On the recordJune 14, 2011
I rise in strong opposition to the underlying bill and in support of the DeLauro amendment. Mr. Chairman, hardworking families all across America have been whipsawed in recent years by Wall Street and special interests who have had free rein to place bets on mortgages and place bets on future oil prices. And you know what? We fought back. We fought back, and we passed a Wall Street reform law that outlaws risky financial practices by banks and lenders and that protects consumers. Taxpayers should never, ever again be left on the hook for Wall Street's reckless actions, and yet my GOP colleagues propose to do just that with this bill, let Wall Street off the hook and put consumers and our economy at risk again. This bill significantly cuts the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC is a major piece of the landmark Wall Street reform law because the law put cops back on the financial beat into areas where the financial industry was left largely unsupervised. And you know who suffered because of that? American families suffered the firsthand consequences of an unsupervised and unregulated Wall Street. And now they're proposing a real double whammy to the American family, because my GOP colleagues are pairing their push to put consumers at risk and threaten their economic security with their GOP plan to end Medicare as we know it and undermine retirement security.…
