I appreciate your indulgence, Chairman Bernanke, here in breaking this up a little bit.

I urge my colleagues to support the National Liberty Memorial Act.

With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done differently?

If there is any silver lining in what we have been through...it is because we are in this moment.

The decision regarding how to move forward in Afghanistan represents an incredibly difficult moment--for the President, for this panel, and for our Nation.

I got to tell you, Mr. Chairman, I mean, going through that period at that time when all the headlines were about the $168 million in bonuses that went out to AIG and virtually no reporting whatsoever on the counterparty issue, and the…

We wrote a check for $180 billion to AIG. If we had not done that, they would have been in trouble.

I do believe it is a very, very serious matter to take the Fed essentially out of financial stability management.

I will go to my grave believing that what you did--what we did--over that 2-week period...will go down as the right thing to have done.

I urge my colleagues to support quick passage of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Act of 2009.

I am glad my Senator, Chris Dodd, is doing something about it.

Last week, the Federal Reserve announced that they will require banks to get a customer's consent before enrolling them in an overdraft coverage program.

I am angry now in a sense that they took advantage of that request in here.

Today, we meet to discuss another abusive practice--misleading overdraft programs that encourage consumers to overdraw their accounts then slam them with a high fee.

Abusive overdraft policies are blatantly unfair. And the banks know it.

If they wanted to deter overdrafting, they would deny the transactions on debit cards at the ATM.

Shouldn't we today in the 21st century... have responsible people at a responsible regulatory body making these kinds of decisions.

This ought to be delegated to a responsible regulatory body to provide the kind of protections.

But banks often add overdraft coverage to consumer accounts without informing them or giving them a choice.

That's why I introduced--The Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act.

fee-based overdraft lending traps consumers in astronomically expensive debt and deprives families of money that they need to meet their basic needs.

93 percent of all overdraft fees are paid by 14 percent of account holders.

We also urge the Senate to enact Senator Dodd's legislation to create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

For too long, credit card companies made profits by charging consumers outrageous fees, or raising rates whenever they felt like it.

Our job on the Banking Committee is to make sure that regular folks get a fair deal from their banks.