Richard Shelby

Eighteen billion dollars.

We cannot starve the future. We cannot starve our children of food and sustenance. We cannot starve them of an education.

How can you consider an over 20 percent increase since 2010 a responsible budget that emphasizes fiscal restraints?

You have to look under the hood and make sure there are not any regulatory gaps in there that would bring systemic risk.

We do not want to go down that road.

But there are some big insurance companies that could cause systemic risk to this country.

Will you as the regulators implement Basel III capital?

The banks are in good shape. But they were not. They were undercapitalized and in a lot of instances not well managed.

I hope that the Chairman will continue this, to hold a hearing specifically on the condition of our banking system.

I would think that the ideal situation would be a message from the regulators that nobody is too big to fail.

I will not be speaking for the Administration or for the industry, or for the State regulators.

If a foreign bank... doing business in this country if they are undercapitalized, do you have any power over them at all?

Like we have stood behind it before?

What are the CFTC's plans with respect to financial institutions engaged in activities that are designated by the Council to be systemically important?

It is my understanding that the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve recently revealed that the Fed's internal written policy for rulemaking procedures is more than 30 years out of date.

Dodd-Frank fits this pattern, it seems to me. Because of Dodd-Frank, regulators have seen their powers grow over the American economy and their budgets also grow.

We hope, working with Chairman Johnson, that sooner or later--the sooner the better--that we can do something comprehensive.

We pushed hard--hard--for a reform of Fannie and Freddie. We got it out of the Committee.

I do agree with Congressman Frank that there is a heck of a lot of difference between managing risk and speculation.

The truth is that there was as great deal of agreement on a number of issues until the White House decided that the only issue that mattered was the creation of a massive new consumer bureaucracy.

However, for millions of Americans, the 1-year anniversary of Dodd-Frank provides little comfort as they continue to deal with the harsh economic reality marked by little to no innovation, anemic, economic growth, and virtually no job…

It seems to me that is a pretty fundamental part of our Government.

I would hope everyone on this panel would agree that we should seek more accountability for the Federal bank regulators.

I think you need to go back and look at them if you do not believe it is lack of accountability.

I believe from this point here on the Committee, failed the American people leading up to the financial crisis.