[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6917]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will 
resume consideration of S. 3217, the Wall Street reform legislation. 
There will be no rollcall votes today.
  I am anxious to see how the debate goes forward on this bill. It is a 
most important bill. The bill before the Senate places strict new 
regulations to stop Wall Street's reckless gambling. There will be no 
more taxpayer bailouts; that is, no bailouts ever. It ends too big to 
fail. It puts a new cop on the beat. It puts consumers in control with 
information that is in plain English.
  Let me repeat. The legislation before this body holds Wall Street 
accountable, ends taxpayer bailouts, guarantees taxpayers will never 
again be forced to bail out reckless Wall Street firms by creating a 
safe way to liquidate failed firms without taxpayer money, ends too big 
to fail with strict new caps on leverage requirements to prevent firms 
from growing too big to fail, brings sunlight and transparency to 
shadowy markets where Wall Street executives make gambles that threaten 
our entire economy. That will no longer exist. It reins in CEO pay, it 
protects community banks, streamlines bank supervision to create 
clarity and accountability, and protects the dual banking system that 
supports community banks; it protects consumers in many different ways.
  In effect, it puts a new cop on the beat, creates an independent 
agency with broad authority to monitor firms for abusive practices and 
intervene to protect consumers. It guarantees clear information in 
plain English. It ensures that consumers get the information they need 
to shop for mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products that 
they can read and understand.
  There will be no more abusive practices. It protects consumers from 
hidden fees, abusive terms and deceptive practices. In effect, it 
protects against the Bernie Madoff-type scams. It reforms and 
strengthens the SEC's ability to enforce securities laws. This is a 
good piece of legislation.
  I know Republicans and Democrats want to improve it in ways they feel 
are appropriate. I hope the debate will be civil. I hope we can have 
limited time on these amendments, as the Republican leader said 
yesterday. I look forward to that debate. It is one of the most 
important issues to come before this body in a long time. I hope we can 
complete it in a time that is appropriate. We have so much more to do, 
and we have been prevented, basically, this week from getting to this 
bill by the minority.
  In the future, I hope they will recognize there are other things to 
do in this body that are of extreme importance to our country. We are 
going to have a name from the President in the next few weeks--I assume 
that is the case--so we can begin work on someone to replace Justice 
Stevens.
  We have to do something with energy. There is much we have to do, 
including our normal housekeeping appropriations bills. We have to make 
sure the tax extenders, the expiring provisions, are taken care of. 
That expires at the end of May.
  So we have a lot of work to do. We have made some commitment to do 
something with small business jobs. I explained to one Republican 
Senator who said they wanted to move to that, that the longer you hold 
up on us moving legislation, the more difficult it will be to get to 
some of the things you want to do.
  This has been difficult. We moved to this financial reform bill last 
Thursday and here it is Friday and we just got on it yesterday. It has 
been a tremendous waste of our time.

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