they want wall street cleaned up. an abc news-"washington post" poll conducted yesterday found -- that an overwhelming majority, 63% of americans support stricter federal regulations on the way that wall street firms conduct their business an every one of us can vouch for that from what we're hearing from our constituents at home. the republican minority can delay reform, but they can't defeat it. remember joshua. he walked around the city of jericho, blazing his horn. the first time, the walls did not come down. the second time, the walls did not come down. he had to go seven times around the city of jericho before those walls came down, but, mr. president, the walls of obstruction of the republican minority are going to come down on this issue because the american people won't have it any other way. let's look at the provisions of the bill as it passed senator dodd's banking committee that they are so upset about, the

bill that the republicans are so upset about, they are obstructing us from even debating it and beginning the process of legislating. the bill would end government bailouts by establishing an industry financed winddown mechanism to put out of their misery banks that are failing. that is how we would deal with future meltdowns. no more taxpayer bailouts, no more a.i.g.'s. the republicans amazingly assert that this industry-financed resolution fund to put an orderly end to banks that have gotten in trouble will actually perpetuate government bailouts. that doesn't even make sense, so why are they saying it? well, they're saying it because a republican pollster named frank luntz determined that if you call a bill a bailout bill, the public will be alarmed and confused and upset and against

it. so they're saying it because the polling shows that that is what will concern americans. we have gotten to the point where it is no longer important in american debate for words to be true. it only matters that they have the requisite effect. words that are used for their effect without regard to whether they are true have a name. it's called propaganda. frankly, it is beneath proper debate in this forum. the bill would also create a small consumer financial products regulator, to make sure that americans are never again fooled into subprime mortgages and other tricky gotcha financial products with little hooks and trips and traps in there to catch the unsuspecting consumer. we need a regulator in place that can monitor the market and act quickly when there is a consumer hazard. we need this new agency to do for credit cards and mortgages what the consumer product safety

commission does for toasters and toys. a tough, independent consumer protection agency is a plain old good idea to give consumers a fair shake. the bill would also consolidate existing bank regulators so that banks can't shop around for the most lenient regulator. under the republican that the republicans -- under the bill that the republicans won't even let us debate, regulation would be strengthened over all financial firms. no more changing your charter just to avoid the rules that you don't like and picking your favorite regulator. again, commonsense protections against wall street trickery, but they are being blockaded. perhaps the provisions that have the c.e.o.'s most distressed are the ones that would crack down on runaway executive compensation. it's really remarkable that even in the worst of times, wall street bankers pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses.

there really are no lean years, it appears, on wall street. just good times and really, really, really good times. the bill that the republicans won't let us debate would give shareholders a stronger say on management compensation and would ensure that the compensation committees of boards of directors, the ones who are figuring out what the c.e.o.'s should be paid, are composed of directors who are independent, who are not tied to the management. no more having your pals and golfing buddies decide how much you should be paid. it would also require companies to adopt policies that would permit them to rescind compensation, to take it back if the executive is found to have engaged in fraud. again, these are commonsense provisions to prevent unfairness and to give the american people a chance, yet the republicans won't even let us debate them. mr. president, the american people have grown sick and tired

of delay and obstruction, and they want their congress to move forward with the people's business. this is something we should agree on. the american people also overwhelmingly favor stronger regulation over wall street banks, so let's get to it. i implore my republican colleagues to cut the delay tactics and let us debate a bill that will help to prevent future financial crises. if they have a better idea that they want to offer on the senate floor, that's what they are here for, but let us get to the bill, let us begin the process of serving the american people, let us end the endless filibuster and obstruction and delay. i thank the chair. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. udall: mr. president, i rise

today along with many of my colleagues to speak about the critically important legislation before the senate, the bill to reform wall street and end the excesses that have sent our economy into a tailspin. having made the tough choice to fend off a collapse of our economic system, we must now look back and decide what actions are required to hold wall street accountable and put consumers back in control of their fns. -- of their finances. this congress has taken decisive action to stem the bleeding, actions that were not always comfortable but were necessary, and our economy is starting to heal. and yet, we remain at a seminal moment in our history. 1/10 of our population remains unemployed. the threat of foreclosure haunts far too many families, and american seniors are scrambling to replenish what they once considered their retirement accounts. the fault, mr. president, for this economic decline, however, does not lie at the feet of the working class or reflect the

steady strength of american ingenuity. instead, the wall street bailout and the threat of global economic depression that necessitated it was thrust upon us by those who put short-term self-interest above the economic security of our nation. it's an unpleasant fact to admit, but the current financial system all too often rewards greed and recklessness, fans speculative trading and has fostered shady dealings that are so complicated that only those wall street firms that stand to benefit can comprhend them. compounding this, consumers have often found themselves on the loosing end of these deals. wall street executives have taken excessive risks, knowing a sweetheart contract, a bonus or a stock option will cover their losses while stockholders are left empty-handed. nearly a quarter of americans have found themselves with home mortgages they struggle to

afford while the lender's commission has long been spent. and, mr. president, american consumers have to jump through hoop after hoop and ultimately pay to have access to their own credit score while bankers and lenders can easily obtain this information to hike their annual interest right for a monthly payment. mr. president, don't get me wrong. i'm the first to recognize that our financial sector historically has played a driving role in the growth of our economy. in many instances, wall street's ingenuity has spurred solid investment and helped u.s. businesses compete worldwide, but we can't ignore the plain fact that transparent investing and fair business dealings seem to be the exception these days rather than the rule. in one recent example, the u.s. securities and exchange commission alleged that goldman sachs realized that the only way out of bad securities was to sell them to unwitting investors. and this investigation,

unfortunately, has rapidly expanded to other financial firms and products and is symptomatic of how out of touch wall street has become with the american workers who are the real engine of our economy. the 2008 collapse washed away nearly half of americans' savings and investments, and then those same taxpayers were on the hook to finance wall street's rescue. and i have got to tell you, mr. president, i understand the anger of coloradans and americans all around the country, many who felt that the big bank should have been left to fail, so in that context, mr. president, our constituents have asked us please reform the current laws so that this has not happened again. please hold wall street to the same rules that hard-working families and small businesses are held to, but now as the economy recovers, slowly adding jobs and allowing families to rebuild their savings and retirement portfolios, wall street is reporting record profits and its executives are

again pocketing record bonuses. it's time to put american consumers back in control of their financial future. we must hold wall street accountable and create a financial system that works for all americans, not just rich executives. the legislation that we're trying to bring up for debate this week does just that. with senator dodd's leadership, he is here on the floor. the wall street accountability act will safely regulate the shadow markets and the hidden side bet financing that escaped the regulatory radar and allowed financial firms to engage in risky and irresponsible behavior that wiped out trillions in family savings. senator dodd's bill will hold big banks and financial institutions accountable for the bad decisions they make and make them plan ahead to deal with their losses to ensure that taxpayers are never, never, never again responsible for bailing out a financial firm

that is designated as too big to fail such as a.i.g. the bill as my colleague from rhode island talked about will also hold wall street accountable by giving consumer shareholders new power to prevent excessive bonuses that reward executive failures while average americans are left holding the bag. the bill will also complement the credit card bill that i introduced in the house of representatives several years ago and legislation under senator dodd's leadership that congress passed last year. the bill forced big banks and credit card companies to provide clear and understandable information to consumers. and this bill will also hold the nonbank lending industry to the same sort of standards that traditional bankers and their industry are required to follow. finally, this bill will start to change the culture of wall street by instilling new transparency and accountability rules to ensure that complicated financial derivative

transactions take place in an open marketplace. in short and in sum, this legislation provides what our friends, our neighbors, our family members for years have been demanding, a system that's designed for them, rewards hard work and is grounded in the kind of business integrity that americans every day certify with a handshake. americans will be back in control of their financial well-being. that is why in addition to the reforms that we will be discussing this week, i introduced legislation last week with bipartisan support to put everyday americans back in charge of their fns by giving them free access to their credit score, and i want to just take a moment and thank senators lugar, menendez, lieberman, levin, hagan, shah reason, cloture, and scott brown for joining me in putting consumers first by cosponsoring this commonsense legislation which also has the support of a wide range of

consumer groups. today, as we look back on the mistakes of the past and the imbalances that still disadvantage consumers, americans deserve a congress on their side, yet some here appear to still support a risky system where wall street can act with impunity and get bailed out when things go bad. they want to protect speculators at the expense of consumer protections and shield financial institutions from rules that would avert taxpayer-financed bailouts. i'm here to say, as many of my other colleagues have tonight, that those days are over. it's time to hold wall street accountable, and we cannot let the status quo continue to persist. i see the chairman of the banking committee, senator dodd, is here arcs and -- is here, and i was reminded just a few blocks from here is a pair of statues each portraying a strong figure straining to control a powerful

horse. they were erected under the roosevelt administration as an emblem to americans from all walks of life that fair business practices would help to defer the common good to all americans. under our current system, the reins have been released when it comes to wall street. now some 70 years later at a similar point in our history, and we must stand together as we did then, as a nation committed to sound investing, transparent business dealings, and an economic system that puts the consumer first. mr. president, this debate is about choices and the american people have a clear choice. there are a lot of us here that want to get to work. we wanted to get to work today. but the vote that we took tonight also show that some in this institution are willing to filibuster and delay to be prevent the senate from even debating wall street reforms. it's clear to me and clear to coloradans that a vote against even having this debate is a

vote to protect wall street at the expense of hard-working americans. too much is at stake to let this delay persist. i want to close with something that president roosevelt said in 1932." never in history, have the interests of all the people been so united in a single economic problem." once again, as we did 70 years ago, let us get to work, put together protections against the wall street excesses that threaten our long-term economic stability. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: mr. president, tonight we had a vote in which

57 members of this body said we should proceed to have a full debate and votes on issues related to wall street and main street. 57, far more than a majority, said it is time for us to come to this floor, now well more than a year after our bubble economy burst, and wrestle with the right rules of the road and lay markers for our financial system. but, unfortunately, mr. president, 57 votes are not enough. we need additional votes from our colleagues across the aisle in order to have that debate on this floor. we need additional votes from our colleagues across the aisle to consider what the lay markers should be and what the traffic signals should be in a financial

regulatory system. but tonight we did not get those votes. instead, tonight my colleagues across the aisle said they do not want a debate in public on how to reform wall street. they want a conversation behind closed doors instead. quite frankly, i don't think the american people agree with them. now, there are many parts of this story but it's a story that can be told in millions, billions and trillions. the millions are the size of the wall street bonuses. a single bonus can equal what a working family can expect to earn in an entire career. then we have the billions, the billions of dollars of quarterly profits of many wall street firms. and then we have the trillions, and that's the trillions of dollars of damages to working families in america.

what happened when the bubble burst more than a year ago? we had a tremendous loss in the value of retirement savings. we had a tremendous loss in the family savings for their children to go to college. we had an enormous drop in employment. we had a tremendous drop in families covered by health care because of the loss of employment. we had damag damage on every paa family's finances, including the value of their home so that millions of american families today owe more on their home than their home is worth. well, quite frankly, mr. president, i don't believe that a system of million-dollar bonuses and billion-dollar

profits and trillion dollars of damage to the american working families is a system that we need here in america. indeed, tonight's vote was about whether or not to have a public debate on the rules of the road for wall street, but it was also about whose side are on you. are you on the side of some wall street firms which don't believe that any additional rules of the road are necessary? they are happy with the status quo. bonuses have rebounded on wall street? profits have rebounded on wall street. -- bonuses have rebounded on wall street. profits have rebounded on wall street. but if you're not clued in, let me fill you in that the american people have not rebounded. 10% of american families unemployed, houses still underwater, savings still

decimated. so it's very important that we have this debate on the floor of the senate, that we ask ourselves and we adopt the right rules of the road, the right traffic signals, the right lane markers to create a solid financial foundation for our economy to thrive. now, that's what happened after the great depression, new rules were adopted that restored the integrity of the american financial system, that restored the integrity of the stock market. and why was that important? it meant that people throughout america and around the world said we can trust to invest in the united states of america because their system has integrity, it has transparency. and that solid foundation has served our nation well for decades until deregulation dismantled it, allowed wild

speculation, wild speculation and wild risk led to a spectacular collapse of the economy and our working families are still paying the price. so what is the way to be on the side of the working family? it's to say we will adopt those rules, provide that new foundation, that new muscular set of rules that will allow wall street to prosper but will also set the foundation for the american economy to prosper. and how should we measure the success of that economy? this economy should not be measured by the size of the bonuses on wall street. the success of our economy should not be measured by the billion-dollar quarterly profits of wall street firms. the success of this economy needs to be measured by how well we build the financial foundations for working families throughout our nation. do we create the ability to have

the next generation do better than we did? do we create living-wage jobs that enable a family to have significant opportunities for their children? do we proceed to strengthen as we've been working at here in this chamber the structure of health care? do families in america have a share in the increased productivity of our nation, which has not been the case since 1974, the year i came out of high school? oh, yes, our nation had a huge surge in productivity, a huge surge in national wel, but -- national wealth, but that has not been shared with working families. that's a diversion from what happened in the earlier era. how do we rebuild our economy so it builds our working families? that's what we're about. and we can proceed to look at the pieces of this bill, and

senator dodd, who is here tonight, the chair of our banking committee, has put so many strong steps forward on the work that came out of his committee. you know, a lot of folks don't realize that the humble family mortgage and a new product that came out in 2003 is right at the center of the fiasco in our economy. what happened? a new mortgage called a subprime came out and it was designed differently than subprimes in the past. it was designed with a two-year teaser rate -- that is, a low interest rate -- then with a prepayment penalty that prevented families once the ink had dried on the mortgage from ever escaping that mortgage without giving many pounds of flesh, and an exploding interest rate that soared from, perhaps, 4.5% or 5% to 9% or maybe even 11%, interest rates that could never be sustained. and so this diabolical device

was worth a lot of money on wall street because it was going to make a lot of money pulling those exploding interest rates out of american families. and so wall street paid bonuses back to brokers to say to them, i'm your financial advisor and i recommend this subprime loan, instead of recommending a loan that was best for the family. and so a vicious circle resulted in exploding subprime mortgages. well, this bill that has come out of the banking committee says no longer. prepayment penalties will not be allowed on subprime mortgages. we will break the cycle that head us into this economic fiasco, this financial fiasco. now, if my colleagues across the aisle have some ways to improve on that, then let's have a public debate, let's have that amendment on the floor. if my colleagues across the aisle think that they don't want

to protect a fair deal for consumers and they want to continue a diabolical subprime exploding interest rate trap that has destroyed millions of families, then go ahead and propose that amendment. i doubt the majority of people here will support it. i certainly will oppose it vigorously, but if my colleagues want to go that direction, then have that debate on this floor. now, this bill is designed to end the taxpayer from ever being on the hook for bailing out financial firms again. it does it by assessing financial firms for the costs of unwinding, or to put it a little bit more directly, dismantling a financial firm when it fails. to make sure the taxpayer isn't on the hook, it creates a fee on the financial industry to pay to make sure those costs are covered by the financial industry themselves. this is a buffer that protects

the american taxpayer. now, my colleagues across the aisle have said no, no, no, here's a fund, it looks like a bailout fund. well, quite frankly, it's just amazing what you hear on this floor. here is a fund designed to ensure taxpayers are protected, to assure the financial industry pays the only costs of dismantling their firms, and it spun 180 degrees until north is south and south is north trying to confuse the american public. well, i don't think the american public is going to be all that confused about this. they want to see the financial industry pay for the costs of dismantling their own failures. they don't want to be on the hook again. and you can try to keep pulling the wool over the american people's eyes but it's not going to work. so i say to my colleagues across the aisle, if you want to pull the wool over the people's eyes, come here and propose that amendment that puts the taxpayers back on the hook when

we're taking them off the hook and see how it fares, make your case, make your fair debate on this floor. but come and face and present and debate and vote so that we can proceed to put the rules of the road back in place for wall street. now, this bill takes a huge stride forward on proprietary trading. it says we should not put fire works in our living rooms. it's pretty straightforward. fire works are wonderful. i love fire works on the fourth of july. the bill says they should not be stored in the living room. now, i have an amendment that i think will further strengthen that concept and that amendment also takes on -- and i applaud my colleague, carl levin from michigan, my cosponsor, who has brought forward a part of that amendment and emphasized it, saying we need to address the conflict of interest in financial firms. and so what is that conflict of interest? you shouldn't be in the position of designing and selling securities, telling your

customers they're the best thing since sliced bread over here when at the same time you're betting against those securities because you think they're going to fail. that's a conflict of interest and it shouldn't be allowed. and the merkley-levin amendment will address that as well as strengthen proprietary trading. and i am very comfortable bringing that to the floor of this senate and having that debate. it may have a majority. it may not. but that is the type of debate we need to have on this floor. and i could go on through the treatment of derivatives, and i applaud my colleague, blanche lincoln. discussion of a consumer financial protection agency that provides the same fairness in financial contracts, as my colleague pointed out, that the consumer products commission provides in toasters, making sure the tricks and traps and scams are taken out of financial products. so that a consumer can make a fair choice without being misled by something hidden in the fine print.

that's the type of options that citizens in this country want. well, now wall street plays a very important role in aggregating and allocating capital. but we need to make sure that the rules are done such that i it -- the rule is done well, the conflicts of interest are removed, that transparency is provided, that tricks and traps and scams are taken out of financial products. these are the sorts of things this bill z. this is a bill that is all about fighting for fairness, for main street, which in the long-term will be a very good business model for wall street as well. so let us as a chamber recognize our responsibility is to build an economic system that strengthens the financial foundations of our families.