Jim Bunning: “I come to the floor to speak about financial reform and the bill the Senate is considering right now. I have made no…”

“I come to the floor to speak about financial reform and the bill the Senate is considering right now. I have made no secret of my desire to pass a strong financial reform bill and rein in excesses of our largest financial companies. No Senator in the Banking Committee or in this Chamber has been a stronger voice against the financial industry enablers at the Fed than I have been. I have fought every bailout that has come through this Congress as well as the bailouts that the Federal Reserve and both the Bush and Obama administrations put in place without the approval of the Congress. I wish to pass a bill that ends bailouts and puts strong restrictions on reckless activities in our financial sector. Unfortunately, the bill before the Senate not only fails to end bailouts, it does the opposite and makes them permanent. This bill will also lead to future financial disasters because it ignores the root causes of the crisis and thus fails to put the necessary handcuffs on key parts of the financial system. The primary goal of this bill should be to end bailouts and the idea of too big to fail. Instead, the bill makes too big to fail a permanent feature of our financial system. It concentrates regulations of the largest financial institutions at the Federal Reserve and removes only small banks from Fed supervision.”