.
  First, it is unbelievable and unacceptable that so many of my 
colleagues want to turn a blind eye to the government-sponsored 
enterprises, GSEs, that contributed to the financial meltdown by buying 
high-risk loans that banks made to people who could not afford them.
  Everyone here knows what I am talking about. Despite this bill's 
2,300 pages, it completely ignores the 900-pound gorilla in the room: 
the need to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the toxic twins as I 
not so fondly have to refer to them now.
  The irresponsible actions by Fannie and Freddie turned the American 
dream into the American nightmare for too many families who have either 
had their homes foreclosed or who are hanging on by a thread.
  The irresponsible actions, pushed by previous administrations on 
Fannie and Freddie, devastated neighborhoods and communities as 
property values diminished.
  To add insult to injury, after Freddie and Fannie went belly up, it 
was the very Americans who suffered from their irresponsible actions 
who were left footing the bill.
  As if that were not bad enough, unless we act now to reform the toxic 
twins, over the next 10 years Fannie and Freddie will cost the American 
taxpayers at least an additional $389 billion.
  In the joy of the Christmas holiday last December, the administration 
took off the $400 billion limit on them. I have to ask: How much money 
do they think they can lose if $400 billion is not enough for them to 
lose?
  What is in this bill to address this problem? Absolutely nothing. 
Zip. Zero.
  Next, this bill lumps in the good guys with the bad guys and treats 
them all the same, particularly when it comes to derivatives.
  Folks who are trying to manage and control costs are treated the same 
as folks who are spending and speculating in the market, making shady 
bets with money they did not have, making insurance bets on property 
they did not own.
  This was described in the book, ``The Big Short,'' by Michael Lewis. 
These computer game derivatives, or insurance policies, were dreamed up 
by Wall Street geniuses, some who made billions, others who lost 
billions. The billions in losses almost destroyed our financial system 
and poisoned the world's financial system.
  I have heard some folks say: Why do these bad practices mean 
something is going to happen to me? The way this bill is drafted, 
utility companies may not be able to lock in steady rates for their 
customers, leaving them instead at the whim of a volatile market. The 
utility companies will have to pay billions to Wall Street or Chicago 
to clear their normal long-term contracts and postcollateral with 
energy suppliers through clearinghouses run by big financial firms. 
That money will be immediately passed along to every consumer of power 
from that utility company. That is what utilities do--they pass it on 
to you and me as electricity or gas or other customers of theirs.
  Mr. President, you and I and folks in every community across the 
country could pay higher costs every time we flip on the light switch 
or turn on the air conditioner or heat.
  That means family farms may not be able to get long-term financing, 
forcing many to quit farming and prevent many from beginning to farm.
  The Wall Street Journal today, in a front-page article headed 
``Finance Overhaul Casts Long Shadow on the Plains'' tells how this 
bill will clobber folks in agricultural communities who have to have 
forward contracts. They never caused the problem, but it will tie up 
capital and make them pay tribute to big firms on Wall Street or 
Chicago. No wonder those big firms are for them. There is a lot of 
business for them, a lot of expense for the farmer, the commodity 
hauler trying to make a living.
  I am stunned that any Senator in good conscience would vote for a 
bill that would increase costs for every American, especially at a time 
when working families are struggling to make ends meet. One thing is 
certain: This bill will enlarge government.
  Today's Wall Street editorial opines that:

       Dodd-Frank, with its 2,300 pages, will unleash the biggest 
     wave of new federal financial rulemaking in three 
     generations. Whatever else this will do, it will not make 
     lending cheaper or credit more readily available.

  They go on to state that one law firm has estimated that the new law 
``will require no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 
different agencies.''
  What will be the effect? More lawyers, more bureaucracy, more 
taxpayer money, and more lawsuits.
  Certainly, I cannot vote in good conscience for a bill that creates a 
massive new superbureaucracy with unprecedented authority to impose 
government mandates and micromanage any entity that extends credit.
  We are not talking about the big guys--the Goldman Sachs and the 
AIGs. In the real world, we are talking about the community banks, 
small retailers, and even your dentist.
  I talked with a lot of small businesses and listened to them. A lot 
of people were concerned this past week when I was home about what is 
going on in Washington. I was talking with a group in Maryville in 
northwest Missouri.
  I said: The uncertainty is really a problem for small businesses.
  One small businessman corrected me. He said: No, it's the certainty. 
We know what Washington has already done to the deficit, to the debt, 
to health care, what it is going to do to financial regulation, and 
what it is threatening to do to energy costs.
  I asked everybody around the table: Should I have said ``certainty'' 
rather than ``uncertainty''?
  They said: You certainly should.
  Small businesses are not willing or able or even inclined to create 
jobs when this massive government rollout of spending, taxation, and 
regulation is coming down on them.
  Let's not be naive. Any of the new costs as a result of new mandates 
and regulations, regardless of the entity on which they are imposed, 
will be passed down to the very people this bill claims to 
protect. Under the new, misnamed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 
or CFPB, the decisions on allocating credit will no longer be based on 
the safety and soundness requirement for healthy banks. Instead, by 
empowering this new superbureaucracy with unprecedented power, 
decisions on credit will be driven by the administration's political 
will and agenda. Politics will then decide how to allocate credit while 
operating outside the framework of safety and soundness, thus putting 
more risk back into the system when we were supposed to be taking risk 
out of the system.

  This giant bill also contains a provision creating a new Office of 
Financial Research. You will get to know this one. It is given the 
authority to access personal financial information of any citizen in 
the United States. Well, I don't know about you, but I would prefer not 
to have a new bureaucracy rifling through my personal account 
information in an era of economic and electronic communications where 
fraud and identity theft run rampant. Ordinary Americans who did not 
cause the financial meltdown should not be punished and placed at risk 
because the government wishes to create this new, unnecessary office.
  I could continue to list provision after provision, pointing out 
expansions of government and ill-intended policies that will create 
more uncertainty while failing to hit the objective of regulatory 
reform. However, this Chamber doesn't have the hours for my speech 
alone. I could say: Harsh letter to follow. If anybody wants to know, 
we will be happy to send them lots of chapters and lots of verses. But, 
much like the health care bill recently signed into law, I fear small 
businesses will soon learn of many more unintended consequences which 
have yet to be seen. Even the bill's sponsors admit that the bill's 
long reach will not be

[[Page S5817]]

fully known until it is in place. Remember when the leader on the other 
side of this building said: If you want to find out what is in the 
bill, you will have to pass it. Well, in this bill, if you want to find 
out what it is going to do, unfortunately, you are going to find out if 
you pass it. I don't want to have my fingerprints on what is going to 
happen to businesses, to communities, and to jobs in the United States 
if it passes.
  To sum it up, if the goal is to enact real reform that ensures we 
never, ever have another financial crisis like the one we had 18 months 
ago, the bill falls woefully short of that goal. It is light on reform, 
heavy on overreach and unintended consequences. Overall, this bill is 
too large, too costly for consumers, and would kill job creation at a 
time when working Americans need to be left to do what they do best, 
and that is succeed.
  There is no doubt we need to protect every American from ever again 
falling victim to Wall Street gone wild. But what we do not want--and 
why this debate is so important--is to punish Americans for a crisis 
they didn't cause. Unless we scrap this failed version and start over, 
the Democrats' bill will do just that, and the costs will be paid by 
Main Street.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
an editorial from today's Wall Street Journal to which I referred.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     [From the Wall Street Journal]

                       The Uncertainty Principle

       So Republicans Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins 
     now say they'll provide the last crucial votes to get the 
     Dodd-Frank financial reform through the Senate. Hmmm. Could 
     this be Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's secret plan to take 
     back the Senate, guaranteeing another year or two of 
     regulatory and lending uncertainty and thus slower economic 
     growth?
       Probably not, but that still may be the practical effect. 
     This week White House aides leaked to the press that 
     President Obama may seek a review of regulations that are 
     restraining business confidence and bank lending. Yet Dodd-
     Frank, with its 2,300 pages, will unleash the biggest wave of 
     new federal financial rule-making in three generations. 
     Whatever else this will do, it will not make lending cheaper 
     or credit more readily available.
       In a recent note to clients, the law firm of Davis Polk & 
     Wardwell needed more than 150 pages merely to summarize the 
     bureaucratic ecosystem created by Dodd-Frank. As the nearby 
     table shows, the lawyers estimate that the law will require 
     no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different 
     federal agencies.
       The SEC alone, whose regulatory failures did so much to 
     contribute to the panic, will write 95 new rules. The new 
     Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection will write 24, and 
     the new Financial Stability Oversight Council will issue 56. 
     These won't be one-page orders. The new rules will run into 
     the hundreds if not thousands of pages in the Federal 
     Register, laying out in detail what your neighborhood banker, 
     hedge fund manager or derivatives trader can and cannot do.
       As the Davis Polk wonks put it, ``U.S. financial regulators 
     will enter an intense period of rule-making over the next 6 
     to 18 months, and market participants will need to make 
     strategic decisions in an environment of regulatory 
     uncertainty.'' The lawyers needed 26 pages of flow charts 
     merely to illustrate the timeline for implementing the new 
     rules, the last of which will be phased in after a mere 12 
     years.
       Because Congress abdicated its responsibility to set clear 
     rules of the road, the lobbying will only grow more intense 
     after the President signs Dodd-Frank. According to the 
     attorneys, ``The legislation is complicated and contains 
     substantial ambiguities, many of which will not be resolved 
     until regulations are adopted, and even then, many questions 
     are likely to persist that will require consultation with the 
     staffs of the various agencies involved.''
       In other words, the biggest financial players aren't being 
     punished or reined in. The only certain result is that they 
     are being summoned to a closer relationship with Washington 
     in which the best lobbyists win, and smaller, younger firms 
     almost always lose. New layers of regulation will deter 
     lending at least in the near term, and they are sure to raise 
     the cost of credit. Non-blue chip businesses will suffer the 
     most as the financial industry tries to influence the writing 
     of the rules while also figuring out how to make a buck in 
     the new system.
       The timing of Dodd-Frank could hardly be worse for the 
     fragile recovery. A new survey by the Vistage consulting 
     group of small and midsize company CEOs finds that 
     ``uncertainty'' about the economy is by far the most 
     significant business issue they face. Of the more than 1,600 
     CEOs surveyed, 87% said the federal government doesn't 
     understand the challenges confronting American companies.
       Believe it or not, Mr. Frank has already promised a follow-
     up bill to fix the mistakes Congress is making in this one. 
     In a recent all-night rewrite session, he and Mr. Dodd made a 
     particular mess of the derivatives provisions. They now say 
     they didn't really mean to force billions of dollars in new 
     collateral payments from industrial companies on existing 
     contracts that present no systemic risk. But that's precisely 
     what the regulators could demand under the current language, 
     and the courts will ultimately decide when everyone sues 
     after the new rules are issued.
       Taxpayers might naturally ask why legislators don't simply 
     draft a better bill now. But for Democrats the current and 
     only priority is to pass something they can claim whacks the 
     banks and which they can hail as another ``achievement'' to 
     sell before the elections.
       More remarkable is that a handful of Republicans are 
     enabling this regulatory mess. Mr. Brown and Ms. Collins say 
     they now favor Dodd-Frank because Congressional negotiators 
     agreed to drop the bank tax. But lawmakers didn't drop the 
     bank tax. They only altered the timing and manner of its 
     collection. Instead of immediately assessing a tax on large 
     financial companies to pay for future bailouts, the final 
     version simply authorizes the bailouts to occur first. The 
     money to pay for them will then be collected via a tax on the 
     remaining firms.
       Because this tax will be collected by the Federal Deposit 
     Insurance Corporation, even opponents of the bill have viewed 
     it as part of an insurance system. It isn't. Insurance is 
     when you pay a premium and the insurance company agrees to 
     replace your house if it burns down. A tax is when you pay 
     the government and then the government decides which houses 
     it wants to replace when there is a fire in the neighborhood.
       Under Dodd-Frank, if Firm A pays to cover the cost of the 
     last bailout, there's no guarantee that the FDIC will rescue 
     its creditors if Firm A fails in the future. This is 
     fundamentally different from traditional deposit insurance, 
     which guarantees the same deal for every bank customer. Dodd-
     Frank allows the FDIC to discriminate among creditors at its 
     discretion.
       This transfer of wealth is a tax by any reasonable 
     definition, borne by the customers, shareholders and 
     employees of the companies ordered to pay it. Is this how Mr. 
     Brown plans to reward the tea partiers who carried him to 
     victory last winter in Massachusetts? Is this the key to a 
     small business rebound in Maine?
       A good definition of a bad law is one that its authors are 
     rewriting even before they pass it. The only jobs Dodd-Frank 
     will create are in Washington--and in law firms like Davis 
     Polk.


Triumph of the Regulators--Estimate of new rule-makings under the Dodd-
                Frank financial reform by federal agency

Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection..............................24
CFTC.................................................................61
Financial Stability Oversight Council................................56
FDIC.................................................................31
Federal Reserve......................................................54
FTC...................................................................2
OCC..................................................................17
Office of Financial Research..........................................4
SEC..................................................................95
Treasury..............................................................9
                                                               ________
                                                               
    Total*..........................................................243

* The total eliminates double counting for joint rule-makings and this 
estimate only includes explicit rule-makings in the bill, and thus 
likely represents a significant underestimate.
Source: Davis Polk & Wardwell

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to 
speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. UDALL of New Mexico pertaining to the submission 
of S. Res. 581 are located in today's Record under ``Submission of 
Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I rise to voice my support for the Dodd-
Frank Wall Street Reform Act. As the

[[Page S5818]]

chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I was fortunate to play a 
role in writing some of the most important reforms of this legislation, 
and that was the derivatives title. This historic legislation the 
Senate stands poised to approve will rein in the reckless Wall Street 
behavior that nearly destroyed our economy, hurting Arkansas small 
businesses and costing millions of Americans their jobs.
  In 2008, our Nation's economy was on the brink of collapse. America 
was being held captive by a financial system that was so 
interconnected, so large, and so irresponsible that our economy and our 
way of life were about to be destroyed. I will never forget the 
sobering meetings at the Capitol with then-Treasury Secretary Hank 
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who informed us of 
the imminent collapse of the U.S. economy. Overnight, the United States 
of America--the most powerful economic power on the globe--had been 
brought to the brink of collapse.
  Today, American families and small businesses are still managing the 
consequences of the reckless behavior that occurred on Wall Street and 
nearly led to our economic collapse. Congress has the duty to the 
people we represent and to future generations of Americans to ensure 
that this country's economic security is never again put in that kind 
of jeopardy. Failure to correct the mistakes of the past is simply 
unacceptable. That is why I am proud to say that today we stand poised 
to deliver the historic reform the American people deserve.
  This legislation provides 100 percent transparency and accountability 
to our shattered financial markets and regulatory system. As chairman 
of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I was proud to help craft the 
bill's strong derivatives title. This legislation brings a $600 
trillion unregulated derivatives market into the light of day, ending 
the days of Wall Street's backroom deals and putting this money back on 
Main Street where it belongs. In all of our communities across this 
Nation, these reforms will get banks back to the business of banking, 
protecting innocent depositors and ensuring taxpayers will never again 
have to foot the bill for risky Wall Street gambling.
  After spending countless hours on this legislation and digging into 
the details of the derivatives world, I am here to reassure my 
colleagues and all Americans that this bill is strong, it is 
thoughtful, and it is groundbreaking reform that will fundamentally 
change our financial system for the better. We worked hard to ensure 
that it would.
  It is important to reiterate that this reform is not regulation for 
regulation sake. It is surgical in its approach. We maintain an end-
user exemption, promote restraints on the regulators, where necessary, 
and provisions that recognize we are competing in a global financial 
marketplace.
  Over the next year, Congress will rely heavily on the regulators for 
their guidance and expertise as the rules and regulations are written 
for this legislation. As chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee--
one of the key committees of oversight--I pledge to be vigilant in this 
process and retain a watchful eye on those regulators. It is imperative 
that our vision of strong reform is implemented properly; that everyone 
should be doing their job--in the legislation we write, the regulations 
that need to be written to match that, and the oversight to ensure that 
balance continues. While the regulators must hold the financial system 
accountable for its actions, Congress must hold the regulators 
accountable, just as the voters hold us responsible for a lack of 
meaningful reform.
  As the Senator from a rural State, I will also ensure that our 
community banks are able to continue to meet the lending needs of rural 
America and will not be subject to unintended consequences. Our 
community banks did not create this problem and should not have to 
shoulder the burden of paying for the solution.

  America's consumers and businesses deserve strong reform that will 
ensure that the U.S. financial oversight system promotes and fosters 
the most honest, open, and reliable financial markets in the world. Our 
financial markets have long been the envy of the world. The time has 
come for our country to restore confidence to our shattered financial 
system. The time has come for us, the United States, to lead by 
example. We stand poised to deliver that reform today, and I look 
forward to final passage of this bill.
  Finally, a bill of this complexity and importance requires 
perseverance and long hours, and the dedicated staff of the Senate 
deserves congratulations. I thank my colleagues, of course, Senator 
Dodd and his staff, for their tremendous work. In particular, I would 
like to thank Ed Silverman, the Banking Committee staff director for 
his dedication to finishing this legislation. I would like to also 
thank Senator Chambliss, my ranking member on the Senate Agriculture 
Committee, and his staff for their friendship and eyes and ears 
throughout this process; Senator Reid and his staff, of course, for 
their leadership; and the administration and regulators for their 
extraordinary commitment to this reform bill; and certainly our House 
colleagues, Chairmen Frank and Peterson--particularly Chairman Peterson 
of the House Agriculture Committee in particular, and their staffs, for 
their cooperation and leadership.
  I also would like to thank my staff for their unbelievable hard work 
throughout this process. There were a lot of long nights, a lot of 
complicated issues, and a lot of dedication on their part to ensuring 
that what we produced was something that was good and solid for the 
future of this country, particularly Patrick McCarty, Cory Claussen, 
Brian Baenig, Julie Anna Potts, Matt Dunn, George Wilder, Courtney 
Rowe, and Robert Holifield on our Agriculture Committee staff, as well 
as Anna Taylor on my personal staff.
  We have an enormous opportunity to do something that is going to move 
us forward, understanding that we never get things perfect but, more 
importantly, that we are willing to step to the plate and to do what we 
can to make our country strong again, to make our economy strong again, 
to bring confidence to consumers and investors in this Nation and 
globally in order to move ourselves forward--not just for ourselves but 
for future generations. I urge my colleagues to support this conference 
report, and I look forward to this legislation being signed into law.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. (Mr. Franken.) Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. CORKER. I wish to speak for a moment about the Dodd-Frank bill 
that we are going to vote on apparently tomorrow evening. I wanted to 
talk a little bit about politics, which is not my specialty, and then a 
little bit about the substance.
  I know the Presiding Officer has been highly involved in this bill 
and made a positive contribution. I read recently comments made by our 
leader, the majority leader here, and the President, and actually the 
chairman of the Banking Committee regarding the fact that the reason 
the bill is the way it is is partisan politics, and basically 
insinuating that Republicans did not want to deal with a financial 
regulatory bill.
  Nothing has disappointed me more than the fact that we have a bill 
that has basically ended up wrapping folks around the axle as they 
tried to get two or three votes on our side of the aisle to pass this 
bill. We had a tremendous opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill. We had 
a tremendous opportunity to pass a bill that would have shown the 
American people that we in this body have the ability to work together 
on big issues and solve problems. I think it is a shame we did not do 
that. I have to say, from my perspective--and I think I put as much 
time into this bill as anybody here in the Senate--it ended up being 
about partisan issues. There was an overreach on issues that had almost 
nothing to do--as a matter of fact, absolutely nothing to do--with this 
crisis, to advance some political agenda issues, and then, on the other 
hand, a total denial to deal with some of the core issues that

[[Page S5819]]

got us in this situation. So I am disappointed.
  We talk a lot. We have had groups come in, and they talk us to about 
how they want to see bipartisanship. Then some of us on both sides of 
the aisle step out from time to time to do that. When it happens, and a 
lot of effort is expended, and the end product is not achieved, for a 
lot of forces that exist around here, the very people that you end up 
reaching out to criticize the fact that we ended up with a partisan 
bill.
  Yet, at the end of the day, let's face it, one side has the majority, 
one side has the minority. In this particular bill, I do not think 
there was, at the end, a valid attempt to do that. So I am 
disappointed. We have issues in this country as they relate to our 
financial system that do need to be addressed. No doubt, any bill of 
this magnitude, 2,300 pages, has some good things in it. There are good 
provisions in this 2,300-page bill. In many ways we punted most of the 
work to regulators. They are going to spend the next 10 to 18 months 
making rules that leave a lot of instability in our financial system at 
a time when I think people want to have a degree of certainty.
  I think the Presiding Officer today tried to actually focus on 
greater certainty in some areas, and I might have disagreed with some 
of those. But the fact is, I think part of our job here in legislating 
is to create a degree of clarity.
  One of the shortcomings of this bill is that--I think the count keeps 
going. I have heard a count of 363 rulemakings. I have heard a group 
come out and say there are 500 rulemakings. In essence, what we did 
with this bill in many ways is say to the very regulators who had the 
power, candidly, to do most of what is in this bill anyway, they had 
that power within their purview, did not do it, and kind of what we 
said is: Look, we would like for you to make rules.
  So K Street and government relations folks are going to make a lot of 
money over the next 12 to 18 months as they now lobby regulators to 
sort of figure out what the rules of the road are going to be. In the 
process, again, jobs in the country will be more stagnant.
  The other piece of this is that this all started with this sort of 
political agenda: We are going to bash Wall Street. Now Republicans 
have come out and said, no, this is a Wall Street bailout. So we had 
Democrats going to bash Wall Street, and Republicans saying, this is a 
Wall Street bailout. Candidly, I do not know that it is either one. The 
fact is, I think most folks on Wall Street like this bill.
  As a matter of fact, I am looking at hedge fund managers right now, 
reading the Financial Times, many of the folks who probably are 
involved in the riskiest businesses are now out forming new hedge 
funds. Now they are moving to a more unregulated area than they were 
already in. So it is pretty fascinating how we create bills and we do 
not address the core issues, and then we have lots of unintended 
consequences along the way, as we are seeing play out right now.
  I am not supporting this bill, which I had hoped to cosponsor. I am 
not supporting this bill out of partisanship; I am not supporting this 
bill because it misses the mark. This is not the worst bill that has 
ever been created. I am not going to say that. It is not. We just did 
not do our work. I mean, basically what we have done is, as I 
mentioned, we left it to regulators. We did not deal with some core 
issues.
  I offered an amendment to deal with underwriting. At the end of the 
day, regardless of everything that people talk about at hieroglyphic 
levels, we had a lot of loans in this country that were written to 
people who could not pay them back. We did not have underwriting 
standards. We still do not have underwriting standards.
  At the end of the day, we had two entities. I am not one of those who 
said, these entities were the core reason for the problem. But the fact 
is, we had two enablers, Fannie and Freddie, that, let's face it, what 
they do is they allow people to write bad mortgages, pool them 
together, and then they insure or purchase those. They were enablers. 
We have not dealt with that.
  I do not support this legislation, not because it is the worst bill 
in the world. It is not. As a matter of fact, we do not even know what 
the outcome of this legislation is. It is interesting, I read the 
papers and they talk about the fact that this is a historical piece of 
legislation. We have no idea whether this bill is historical. We will 
not know for a long time until the regulators decide what they are 
going to do with this bill, because basically the power is left to a 
huge number of bureaucrats which, by the way, we have created, which is 
going to be like a malaise over our financial community because we did 
not give a lot of clear direction. We left it to regulators. We created 
a bureaucracy.
  One other note. I think the issue that in many ways divided us--I 
know people on the other side of the aisle knew this well, refused to 
address it, although at one point we got very close and almost had a 
deal--was this issue of the Consumer Protection Agency.
  I am all for consumer protection. I think the concern that I had as 
an individual is we have created a new entity. It has no board. It is 
an amazing thing. It has no board. Because of the standards against 
which the way this organization is judged as it relates to its 
rulemaking, which is expansive across the entire financial industry, 
because of the standard against which you have to challenge, there is 
no veto ability.
  This new organization has a budget anywhere from, I think, $600 
million to $1 billion a year, and the only way the Presiding Officer or 
I will know what direction this organization is going to take is who 
leads it. This is an incredible place for us to be, for us as a 
Congress to be. I think it is an incredible place for the 
administration to be, where we are creating an entity, a consumer 
financial protection organization, that has incredible rule-writing 
abilities, that has no board, no real veto ability, and yet on its own, 
one person--I am not talking about a group of people, but one person is 
going to decide the nature of what this organization is going to engage 
in. I find that incredible.
  For all I know, the fears that I have about it, the fears I have 
about this organization, may not be borne out--may not be borne out.
  I think the Presiding Officer very well may support this concept. He 
will never know whether his hopes for this organization are borne out 
until we know who the person is and what their bent and flavor is.
  I think that, again, as a body we had a responsibility to put a 
balance in place so that we knew what the direction of this 
organization was going to be over time. I find that to be incredibly 
irresponsible.
  As we look at this bill, I think one of the gauges of what it does 
is, we have the folks on Wall Street who rhetorically my friends on the 
other side of the aisle wanted to bash, and, candidly, all of America 
in many ways is upset with Wall Street is loving this bill. They have 
got teams of compliance officers who have the ability to deal with 
regulations a consumer protection agency might put out, all these 
rulemakings. As a matter of fact, typically when we regulate like this, 
it is the big guys who benefit, and they get bigger.
  But the community banks, the smaller banks in my State, and I think 
across this country, are the ones that are concerned. I know we are all 
concerned about the employment activity in our country. All of us want 
to see the economy improve.
  At the end of the day, most Americans have to deal with these smaller 
institutions. Most Americans want to deal with these smaller 
institutions. They are people they go to church with, they go to Rotary 
Club, they see at the grocery store. These are the people they have 
relationships with. What we are doing in this legislation is we are 
increasing the cost of capital that is available to most Americans, and 
we are limiting the amount of that increased cost--that capital is 
going to cost more--we are decreasing the availability.
  So we are decreasing the availability of capital in communities 
across our country, and we are increasing the cost of that. So I find 
that it is an amazing place where we are. We all care about employment, 
and yet we put in place policies that are counter to that employment. 
So, again, I am disappointed in the outcome of this bill.
  I have appreciated working with many Members on both sides of the

[[Page S5820]]

aisle to come up with a balanced piece of legislation that will stand 
the test of time, a piece of legislation, by the way, that will 
actually deal with the core issues that created this financial crisis. 
This bill does not do that in every area. It does in some. I want to 
say that some of the derivatives--clearing houses, I think that is a 
good contribution. Again, I think we have got end users out across our 
country now who are panic stricken, farmers and others, who use 
derivatives in their daily lives. And now maybe--we do not know because 
regulators will decide down the road. We punted that. We said, we will 
let the regulators decide. So for a period of time, they are going to 
be concerned about whether they are able to put up their tractors and 
barns and other things as collateral against derivatives or be in a 
more risky position.
  We have missed the mark. I realize that, ironically, after a year of 
work, 2,300 pages, hundreds and hundreds of rules that are getting 
ready to be generated by regulators. It is my understanding there is 
now already another bill coming to correct this bill. That is pretty 
amazing to me.
  I wish to say that politics ends up overcoming substance, I have seen 
as bills come to the floor. We had an opportunity which we missed to 
try to get this bill right in a bipartisan way. In spite of the fact 
that I am disappointed I cannot support this legislation strictly on 
policy grounds, I do want to say that our staff and our office is going 
to continue to be engaged with others. I know there is going to be a 
lot of other activity as a result of this bill, some of the unintended 
consequences, some of the mistakes that have been made and some of the 
glaring omissions we did not deal with, things such as--it is hard for 
me to believe that we would not take the time to upgrade our Bankruptcy 
Code so that a large entity that fails goes through some of the same 
things the same entity in Minnesota might go through. It is amazing to 
me that we did not do that work. But we still have an opportunity.
  I know the Presiding Officers have now changed. I know the Presiding 
Officer sitting here today is on the Judiciary Committee. I also know 
that over the course of the next year or two we will have the 
opportunity to work on that and try to develop something so that when a 
large, highly complex financial entity fails, there is actually a sort 
of standard they go through when they fail that people understand, and 
they understand the bankruptcy stats, they understand what their rights 
are going to be.
  There is a lot of work left to be done. I am disappointed in where we 
are and what we are going to be voting on tomorrow night.
  I cannot support it, but I do look forward to working with my 
colleagues on changes that will have to be made, on the unintended 
consequences this bill will create and, obviously, the many technical 
changes that will result because of the fact that we rushed our work.
  This process began mostly about substance. A lot of people put a lot 
of time into trying to understand substance. I know the Presiding 
Officer focused on one particular issue and tried to offer some 
substance in that regard. At the end of the day, politics took over.
  November is approaching. It would be nice in the eyes of some people 
to have a 60-, 61-vote bill. Some are said to like obstruction. I can 
tell my colleagues, nothing could be further from the truth, especially 
on this piece of legislation.
  What I regret most is, I know this bill is going to have the 
unintended consequence of hurting Tennesseans, hurting people from 
Oregon and Minnesota and around the country. There is no question that 
with all that we have laid out in these 2,300 pages, there will be less 
credit available and the credit that is available will cost more money. 
What we really have done with this bill is hurt the average American.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to address the Dodd-Frank 
financial reform bill and to share the reasons it makes a great deal of 
sense to restore the lane markers and traffic signals to our financial 
system--lane markers and traffic signals that were ripped away 
carelessly, thoughtlessly over the course of a decade and led to the 
economic house of cards that melted down last year, doing enormous 
damage to America's working families. There may be many in the 
financial world who feel pretty good about the most recent billion-
dollar quarterly profits or million-dollar bonuses, but families in 
America's working world are not feeling so good. They are looking at 
their retirement savings being decimated. They look at the value of 
their house and realize it is worth less than it was 6 years ago. For 
many families, the amount they owe on the house is more than it is now 
worth. Families are looking at lost jobs and lost health care that went 
with those jobs. They are looking at an economy that struggling to 
recover, that is providing them few opportunities to get back on their 
feet.
  The meltdown triggered by the economic house of cards built up over 
the last decade is enormous. It is not only the damage done to 
families, it is the damage done to the economy as a whole. We cannot 
talk to any room with owners of small businesses and not hear stories 
about frozen lending, about credit lines cut in half, about 
opportunities to expand a business, but, despite a regular banking 
relationship extended over a decade, that bank cannot now extend the 
loans that would enable them to seize that opportunity to create jobs. 
We still have massive disruption in our securities market that provides 
the credit that fuels not only home mortgages but many other parts of 
the economy.
  This economic meltdown has been a huge factor in contributing to the 
national debt. In every possible way, the absence of responsible lane 
markers and traffic signals has wreaked havoc on the American family 
and the American economy. We are here now to set that straight, to 
restore those lane markers and traffic signals.
  What really happened? It can be summed up in two words: irresponsible 
deregulation. Let's get into the details a bit further. Let's start 
with irresponsible deregulation that led to new predatory mortgage 
practices. One of those practices was liar loans, loans in which the 
loan officer was making up the numbers and putting them in because they 
knew they could turn around and sell that loan to Wall Street and have 
no responsibility for whether that family succeeded in making the 
payments.
  Another predatory practice was steering payments--mortgage 
originators getting paid huge bonuses to sign people up for mortgages 
that had in the fine print hidden exploding interest rates, so the 
family could easily make the payments at 5 percent, but when that 
hidden language triggered 9 percent, there was no way the family was 
going to be able to make those loan payments. Since most of those were 
on a 2-year delay, we can think of it as a 2-year fuse, a ticking 
timebomb, a ticking mortgage timebomb that was going to go off and 
destroy that family's finances. Then the prepayment penalty that locked 
people into those loans. These retail mortgage practices resulted in 
irresponsible deregulation.
  Then we had the securities that were made from those bad mortgages by 
financial firms, packaging those bad mortgages, putting a shiny wrapper 
on them, and then selling them with AAA ratings to financial 
institutions, to pension funds, to investment houses, tossing those 
mortgage securities hither and yon without full disclosure. When those 
mortgages that were in those packages went bad, those securities were 
going to go bad. That is what happened in 2008 and 2009. It melted down 
this economy.
  Another piece was the irresponsible deregulation lifting leverage 
requirements on the largest investment houses. Bear Sterns in a single 
year went from 20-to-1 leverage to 40-to-1 leverage. That means they 
were going to make a lot more money when everything is going up, but it 
means the moment things turn down, they can't

[[Page S5821]]

cover their bets and they are going to go out of business.
  Then we had credit default swaps. That is a fancy term for insurance 
on the success of a bond. That new insurance was issued by AIG without 
any collateral being set aside to cover the insurance--complete failure 
to deregulate this new product. Those insurance policies, those credit 
default policies created an interwoven web in which if one firm failed 
and couldn't pay off its responsibilities under the credit default 
swaps or insurance policies, then the firm that it owed was going to 
fail. It set up a web of potential collapse.
  Those are the types of dramatic issues created through irresponsible 
deregulation that we must address in this body and that are addressed 
in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.
  First, the bill ends those three predatory mortgage practices I spoke 
of. It ends liar loans. It creates underwriting standards. My colleague 
from Tennessee mentioned he would like to see underwriting standards in 
this bill. They actually are in the bill. That is a very important part 
of this legislation. This bill ends the steering payments, the bonuses 
paid to mortgage originators to basically guide people into tricky 
mortgages with hidden exploding interest rate clauses. This bill stops 
prepayment penalties that were used to lock families in. If you are in 
a mortgage and you have to pay several pounds of flesh to get out of 
that mortgage--and by that, I mean perhaps 10 percent of the value of 
your house--where is that 10 percent coming from? You can't do it, so 
you are locked in. You are chained to the steering wheel of a car going 
over a cliff. We have gotten rid of that practice.
  The second main thing we have done is establish real-time consumer 
protection to end scams and tricks and traps in financial documents. 
There was a woman from Salem, OR, who wrote to me. She wanted to share 
her story, just one of the little pieces of malfeasance that had 
occurred. She had paid her credit card bill on a timely basis month 
after month, year after year. She was very surprised when she received 
a letter saying she had a late payment and owed a fee. So she called up 
the credit card company and said: How can this be? I always pay on 
time.
  The person on the other end said: Yes, we received your payment, as 
you indicated. But your contract says we don't have to post your 
payment for 10 days, and so we didn't post your payment right away. We 
posted it at the end of that 10-day period. At the end of the 10-day 
period, your payment was late. So you owe us this fee. It is all in 
your contract.
  She said: How can that be fair?
  That is why we need a consumer protection agency for citizens across 
the country. Members know what I am talking about because virtually 
every one of us has opened up a statement and gone: Wait, how can that 
be fair? We did have the delegation of consumer protection 
responsibilities to the Fed, but the Fed had its monetary mission in 
the penthouse of their office building. They had safety and soundness 
on the upper floors, but they put consumer protection down in the 
basement. They ignored it. They didn't act on the responsibilities they 
had. So we put those responsibilities in an organization, a Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau that has a single mission--not a third 
mission or a fourth mission, not a forgotten mission, not a mission we 
put in the basement, but a first mission--so that Americans can choose 
from responsible financial products, not ones that compete to see who 
can have the biggest scam, the biggest deception, the biggest trick or 
the biggest trap but instead can compete on the cost of the product and 
on the quality of the service.
  The third thing this bill does is redirects banks to the mission of 
providing loans to families and small businesses. This is the core 
function of the banking world. What happened over the last few years is 
some of our banks said: It is a lot more fun to bet on high-risk 
investments than it is to make loans to families and businesses. But 
that is not the mission of the banks that have access to the Fed window 
for discounted funds from the Federal Reserve. That is not the mission 
of the banks that we insure their deposits. The function of those banks 
is to make sure there is liquidity in the hands of our businesses so 
they can thrive and so families can thrive. This bill redirects them to 
that mission.
  Let me put it this way: High-risk investing is a little bit like 
high-speed car racing.
  You know as you watch cars going around the race track they are going 
to push the boundaries, the limits of speed and traction, and they are 
going to do quite well. They are going to try to nudge ahead of the 
rest of the cars. But then, eventually, one is going to hit some rubber 
on the track or some oil or some gravel or get bumped by another car 
and the race car is going to crash.
  When you go to the track, you pretty well know in advance you are 
going to see a car crash. That is the way it is with investment houses. 
They are competing with each other to find the best opportunities for 
the highest return, so we know they are going to crash--that some of 
them will--and we accept that. This is an important role in the 
formation, aggregation, allocation of capital. But we want them to 
crash on the race track, not to crash out on the streets of the city or 
the streets of the countryside. That is why this bill moves high-risk 
investing out of the banks that should be dedicated to the mission of 
providing loans to small businesses and families.
  Another key thing this bill does is restore integrity in the 
formation of securities. Let me put it to you this way. Imagine that an 
electrician comes to your house because you are asking that electrician 
to wire up your basement. The electrician leaves, and you find out he 
or she took out a fire policy on your house. I think you might be a 
little worried about the quality of the wiring that was done in your 
basement.
  Or consider this possibility: You buy a car and you find out the 
person who sold you the car took out a life insurance policy on you. 
Well, you do not like the idea, I do not like the idea, of the 
possibility that someone would sell a car that is defective so they can 
take out a life insurance policy and maybe cash in.
  Yet that was what was happening with securities: companies taking bad 
loans, putting them in a shiny wrapper, selling them, and then taking 
out an insurance policy--a credit default swap--so when that security 
went bad they could cash in.
  Well, we need to have a level of integrity in the formation of our 
securities or our bonds. This bill takes us in that direction. This 
bill puts the sale of swaps on organized markets. What are swaps? 
Again, they are insurance policies, based on interest rates; insurance 
policies, based on exchange rates; insurance policies, based on the 
success of securities.
  You cannot sell insurance to the general public without setting aside 
reserves, but these swaps were sold without reserves. So this bill 
before us today says reserves are necessary so the bet can be covered 
if the event you are insuring should happen.
  It also creates a market for them so the customer--that is normally a 
business that wants to hedge its interest rate risk or its exchange 
risk or its investments in securities, that wants to hedge and protect 
itself against the possibility that those will go down or change--they 
can get that at a much better price when they can do so through the 
power of a transparent, organized market.
  So being able to hedge risk at a much cheaper price is a huge 
contribution to the formation and allocation of capital in our country.
  Finally, this bill allows a systematic way to dismantle failing firms 
in the financial world so it minimizes systemic risk and so the 
industry itself picks up the cost of their failure, so we the taxpayers 
are not in a position of having to pick up that cost.
  I know some of my colleagues on the other side have simply asserted 
the opposite to try to confuse the issue. Well, I think that is 
irresponsible because so much was done in this bill to make sure 
American taxpayers are never again on the hook for the failure of 
financial firms in our Nation. This is the type of responsible lane 
markers and traffic signals we need in our system.
  Certainly every one of us here believes there are further strides 
that could be made. There are standards in this bill that I would like 
to have crisper. There are terms for which I know we will need fierce, 
vigilant regulation to make sure those terms are not expanded into 
loopholes.

[[Page S5822]]

  This bill does not do as much as I would like to address the issue of 
perverse incentives in the system of rating securities, something the 
Presiding Officer was a huge advocate for, and put forward a terrific 
policy to address. We are going to have to keep working on that piece.
  But in each of these areas I have described, this is a quantum 
improvement. I think colleagues on both sides of the aisle know that. 
So beware of efforts to confuse the debate trying to say what is north 
is south and what is east is west.
  So these are the reasons--these core improvements to our financial 
system that enhance the ability to aggregate and allocate capital 
efficiently--why I am supporting this bill. I applaud the chairman of 
the Banking Committee, who steered this bill through enormous sets of 
obstacles. It is reported that Wall Street hired 1,000 extra lobbyists 
to try to torpedo the bill that is before us. That is a lot of 
obstacles to get through.
  These are complex issues that required thoughtful analysis and had to 
be worked and reworked. So I applaud the chairman's work in taking us 
to this point where we are prepared to send this bill on to the 
President's desk.
  I would like to particularly thank my colleague, Carl Levin, who 
teamed up to work with me on a proposal to take high-risk investing out 
of the bank holding companies and to improve the integrity of bonds. 
That was work that came straight out of the committee work he did in 
such a capable and timely fashion.
  So with that, I conclude by saying we need a financial system that is 
not about quarterly profit margins on Wall Street, that is not about 
the size of bonuses on Wall Street but is about providing a foundation 
for business to thrive, for employment to be increased, for families to 
find work, and to build financial foundations for the success of those 
families over the next several decades. That is the type of financial 
foundation we need, and this bill certainly is a huge stride in 
accomplishing that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I will not take long at this moment. I just 
want to compliment our colleague from Oregon--as well as other members 
of the committee--for his work on this historic piece of legislation. 
This was a long time in putting together a comprehensive, complicated 
piece of legislation dealing with financial reform. There are many 
people who deserve credit for the product of this legislation, not the 
least of which is Senator Merkley of Oregon, a new Member to this body 
but a very active and vibrant member of the Banking Committee who added 
substantially to the product that is now before us.
  So I appreciate having the opportunity to hear his observations about 
the bill and look forward to further comments today and tomorrow by 
others on this product. At a later point today, we will go into greater 
length about the bill. But I would urge my colleagues to support this 
legislation. I am very grateful to all who have been involved--both 
Democrats and Republicans--in trying to make this as strong and as good 
a bill as we possibly could.
  I have listened with some interest today to the comments of others 
about this legislation, with some amusement, I might add, in terms of 
observations about how we got to where we did. But, nonetheless, that 
is the nature of this institution, I suppose.
  With that, I again thank Senator Merkley for his fine work.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VOINOVICH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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