Peter Welch

I commend this committee and the Congress, and to both sides of the aisle, for the commitment to this endeavor.

That just doesn't pass for common sense.

This Congress is making no distinctions in its zeal to slash and threatening institutions along the way.

This Congress has been focused solely on 12% of the federal budget.

I applaud the Budget Committee and your chairman for focusing much needed attention on the fiscal crisis in our country.

We need to put the nearly $40 billion in taxpayer subsidies that go to mature, profitable oil companies on the table.

America has a debt problem. There is no denying that fact.

The only way we are going to accomplish that goal is by putting everything on the table.

Representative Cummings has been the leader in Congress in focusing attention on what the impacts are in neighborhoods.

It has been informative for me to listen to everybody because I go back to the basic proposition that the debit cards and the credit cards are really essential for commerce.

Merchants have literally no power individually to be able to negotiate a price.

There was a total lack of regulation. They didn't have any margin requirements, and it led to outsize risk taking.

Right, so what steps would we need to take in order to protect, in effect, not just the taxpayers who ended up having to bail them out, but a lot of main street businesses that needed stability in the credit markets?

I have a lot of community bankers who are very upset about some of the regulatory impacts of Dodd-Frank.

The goal here is to try to get the regulation right.

I think the exchange went to great lengths to try to change the terms of the cotton contract last year because a lot of people were concerned that the cotton market wasn't working properly.

I believe the CFTC is the right place to determine whether that manipulation has taken place.

So that market has to be protected, and we have already seen that we have severe problems in the market.

And our concern also is with the industry itself, the industry that has become so dominated by just four large packers that now control over 80 percent of all the fed steer and heifer slaughter.

One is to make certain that the hedging a benefit is absolutely available at the least possible costs.

The good news is businesses, large businesses and small, that have fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders and to their employees have sharp pencils and figure out what makes the most sense for them, and they're signing up for this…

I mean, the point is that, if you want to improve something, you know, that's our job. Let's do it. There are provisions that all of us who supported this bill know could be improved; but we are hearing now real-world stories about things…

When it comes to providing unemployment benefits for people who had no responsibility for getting us here, when it comes to the question of who is going to pay the price, should it be the victims of these reckless decisions, the…

America needs jobs. The unemployment is too high, and there are concrete things that we can do to create jobs. One is to pass the Home Star Energy Retrofit bill into law. The Senate has to act. The House passed it on a bipartisan basis…

I want to remind folks of the broad basis of support from unusual allies--the National Association of Manufacturers, a key vote; U.S. Chamber of Commerce, key vote; National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association--that's 6,000…