On the recordNovember 16, 2016
I thank Chairman Huizenga for the couple minutes. This is one of those moments, has anyone actually read the four pages on the bill? Great. In that case, we should all know this isn't about selling jets. It is about using the American financial system to finance them. That is what the language of the bill is. Think about this. We have now spent the last 6 years around this body talking over and over and over how we are going to keep the American financial system safe, how we are going to not do things that concentrate debt within our capital markets. If Iran wants to buy jets, let them go find bilateral agreements in other countries. Let them show up with the cash. Let them go find someone else to put up the surety bonds. Let someone else go put up the coverage on the lost pieces on the ladder of the financing. This piece of legislation coming through the Committee on Financial Services is about protecting our financial system, first, from what many of us on the committee believe is going to turn into bad debt and functionally become toxic within our financial markets; but then, secondly, do you really want the United States financial system providing liquidity and financing for the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world? That is a pretty powerful ethical question when you consider what we have been through in cleaning up our own financial system over the last few years.
