On the recordMay 18, 2010
as I take the floor today, my colleagues and I are caught up in a momentous debate over the shape of our Wall Street reform bill. This legislation will not only help secure America's continuing economic recovery, it will also help prevent this kind of economic crisis from happening again in the future. It would create commonsense regulations designed to keep major institutions from gambling with America's economic stability, and it would extend a helping hand to the underserved populations that are currently suffering the most especially minority individuals and the elderly. I believe when the history of this economic crisis is written, we will judge that its most damaging legacy was the harm it did to people's savings and investments. It wiped out stock portfolios and 401(K)s. It forced many fixed-income retirees to go back to work, and it undermined the hard-earned retirement security of an entire generation of Americans. So it is time to take action. We need to do everything we can to protect people's savings, investments, and retirement security. In a broad sense, this means limiting the risk that big firms can pose to the economy as a whole, and shoring up our overall financial stability. But it also means we need to guard against fraud and abuse. We need to prevent scam artists and people like Bernie Madoff from taking advantage of hard-working Americans, so folks can breathe a bit easier, so people know that their money is safe.
