Mr. President, I hope we are drawing to a close. We are not certain; there are still some unresolved issues. But the Omnibus appropriations bill is moving forward, and it will fund our government for the remainder of this fiscal year. It has been a long and arduous process. We started by passing three appropriations bills in the Senate, then when we tried to call the next three we ran into opposition. So the Appropriations Committee, on which I serve, had to sit down and try to craft nine separate spending bills and put them together into one. It was a long and involved and difficult process with the Financial Services Subcommittee which I chair. Included in that committee jurisdiction are the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. These are the two government agencies responsible for watching Wall Street and the major financial institutions markets across America. We are doing our best to not only restore America's confidence in some of these institutions that have been shaken by the recession but also to make certain it never happens again. There is resistance, primarily from the banking community and some financial institutions that don't want regulation even after the embarrassing failures of the last recession and the need for a Federal Government bailout. We need to make certain that at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission there are adequate funds for them to do the job.…
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