Richard Shelby

I appreciate your remarks. I have been on this Committee 26 years, ending it, but I am not ending being on.

I think it is very, very important.

The Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King and several other prominent economists in the world have said that the Basel III capital standards are insufficient to prevent another crisis.

Unfortunately, one of the clear lessons of the financial crisis is that bank regulators set capital requirements too low.

The Basel framework has spawned startling degrees of complexity and an over-reliance on probably unreliable models.

I think this is a worthy goal as strong capital requirements are essential for a safe and sound banking system and also to protect against taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The poor record of Basel I, II, and II.5 is that of a system fundamentally flawed. Basel III is a continuation of these efforts, but with more complexity.

I share your outlook on that, Senator, and I have talked repeatedly to community bank groups and credit union groups.

It seems like that is what you are doing. I hope that is not what you are doing. If you do, we are going to hold you accountable.

Do you disagree that if the statute is clear, unambiguous, that you cannot change that statute by rule?

Dodd-Frank granted the Bureau the power to set its own budget and spending priorities without any Congressional oversight

I do not believe you can change that by a rule.

If the Bureau can easily ignore a statute, it raises the more serious question of whether Congress or the Bureau has the final say over what the law is

The new disclosure... would be difficult to calculate and explain to consumers, would not likely be helpful to consumers, and may distract consumers from more important disclosures

The Bureau appears before us, as always, completely immune from Congressional oversight

A lot of this could have been prevented. I don't know where the regulators were on this, they certainly were asleep.

Not even a Council headed by its own Treasury Secretary I believe can hide the President's failure to revive the economy and put Americans back to work.

But historically a lot of banking has been based on trust, has it not, integrity?

It hurts the whole financial system, it hurts us all, does it not?

The Council's view of Dodd-Frank... fails to mention their enormous cost to the economy.

I agree with you that sequestration is not the way to do it.

I voted against the sequestration legislation, as the Mr. Chairman did, that brought us where we are today.

I think the point is these cuts would be absolutely devastating.

Since 2008, the education budget has increased $7.2 billion from $59.2 billion to $68.4 billion.

Our Nation is $15.8 trillion in debt, a number that grows by $42,000 every second.