Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for giving me an opportunity to rise in support of H.R. 4061, a bipartisan bill that I worked very closely on with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Ross), and I thank him for giving me the opportunity to partner with him on this bill. This is a bill, as has already been stated, that came out of the Financial Services Committee with the support of the majority of the Democrats. Mr. Speaker, about 10 years ago, we had a financial crisis; and during that financial crisis, 19 of the 20 largest financial institutions in this country failed or needed support from the Federal Government. More importantly, tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their retirement savings. In the wake of that crisis, it was very appropriate for Congress to do something, and we did, with Dodd-Frank legislation, which is legislation that I strongly support. As part of the Dodd-Frank legislation, FSOC was established, the Financial Stability Oversight Council; and the job of FSOC was to reduce systemic risk in the financial services sector, which is a mission that I also support. But they were given very limited tools to fulfill that mission. Effectively, their one tool was to designate companies as systemically risky to the system. So they had the power to designate; they didn't really have the power to de-risk the system, which should be their job.…”