Political Quotes

“Thank you, Madam President. First I wish to thank my colleague for raising issues of great importance to all of us. Financial regulatory reform is critically important for our country moving forward. Senator Crapo and I spoke earlier about this amendment. We have a number of areas of shared concern and I have committed to work with him on these issues. First and foremost, I agree with my friend from Idaho that we need to protect our manufacturers, our rural co-ops, energy providers, and other companies that use financial products to manage their legitimate business risks. These end users did not cause the financial crisis. So when we passed Wall Street reform, we included protections for them. We have held several hearings in the Agriculture Committee to reinforce to the regulators that manufacturers and others need to be protected. We will continue to do that oversight. We certainly agree that as new rules are written, we need have an open and transparent process. I believe the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has created, in fact, an open and transparent process and has worked to improve that process over time. They have held roundtables, sought public comment, and are making changes based on those comments to ensure that the new rules work. But it is important that Congress continues to work with the agencies to get these rules right. We also expect the agencies to work with each other and with their international counterparts.…”