Ben Nelson: “We're at a crisis. We're running out of money and we need to do this as a core function of government.”

Dodd-Frank contained critical protections to ensure that non-financial end users who use futures contracts in a legitimate manner to hedge against higher prices would not be hampered by unnecessary regulations.

We have made conscious decisions to have a balanced program, and part of those decisions has been to accept a higher risk and to manage that risk.

How are we going to make it work? How are we going to, over a longer strategy, make the dollars work to meet the obligations we've undertaken?

These programs are central to our national security. They deserve full, bipartisan support.