Saxby Chambliss: “first of all, I thank the chairman for allowing us to debate this amendment this afternoon. I think this is one of the…”

“first of all, I thank the chairman for allowing us to debate this amendment this afternoon. I think this is one of the most critical amendments that certainly we have talked about to date, and moving forward, unless we address the issue of the GSEs, as I am going to talk about in a minute, I am not sure we have accomplished anything in this bill. For all of the potential unintended consequences in this financial regulatory restructuring package, at least one will be entirely intentional--failing to address Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Despite the general theme of the increased ``overreaching'' regulatory power of this legislation, a glaring example of something that was actually left out is a substantive attempt to address one of the most significant causes of the financial crisis--reform of the government sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It has been highlighted from this floor that recent market volatility and a faulty trading construct in our financial markets are illustrations that the bill before us is needed now more than ever.”