On the recordApril 29, 2010
Mr. President, I will say more about it in my conclusion remarks, but first of all, Senators Dodd and Shelby, thanks for continuing your dialog with each other, and thanks for coming forth with the type of agreement that has allowed us to get this extremely important agreement to the floor. With the financial collapse of 2008, there are a number of issues that simply have to be addressed, and this is the appropriate forum now for all of those issues to come forward and have debate on both sides of the aisle; to hopefully at the end of the day come up with the right kind of product that is going to make sure situations like 2008 never occur again. To my chairman and my partner on the Committee on Agriculture, she is my dear friend, and we have worked very closely together on so many issues, including this one. When we have our differences, we are able to disagree in a very professional way. I am very appreciative of her as well as of her friendship. We all know that appropriate regulation of derivatives and specifically the swaps market is a critical component of this legislation, and the Agriculture Committee is responsible for the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which will become one of the key regulators of the swaps market. As the ranking member on the Agriculture Committee, I have the responsibility to ensure that we get this right. The Agriculture Committee has a history of not falling subject to partisan influence.…





