i think there would be tremendous political pressure not to spend that money, because the wall street firms would have to anti-up more if that money was lost. what my concern was, although i agree with you that would probably do without this $50 billion fund, is that the funds available for the fdic to bail out the creditors and counterparties of defunct financial institutions was not just the 50 billion, but 50 billion plus the possibility of huge loans from the treasury. and i'm glad that, first, by changing the house bill, even more with the changes we'll see in the senate bill, that senator dodd and i have discussed, we're not going to have that borrowing. and the taxpayers are not going to be on the hook. so i think we're moving more and more towards a circumstance if you lend money to a wall street financial institution, there's no safety net. so you may not want -- and even

at 50 the dollar safety net israel to be small compared to what goes on on wall street. as to fannie and freddie, you know, we have bipartisanship in the house of representatives and 2005. we passed the bill to provide for much tougher oversight as fannie and freddie. i think it would have had a tremendous impact, and it really rating the size of this recession. and we pass it on a bipartisan basis. the bill then went to the senate. it was opposed by the bush administration. it was opposed by senate republicans, and it i'd. we passed a very similar bill in 2008, and it became law. and i think it was a good bill. i think it was about three years too late. so i think fannie and freddie need a kind of oversight that we provided when the law was passed in 2008.

>> host: next question is from michigan. democrats line. >> caller: good morning, representative sherman. i watched the house and watch the senate. and i saw from 2006 until now all the republicans are just getting in the way of everything trying to be done. i'm not just a person out here. we are starting than that. we see what they do. i don't approve of it that they need to get to work. i appreciate your work. and wall street does need corrected, but all our economy is held together. manufacturing, small businesses, bankers, even down to a banker. they are all hooked together. and we need to get these problems solved and out of our way. and if immigration in arizona, that's a distraction. take your time, make a good bill.

i agree we need to get a handle on the drug dealers, the smugglers, the kidnappers. we need to get a hold of them, but people that are here to work and make a living for their families, arizona should be a saint of himself. >> host: thank you for your golf. >> guest: thank you and once again, i think we passed good legislation in 2052 control fannie and freddie. and it's a shame it got tied up in the senate until 2008 you 20. and the causes that was republicans. in that case she's right. >> host: next caller from florida. republican line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. my question is about freddie mac and fannie mae. [inaudible] is that correct? >> host: regulation for fannie and freddie.

>> guest: yes, we passed the law in 2008 and became law. as i said it's been very similar to the bill that passed the house in the spring of 2005. it's a good bill. obviously, by the time we got to late 2008 being and friday were in such terrible condition that no law could have put them back to where they were in 2005. if only we had passed the regulatory bill in 2005. we passed in house. it died in the senate when senate republicans were unblinking take it up. >> host: are you still there? >> caller: as far as the arizona law, all americans in business in mexico have to have passports. american passports. they require that. thank you. >> host: thinks that we're going to move on to our next call which is from illinois. this is of your by the name of

melbourne on our independent line. >> caller: good morning. >> guest: good to be with you. >> caller: how are you doing today? >> guest: doing fine. >> caller: bless her heart. i was wondering what you think of the idea of having these big banks, institutions, some type of free that the government can charge them they can build up over a period of time that if they ever need of bail out again, that they can take that money to bail out and take it and help themselves out. i was wondering, get your feedback on this and what do you think of the idea? if you can come up with something like that and in a bill. >> host: you are discussing something that was really an issue within the senate debate about the creation of a bank sponsored fund. >> guest: both in the senate and

house bill. since the depression we've had one fund your it fits the colors image and that is the fdic reserve fund, but that is just there to deal with your insured bank deposits up to, now it's a limit of $250,000. that actually turns out, i mean, bank deposit up to 250,000 sounds just about like everything to do with finance, but it's actually a very small part of a financial system. we now have not banks and we have deposits of well over $250,000 that are not part of that current insurance. there is a proposal in the senate bill to do just what the caller suggests, and that is collected $50 billion from those institutions on wall street that have over $50 billion in assets. that's basically 20, 25, 30 largest institutions. and i think that it's, certainly

a better idea to collect the money in advance from wall street that it is to be in a circumstance where taxpayer money is put at risk to bail out the counterparties and the creditors of these big financial institutions. so i think if, i mean, my own preference would be simply that other than the fdic insured deposits, we don't have any kind of bailout. but if we're going to any bail out, it should be limited to funds collected in advance from wall street. when i use the term bailout, it's not just a matter of getting out the shareholders in the executives of one of these companies, but bailing out the creditors who gave them the states that allowed them to play the game. >> host: mr. shrum has a law degree from harvard law school and spent 15 years and the private sector become forthcoming to congress, and also five years of california

state board of equalization, and also has served as an instructor at harvard law school international tax program. as we mentioned he sits on the financial service committee and subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer credit and capital markets insurance and government-sponsored enterprises. let's go to our next call for him. allentown pennsylvania, victor, democrats line. >> caller: my name is victor. you call me joe carpenter. just a question. all these people are losing their homes, foreclosures and whatnot. we bailed out the banks, right, now why couldn't the government on behalf of people losing their homes right at checkout for the people and then the people pay the banks and then everybody is happy? but now you've got the banks having get the bailout and now the banks of houses. i don't see why that couldn't have been done. >> guest: well, we are doing it

to a limited degree. if we go to everyone whose underwater, whose mortgage is bigger than the value of their house and write them a check for the difference, we are talking many trillions of dollars. and something like that would towards the size of the stimulus bill, and the bail out bill combined. i don't think the federal government could afford it. we are providing banks with incentives on those that meet certain criteria. to adjust the loans and allow people to stay in their homes. and i think that's an important, important thing to do. but it doesn't solve the whole problem. and i think that the focus has to be on those people who can afford to make meaningful mortgage payments every month, but cannot afford the usually

upward adjustment in their payments that is made under these adjustable-rate loans with their teaser rates and complex provisions. and in those cases we have provided incentives to the banks. i can't say it's working as well as i would like, but we had help thousands of people. >> host: gym, independent line. good morning. >> caller: thank you for c-span and thank you, mr. sherman for your political bravery during the t.a.r.p. hearings. love seeing you going to the floor and tell us about the behind the scenes fear mongering that was going on from paulson and the fit and such to get the t.a.r.p. past. >> guest: that was a politically difficult time. thank you for remembering it. >> caller: i commend you for that. and i was wondering, there's one thing i haven't seen rod of in the regulation reform acts that are going on right now. and that's something to control

the front running going on with computers and the trading that is going on. and i was wondering what you thought about the small miniscule tax in order to try and stop that sort of thing? >> guest: the answer is i haven't studied it enough to have an opinion, and i do think that it doesn't do society a whole lot of good to have trillions of dollars invested in, all in the same our by people trying to gain the markets. and if there was a small tax on that, that discouraged or at least gave the u.s. treasury some benefit, some social benefit from the activity, i think that might be a step in the right direction. but right now i'm speaking without the level of knowledge that i would like, that is a

proposal that is on the front burner now. i thank you for bringing up another point that we look at. >> host: marquette, michigan. next on our republican line. high, stan, are you there? >> caller: yes, ma'am. their good morning, mr. sherman. >> guest: good to be with you. >> caller: i've been watching politics ever since the day of jfk, and back in 1913, they transferred our federal reserve in a closed session behind congress to the banking system. my question is, how are you going to take and straighten out an entity that belongs to the banking industry that pretty much does what they want to do? and how are you going to correct a problem that is bigger than the power of the senate and the house works and has been since 1913, of an entity that runs on its own.

>> guest: the fed is a very bizarre institution, because it has a national board that is overwhelmingly controlled by appointees of the president. but then has these regional boards were it's not so much one person, one vote. it's like one bank, one vote, one corporation, one vote. the supreme court has said that the corporations have some rights when it comes to picking many of the seats of the regional boards of the federal reserve. corporations are the only ones. democracy is supposed to work. we elect the president and the president appoints executive branch officers, often with the consent of the senate. and the fed is the only government or quasi- government entity were it's not we elect a

president and he either the executive officers or selects the executive officers. you have banks voting on who serves on these regional boards. and selects the president of these institutions, of the regional boards, that then get a say in monetary policy. if you have watched me before the financial services committee, you know i have often proposed that we have the president select all of the federal reserve board members, old at the national level and at the regional board level. and i hope to move in that direction. i wouldn't say the fed is more powerful than congress, and, therefore, immune to it, but so far the fed has maintained its

bizarre structure, where banks -- >> you can watch the segment online anne arvia library. we are leaving this now as the u.s. senate is gaveling in for consideration of the financial regulations bill. party leaders came to an agreement yesterday to allow debate to begin on the bill. speeches are expected throughout the day with amendment votes possible now live senate coverage you on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. our father god, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light rises up in darkness for the

godly, give our senators the wisdom that saves them from false choices. illuminate their path with the light of your presence so that they will not stumble. in all their deliberations, keep their motives clean, their vision clear, their patriotism fervent, their speech guarded, their appraisals fair, and their consciences unbetrayed. we pray in your sacred name. amen.

the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., april 29, 2010. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable kay hagan, a senator from the state of north carolina, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: robert c. byrd, presidet pro tempore. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: madam president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presidin officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: madam president, many kentuckians awoke this morning to the sad news that one miner was killed and another is missing after a ceiling collapsed in an underground coal mine in webster county, which is in the western part of kentucky. right now it is my opinion understanding that msha officials are on the site and rescue teams are work to go locate the missing miner. for now we can only hope that their efforts are successful. i ask my colleagues and the american people to keep the miners, their families and the rescue workers in their prayers. #. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: for me, being a miner's son and having worked in the mines myself, these reports out of west virginia and

kentucky are very troubling. mining is a very dangerous occupation. i know that personally as a result of my dad having been blasted, as we called it, and reflecting back on my childhood friend, stan hudgins, whose father was working in the blossom with my dad and a rock dropped on his head and killed him, and my dad brought him out of the mine. so these reports out of the coal mines are really troubling. i agree with my distinguished friend that we have to make sure that we act but not do anything that's harmful to the industry, because it's a very important industry. mining is the number-two industry in nevada.

it's not coal mining. a lot of mining now in nevada is open pit. not all of it is. we have underground mining taofplt it's the same with coal mining. hard rock business is open pit mining, but they have a significant amount of underground mining also. i look forward to working with my friend, the the republican leader, and all those who want to make mining safer and protect this important industry. i ask unanimous consent that i be authorized to sign any duly enrolled bills and joint resolutions that appear today, march -- april9 and tomorrow, april 30. the presiding officer: without objection. the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. reid: i ask unanimo consenhe call of the quorum be terminated. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of s. 3217,hich the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 349, s. 3217, a bill to promote the financial stability of the united states by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer:he rity leader is recognized. mr. reid: mr. president, there is a substitute amendment at the desk. i call that up on behalf of senators dodd and lincoln. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from nevada, mr. reid, for mr. dodd and mrs. lincoln, proposes an amendment numbered 3 mr. reid: i ask further reading of the amendment be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. it is so ordered.

mr. reid: mr. president, i ask that now we have the clerk reporthe boxer amendment 3737. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from nevada, mr. reid, for mrs. boxer, proposes amendment 3737 to amendment number 3739. at the end of title 2, add the following: section 212, prohibition of taxpayer funding. a, liquidation required. all if you think companies put into receiveship under this title shall be liquidated. no taxpayer funds shall be used to prevent the liquidation of any financial company under this title. b, recovery of funds. all funds spended in the liquidation of a financial company under this title shall be recovered from the disposition of assets of such financial company or shall be the responsibility of the financial sector through assessments. c, no losses to taxpayers.

taxpayers shall bear no losses from the exercise of any authority under this title. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: the managers of the bill wish to give opening statements on this important legislation. so i would ask consent that senator dodd be recognized and use whatever time he feels appropriate. senator shelby then be recognized to use whatever time he feels appropriate. and then chairman lincoln be recognized to make a statement. and following that, senator chambliss, ranking member of the ag committee. and then senator warner, a member of the banking committee, wishes to make a statement. i ask that be t order. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. s recognized. mr. dodd: mr. president, we're

beginning the debate on the floor of the united states senate on a matter that's obviously been the subject of great discussion and debate itself over the last couple of years. my opening remarks are very brief. i've talked a lot over the last week or so about the bill, and i presume i'll be spending a lot of time talking in the coming days. so i don't need to spend a lot of time. my good friend from alabama, senator shelby, wants to be hers. there are other members who want to be heard this afternoon. i'll be here to engage them. let me begin with my colleague from alabama. we have disagreements about this bill. he's a good friend and someone i work with closely, we will on this bill as we move forward. we want to accommodate our members here on all sides to be able to be heard, to offer their amendments, to have a good debate. weed like to ago -- we'd like to accommodate and accept amendments where we can. if we can't, we'll try to lay

out why. obviously it's very important we get this right. senator shelby has said that many, many times, and i agree with him. it's very important. literally language, punctuation marks can have implications here. so it's that delicate as we work through language, and my intention is to get there. today we're going to have general debate on the bill. tomorrow possibly some additional general debate. we'll pick up our first amendments on monday -- tuesday, rather, when we get back. i'm going to address that point in a minute if i can. but i want to begin the debate with a message for those who have seen the acrimony in the chamber over the past couple of weeks and conclude that this senate isn't up to getting the job done on a piece of legislation of this import, of this size. and i'll be the first to admit that sometimes we become discouraged or disappointed with each oefrplt that's the nature -- with each other. that's the nature of a legislative body where we have as many different views as we

have. i was frustrated by how long it took to bring the bill up to the floor. others are frustrated by what they see in the bill. all of this can have a rationale for why we express frustration. the thing that got us this far is the same thing that will get us to the finish on this important legislation as well. that is the trust we have each committed to getting the job done. senator shelby and i both pointed out last evening, we worked closely together over 37 months that i've chaired the banking committee. we brought 42 measures out of our committee, 37 of which have become the law of the land, mr. president. while we don't agree on this bill, at least not all of it, we're both confident this can become law as well if we work together to try to achieve common ground. even if it's exactly what we would write if we were writing it on our own. simply put, we have no other choice but to do so.

the status quo is unacceptable. we cannot leave the american people vulnerable to the present construct of our financial regulatory system. the american people have paid too high a price for the failure of our system to stop wall street greed and the recklessness undermining the stability of our economy. you've heard over and over again the last number of weeks the 8.5 million jobs that have been lost, the 7 million homes that have been lost to foreclosure or are in foreclosure, trillions of dollars -- some say 11, some say 13, some say higher trillion dollars of loss in household wealth. home values again, the numbers, i think everyone agrees on, about a 30% decline in home values across the nation. some states the numbers are much higher. we've seen a decline in retirement income by some 20% as well across the nation. all of this wasn't caused by one particular event or set of circumstances. there were a variety of circumstances, the culmination of which and the expansion of

those problems that brought us to the brink of financial collapse and disaster. i've described the aims of our legislation. first it will end too big to fail. senator shelby and i have been working on that. we've had long discussions agreeing on principles of what need to be done, and my hope is that at the first part of next week -- our staffs are going to work over the weekend to take the principles of which we've reached agreements and then do the delicate job of writing the language which reflects those principles and ideas. i want to thank my staff as well as his own to try to get us to the point where we've reached a level of comfort where we've done what we said we were going to do. that is to end too big to fail. no longer will there be that implicit understanding if a major or even less than major institution starts to fail that somehow it's going to get propped up by taxpayer dollars. our colleague from california, barbara boxer, you've heard already the language of her

amendment which once again will add, i think, a voice to this effort, to say that when losses occur, again, too big to fail where nil expose -- will never expose the american taxpayer to writing a check to have to underwrite that cost. i presume there may be others who have ideas on how best to nail this down. we welcome those ideas. again, senator shelby and i will work on an amendment we intend to offer the first part of next week that reflect those values as well. i thank him, his staff and others for the time we already spent, mr. president. i can't count the hours we spent sitting with each other talking about these ideas and how best to achieve them. obviously we want to involve as well the treasury department and others for their advice and council because ultimately they'll be asked to implement a lot of what we talk about. we'll be busy over the coming days as well on those issues. senator boxer, her idea, i'm going to discuss this with senator shelby. without committing anyone at all, there seems to be, at least at this juncture, a relatively good response or reaction to

what she intends to do. so too big to fail has been the subject of major conversation. we all agree what we want to achieve. and the question is: can we do this? and my confidence is we can. i'd like us to begin on a positive note as well. there will be times during this debate when we'll be at very different sides on issues. that will happen, and that's as it should be. there's nothing wrong with that at all. but i always think it's better to begin a process where you can agree on things, in setting out your ability where you can come to common understandings. too big to fail, mind you, there is no disagreement on what we're trying to achievement that is a great starting point. my hope is we'll do that in the coming few days. we've created an early warning system. i've talked about this. this has not been the subject of a lot of debate. i think we all agree to have the ability to sort of watch and monitor what's occurring both domestically and internationally i think is very important. we've established what we call a systemic risk council that will

allow us to observe what's occurring on a regular basis, by the way, so that we can spot these problems, mr. president, before they metastasize and grow into as we've seen problems that have created as much harm to our economy as the present recession has. again, i won't go into the details of it, but again i think there's a general agreement that this makes a lot of sense. thirdly, we bring derivatives out of the shadows into the sunlight so that wall street is accountable, again, for actions. and, again, i don't sense a lot of disagreement about what we're trying to achieve here. there is some disagreement about how this is best worked. but, again, i'm hopeful over the coming weeks that we can resolve those differences as we deal with these exotic instruments. but clearly, getting more sunlight, more transparency, we think will be a great asset as well. finally, we put cops on the beat with the consumer protection, so that americans can make smart decisions based on full information when they're planning for their financial futures.

again, there is a general agreement that having a consumer protection agency or bureau division makes sense. there is disagreement on what the powers of that agency will be, how it should operate and how it could be working. again, we'll have to work on that to see if we can reach common ground. if not, we'll have votes on whether or not you're for or against it and additions and subtractions to what it can do and what jurisdiction, over what jurisdiction it has authority. these are the principles. again, i think there's not much disagreement about what we're trying to achieve, but there will be in certain areas about how best to do it. there remain, as i said, agreements on how to actually accomplish these goals. i said before we agreed to move forward on this bill and i'll allow each member in this chamber to offer his or her suggestions, air their concerns, vote up or down on ideas. i'd like to see a curve, mr. president, because not only are we taking on a large issue, but this fusion has been damaged over -- but this institution has

been damaged over the last couple of years. senator jon kyl and i engaged in a colloquy the other day -- not a planned one at all -- in which i think the issue of trust has been, people are concerned about, and i think we need to restore that if we can. i think it's incumbent that we try to at least understand each other's motives, not question them and then deal effectively with ideas as they come up. my hope is that not only will we end up with a good bill at the end of all this, but we end up repairing some of the tensions and stress that have, exist in our legislative body, this legislative body. when i said that i want members to be able to offer their amendments, to be able to debate those amendments and have votes on those amendments, i mean it. and i know my colleague from alabama shares, i think, that view as well. that people with limited time, obviously we don't want to have filibusters occurring, but people ought to have an adequate time to express their ideas and then have a vote on those ideas. i mentioned last evening i need you to consider the amendment

proposed by senator boxer. i discussed that already. others will have amendments to come next week as well. i can't promise the final result will be a bill that 100 senators are going to feel they can support. i understand that. but my goal is here to get the best, most effective legislation we can. my belief is we can make that happen by acting like united states senators, listening to each other, assuring our debate is civil as it is passionate, as factual as it is fierce. to paraphrase our president, we didn't ask for the job of saving our financial system from its inefficiencies and excesses, but that is our job today. that's what we've been asked to do. and i have the greatest confidence in my colleagues that we can get that job done. and so i look forward, again, to working with my colleague and friend, senator shelby, moving forward as well as the leadership and others to achieve the desired results we have with this bill. and with that, mr. president, i yield the floor to my cleague and friend from alabama. mr. shelby: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama is recognized. mr. shelby: bipartisan, before

proceeding to my remarks -- mr. president, before proceeding to my remarks on the bill, i want to thank senator mcconnell, the republican leader, for his leadership and also the members of the banking committee on both sides of the aisle for their hard work and dedication that brought us this far. also, mr. president, i want to thank my colleague and the committee's chairman, my friend senator chris dodd. over the years, as he's said, we've worked together on 00 number of bills and quite often fiewndz a way to compromise, to work forward on some very difficult and complex issues. unfortunately, thus far compromise has alluded us on this particular piece of legislation, at least some of us. throughout our discussions, mr. president, we've shared roughly, i believe, the same goals. where we have differed, however, is how to achieve those goals. my goal during consideration of this legislation here will be to

reshape this bill so that it actually ends bailouts, protects consumers, without jeopardizing our small community banks and brings transparency, as senator dodd mentioned, to the world of derivatives, without sacrificing economic growth and job creation, which we desperately need in this country. i, mr. president, along with many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, democrats and republicans, will seek to remove dozens of provisions that unnecessarily expand the reach of the federal government into the private affairs of americans and potentially endanger our civil libtz. as all, i will try to focus on policy and not politics. unfortunately, over the last several days, debate has become tainted by accusations and misrepresentations. this is nothing new here. the process has already become overly political with allegations that republicans are

blindly following the advice of a pollster's political memo. mr. president, i would just like to say for the record here that i voted against the chrysler bailout in 1979, i believe it was, when this particular pollster they're talking about was still in high school. so i have a long record, you know, of fighting against bailouts and trying to protect the taxpayers. i also, mr. president, advanced the toughest -- advanced the toughest piece of legislation that would have reined in fannie mae and freddie mac years ago, but that was opposed unanimously by the democrats in the banking committee. i was the only senator, mr. president, criticizing the s.e.c.'s lack of supervision of the nation's largest investment banks while some of my democratic colleagues, including then-senator obama, were endorsing it. mr. president, i also opposed the imposition of the bazel ii

capital accords that would have left our banks in far worse shape than they were when the crisis hit. i was questioning regulators, mr. president, about the growing housing bubbl bubble years ago e its collapse. as chairman of the banking committee before senator dodd, i authored and passed, with the help of the senator, the only attempt to address the lack of competition in the credit rating industry, once again over a lot of opposition. finally, mr. president, when congress repealed the restrictions put in place by glass-steagall, i was the only republican of the banking committee to vote "no." so if any of my colleagues wish to discuss my motivations and my record, i'm standing here on the floor right now. mr. president, as i've stated, there are a number of changes i believe that need to be made to this bill before i can consider

supporting it. i think that we should begin by listening to the people who will be negatively affected by this bill if if were to become law. if a small business owner from my hometown in husband cay lou is a, alabama, tells me that he fierce an out-of-control consumer regulator, i listen. if an orthodontist from mobile, alabama, fears regulatory burdens because she offers installment payments, i listen. if the makers of mars candy bars fears massive cost increases from this legislation that will threaten american jobs and prices, i listen. mr. president, there are others we should be listening to as well. for example, large financial firms like goldman sachss and citigroup are in favor of this bill. why is that? the answer is, as now written, they know that the bill will bring them and wall street firms

like them under the federal safety net where they will get preferential treatment just like goldman sachs got in the a.i.g. bailout. yes, mr. president, the bill, as written, will guarantee that goldman sachs could again be paid 100 cents on the dollar if its bets go bad. that is a huge benefit for wall street firms at the expense of others. mainly, the taxpayers. the resolution authority established by this bill at the moment will ensure that the politically influential investors in these firms, such as foreign governments, sovereign wealth funds will get special taxpayer bail joitouts not available to the creditors of -- bailouts not available to the creditors of small financial companies. this will give them an advantage over smaller competitors on main street. this bill will help the big banks get bigger, as it's written today, and further tilt

the competitive playing field against small and less politically-connected firms. mr. president, the legislation that we're about to consider will help the likes of goldman sachs but harm the american people. it will lead to job losses, lost opportunities for business to productively invest in the future, and it will ensure future bailouts witouts which sr dodd and i both want to prevent. chairman dodd has assured me that he will address a number of concerns that i have expressed with respect to bailouts. we've talked about this at length. i appreciate his assurance and take him at his word, but i am concerned that there appear to be no acceptable changes in the relevant sections of the bill. therefore, at the conclusion of my remarks, picking up on what he talked about earlier, i would like to hear how the chairman intends to address the

following: the removal of the $50 million bailout fund some people call a honey pot; not allowing the government to pay creditors and shareholders of a failed firm more than they would be entitled to in bankruptcy; not allowing the fundamentalled to prop up failing firms with government debt guarantees, meaning the taxpayer; not allowing, mr. president, the federal reserve to lend broadly on bad collateral; holding the fdic accountable if it fails to properly conduct resolution or uses the resolution authority to provide bailouts; and not allowing the government to deem any nonbank financial company as systemically important and worthy of taxpayer funds at the fed's discount rate. mr. president, as many of my colleagues are beginning to realize, it doesn't matter what we say. what matters is what's in a bi

bill's language. and the language in this bill right now would allow for bailouts. i urge my colleagues to read the language carefully. i've been assured, however, that the bailout provisions will be addressed, but they have not been addressed yet in the chairman's substitute language. we need to see language from the majority that clearly addresses the issues i've set forth. my hope is that by tuesday this can be resolved quickly, with both of us offering a joint amendment. nevertheless, we're still left with a bill this afternoon that will create massive and intrusive new government bureaucracies, damage job creation, reduce private investmeninvestment in productie project, make risk management more dividend and threaten our economy. this bill that's before us now establishes overarching bureaucracies without any meaningful protections for our financial privacy rights.

also the bureaucracies have been designed to address many issues that have little, mr. president, or no bearing on the recent crisis of any financial crisis. it's a power grab that can reach into virtually every aspect of our economy and it needs to be restrained. mr. president, i wonder how many crises will be prevented through data collection to identify community development opportunities as found in section 1071 of this bill? small businesses across this country fear the massive and potentially very intrusive new bureaucracy created under the rubric of consumer protection. and they have every right to be afraid. this massive new government bureaucracy is that's called for in this bill has authorities and powers to call you forward and ask you under oath about your personal financial affairs. the fact so many are looking the

other way on this serious threat to our civil liberties is troubling but as it debate goes on, i think america is going to start focusing on the deep aspects of this bill. mr. president, the architects of this massive new bureaucracy have long argued for a consumer bureau with the right culture, they call it. whether that culture focuses on consumer protection and a safe and sound banking system or it becomes a way for community organizers and groups like acorn to grab federal resources is left wide open here. mr. president, this massive new bureaucracy will be funded by over $600 million taken directly from the federal reserve, outside of the congressional oversight appropriation process. tapping the central bank to pay for political initiatives is very disturbing and dangerous precedent. they did that in argentina to

the utter dismay of the global community and to ar general dean in a itself. -- and to argentina itself. it shows the lack of understanding of the importance of a central bank. for us to tap the federal for new government programs is not only shortsighted but signals to the rest of the world the failure of this country to act in a fiscally responsible manner. in addition, mr. president, to the new federal consumer protection bureaucracy, this bill envisions a massive, new potentially half a billion bureaucracy called the oostlesz of financial research designed to collect financial data and construct complex financial models. did you their? this new bureaucracy is given unprecedented authority, including abilities to obtain virtually any type of data it

wants from financial companies, from the level of detail of what you buy on your credit card. this new bureaucracy is also designed to gather data, processing it and then is required to make it available to wall street firms so they can cut their costs. so who is for wall street now? mr. president, this bill also threatens our economy, as senator dodd mentioned, by its treatment of derivatives. greater transparency in all derivative markets is a good thing, but this bill at this juncture, under the guise of promoting transparency, i believe threatens main street companies and their customers for no good reason. the end user exemptions put main street companies through almost endless and unworkable hoops that will ensure higher costs, lower growth, fewer jobs, and diminish the economic opportunities. in addition, mr. president, by seeking to concentrate all

manner of risky products into clearinghouses, the bill threatens to concentrate risk to the point of becoming systemically large, which, as we all know, leads to government or taxpayer bailouts. mr. president, this bill could actually increase risk in our financial system, as it's written, and decrease economic output at a time when we need it the most. finally, mr. president, concentrating risk in america, this bill will shift derivative trades offshore to places where we have no oversight or regulatory abilities to act. mr. president, proponents of this bill also argue that regulatory gaps are being closed and that the bill somehow simplifies and rationalizes the regulatory framework, yet the kansas city fed president has said -- quote -- "this bill actually increases the complexity of the regulatory

structure as well as creating unnecessary costs. as is often the case with this bill, claims about what it does does not match the language itself. the claim is regulatory simplicity. the language means there will be increased complexity." mr. president, i've highlighted here this afternoon some of the major problems in this bill. it will not end taxpayer-funded bailouts, as is written. it provides for a drays expansion and over-- it provides ar drastic expansion and overreesht. it also raises cost of risk management and threatens the ability of companies to reduce risk while potentially accumulating risk to systemic proportions and it makes an already complex regulatory maze-complex. i welcome the ability to offer

amendments and work with chairman dodd to improve the deficiencies and to strengthen this bill's shortcomings. i hope that we're going to be able to do this in the spirit of cooperation in the days ahead. mr. dodd: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator connecticut is recognized. mr. dodd: thank you. i say -- other than what you just heard from my good friend from alabama, he likes the bill. so we'll have some work to do on this. let me again assure him and my colleagues here that we've had very productive talks. my friend from alabama and i, particularly on the too-big-to-fail eamplet my two colleagues, mark warner and bob corker did an awful lot of work over many, many weeks. we tried address the issues as comprehensively as possible. i think we hav -- i think we have done that work but i respect the fact that other have additional ideas on how we can make this work even better. so i know he raised the issue

here ask we're going to work over this weekend to try to put together the legal language, the language that has to be drafted here to reflect some of these ideas that we can incorporate as part of this bill. and my colleague and friend from alabama has my word on that, we'll work on that to do that. so i thank him. and again, we've worked well together, as he said, over these last 37 months, and my hope is -- and i'd make this offer to our colleagues, too, and i just had a brief conversation with senator chambliss -- we'd like to offer -- i say this on my own behalf but i hope senator shelby might agree with me, if members have amendments, it would help even in the next day or so if you could let us know what those amendments are, even though we may not get to them for awhile, we can start to work with our colleagues on their ideas. and in some cases, we may be able to accept. i see my colleague from arkansas here, the chairman of the agriculture committee. i don't know if she shares that view but it would be helpful if people have ideas, the earlier we know about them, the better we are to respond them, possibly accept them, modify them in some

ways so they are acceptable. so i hope that senators would take advantage of that offer that the chairperson of the agriculture committee, myself, senator shelby and i presume senator chambliss would share that view as well, to let us see these amendments early on so we can try and be helpful to our colleagues, if at all possible. but with that, let me yield the floor and i see my friend and colleague from arkansas and i commend her on her work as the chairperson of the agriculture committee. she's taken over that job in the last number of months and done a great job at it, i might add, as well. and so i'm looking forward to working with you in the hopefully next week or two on this bill as well. mrs. lincoln mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator i from arkansas is recognized. mrs. lincoln: thank you, mr. president. and i thank chairman dodd for his hard work and absolutely agree that getting members to bring forward their amendments is going to be critical in terms of working with them and their ideas to see if we can't move forward we have a historic

opportunity here to really do something on behalf of our country and i hope that we'll all work together to make that happen. mr. president, i also ask unanimous consent that george wilder, a detailee in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the debate on this legislation. the presiding officer: without objection, it is so ordered. mrs. lincoln: thank you, mr. president. i'd also like to ask unanimous s consent that senator boxer be the next democratic speaker after senator warner in the cue. the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. mrs. lincoln: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i rise today to speak in support of the dodd-lincoln substitute amendment. this substitute amendment represents a critical step forward in restoring the soundness of financial system. this bill will ensure that our markets for main street -- that our markets work for main street and not just for wall street. we have come to a critical juncture and our nation faces great challenges, but within those challenges we find great

opportunities. last fall, mr. president, i had the honor and solemn responsibility of taking over the gavel of the committee on agriculture, nutrition and forestry. as the daughter of a very pragmatic seventh-generation arkansas family, i find myself in the senate committee on agriculture's 18 4 years, the first arkansas to ever -- 18 4 years, the first arkansan to ever serve as chairman of that committee. and i'm very proud of the work that has gone into the product that we bring along with the banking bill to this process. our committee was tasked with putting an end to the reckless behavior that put our financial system in jeopardy. specifically bringing regulation to the over-the-counter derivatives market. reforming this market is at the heart of financial regulatory reform. within a decade, mr. president, this market exploded to $600

trillion in notional value and is today completely unregulated. last week the senate agriculture committee took a critical step towards bringing transparency and accountability to this market. passing the wall street transparency and accountability act with bipartisan support. the major provisions of this bill are included in this substitute amendment that i've offered today here with chairman dodd. i appreciate the work of my distinguished colleague, chairman dodd, and the senate banking committee staff, along with the amazing staff from the agriculture committee to merge our two bills. i also appreciate the leadership of majority leader reid, whose commitment to producing strong financial to her reform guided -- financial regulatory reform guided us through this process. this substitute amendment takes the best of both committees' products and represents the strongest reform legislation to

date. i'd like to thank chairman dodd for his strong leadership on this combined effort. he is a longtime leader in this body and i very much appreciate not only all of his leadership and certainly our strong relationship and grateful to all of his hard work. i'd also like to thank the president and his treasury department for this leadership on this issue. i also greatly appreciate the strong support from jake gentzler at the commodities futures trading commission. because of their commitment, the administration has been instrumental in bringing us to this point. i am also, mr. president, very fortunate to have a strong partner in my good friend and ranking member, saxby chambliss. his thoughtfulness and the hard work of his unbelievable staff is reflected in many of the provisions we begin debating on the senate floor today. while we've had some policy differences, i know without a doubt that we share the goal of bringing thoughtful reform to these markets. this legislation is historic.

it is landmark reform. it will keep banks in the business of banking, mr. president. it will prevent future bailouts. and through the work done by chairman dodd, put an end to too-big-to-fail. we'll lower systemic risk, systemwide risk throughout our clearing mechanisms and exchange trading and realtime price transparency. it will close loopholes and make sure that the regulators have the full authority to go after those entities that would evade or abuse the law. it protects jobs on main street by giving true commercial end users the ability to hedge and manage their risk. it protects municipalities, mr. president, along with pensions and retirees and any government -- governmental agency from gouging or the gross profiteering that has occurred in the past. and most importantly, it will

bring 100% transparency to what is currently a completely unregulated and dark marketplace. mr. president, this bill is true reform. this is a strong reform. but we need to remember that this is not regulation for regulation sake. we have an important but narrowly tailored end user exemption and appropriate restraints on the regulators, where necessary. we understand that we are competing in a global financial world. this is a robust package that balances the needs of strong, meaningful reform and recognizes the importance of these markets. americans are demanding transparency and accountability from their government and from their financial system. america's consumers and businesses deserve strong reform that will ensure that the u.s.

financial oversight system promotes and fosters the most honest, open, and reliable financial markets in the world. that ensures that not only does the united states remain the world financial leader but, most importantly, that we lead by example. i look forward to working with chairman dodd and my colleagues to consider amendments over the next several days and to improving this substitute bill, where necessary. most importantly, though, mr. president, i am looking forwards to providing the american people with a sound economy and a financial regulatory system that they truly deserve. thank you, mr. president, and i eld e floor. mr. chambliss: mr. preside? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia is recognized. mr. chambliss: thank you, mr. president. and i'll say more about him in

my conclusion remarks, but to first of all, senator dodd and senator shelby, thanks for continuing your dialogue with each other and thanks for coming to the type of agreement that has allowed to get this extremely important bill on the floor. with the financial collapse of 2008, there are a number of issues that simply have to be addressed and this is the appropriate forum now for all of those issues to come forward and have debate on both sides of the aisle to hopefully at the end of the day come up with the right kind of product that's going to make sure that situations like 2008 never occur again. and to my -- my chairman and my partner on the committee on agriculture, she is my dear friend and we have worked very closely together on so many issues, including this one. and when we have our differences, we're able to disagree in a very professional way and i' i'm very appreciativo

her as well as to her friendship. mr. president, we all know that appropriate regulation of derivatives and specifically the swaps market is a critical component of this legislation, and the agriculture committee is responsible for the oversight of the commodities futures trading commission, which will become one of the key regulators of the swaps market. as the ranking member on the ag committee, i have the responsibility to ensure that we get this right. the agriculture committee has a history of not falling subject to partisan influence. we have a long tradition of checking our partisan politics at the door in an effort to reach consensus so that both republicans and democrats can then support our products on the floor. for instance, the agriculture committee facilitated a bipartisan deal to close the enron loophole back in 2008. then-chairman senator harkin and i worked across party lines with

senators snowe, feinstein, levin and cantwell to ensure that electronic trading facilities offering contracts that perform a significant price scoaf function are properly regulated in a transparent way. earlier this week, the cftc used this new authority to subject seven natural gas contracts to increased oversight. that is an example of how laws written with bipartisan agreements yield real results. derivatives legislation should have been handled this way too. it should have come out of the ag committee as a bipartisan product. my staff and chairman lincoln's staff spent five months crafting a bipartisan derivatives bill that should have been reported from the committee with support from both sides. unfortunately, things fell apart just as we were about to circulate an agreed-upon discussion draft. this discussion draft that would have required clearing of swaps by swaps dealers and others who

contribute to systemic risk, it would have provided the s.e.c. and the cftc with the authority to establish capital and margin requirements t. would have allowed the cftc to impose aggregate position limits. and most importantly, it would have provided the much-needed transparency that has been absent from the swaps market. this would have represented a $1a 180-degree shift from currew that was in place in 2008. transparency, mr. president, is the key here, and under our agreed-upon discussion draft, 100% of all trades in the swaps and derivatives market would have been out in the open and available for regulators to view in realtime. unfortunately, this legislation is not part of the underlying bill and instead we are faced with a derivatives product crafted without input from republicans. a derivatives product that reflects an agreement between

two democratic committee chairmen and the administration. republicans were not even invited into the room to provide input. the product they have developed will have many unfortunate consequences for main street businesses that has nothing to do with creating this financial meltdown. i fear what i believe to be unintended consequences resulted from aflying complicated regulations too broadly will subject our american businesses to more risk and not less. for example, this legislation would force the farm credit system institutions to run their interest rate swaps through a clearinghouse which will result in additional costs in the form of higher interest rates to their customers without doing anything to lessen systemic ri risk. and let me be clear as to who this will ultimately affect, our farmers and ranchers, our

electric cooperatives and our ethanol facilities who seek financing from these institutions. institutions like cobank will be forced to clear their swaps and execute them on a trading facility which will impose significant new costs and result in higher interest rates for their customer, or worse, discourage them from managing their risk, which will again result in higher costs for their borrowers. and why? because this legislation broadly applies legislation treating all financial institutions exactly the same. cobank and goldman sachs are not the same and should not be regulated in the same manner. cobank should have the option to clear their swaps and not be mandate to do so. this legislation would prevent john deer fret hedging its interest -- from hedging its interest rate risk except through a clearing house. this will result in less

attractive arrangements for farmers. the same can be said for consumers who need favorable finance arrangement with ford motor credit to buy a car. they will not be allowed the best deal because ford motor credit is now going to be forced to take on additional costs when hedging their interest rates. can anyone tell me why we're treating john deer and ford motor credit exactly the same as goldman sachs? entities like coke industry who are hedging their risks and engaged in developing products for their customers' hedging needs, should not inadvertently be captured in a new regulatory category designed to apply to big financial dealers. but that is exactly what this legislation does. coke and goldman sachs swaps businesses with sengs -- would essentially be regulated in the same way.

treating these entities like dealers might force them to stop offering these products to their customers. in which case their customers will have no other options but to seek products from the large dealers like goldman man and other wall street bankers. today i heard that the stock price of goldman sachs is up. and this explains it. they will get increased opportunities to make more money under this legislation. why do we want to essentially lessen competition and drive all of the swaps businesses to those that are the most systemically risky or, even worse, drive them offshore where we cannot regulate them? banks like goldman sachs may even be forced out of the swaps business if this legislation becomes law, which begs the question: who will then be left to offer these risk management tools to our constituent businesses? businesses rely on swaps as a very legitimate option to help

them alleviate risk inherent to their business. but if no one is left to sell them this protection, they will be forced to hold the risk on their books. and why on earth would congress advance legislation that would actually prevent the businesses in each of our states from properly managing their risk especially in these difficult times? the american public wants to know why we cannot target these new regulations so that wall street is regulated appropriately without punishing the businesses that they rely on every day. and i, myself, would like to know the same thing. unfortunately i think i already know the answer and it has absolutely nothing to do with regulating wall street. when the obama administration realized that the committee of agriculture was on the verge of a derivatives regulation package that would agree to both the

democrats and republicans, they moved to kill the deal. anything that has republican support, they can no longer play politics with this issue. if we produce a bill that has the support of several republicans and they can no longer blame us for holding up this process, which would cause the administration to lose the message they are pushing in hope that voters will forget about health care. and their message is simple. they want to tell the public that republicans are opposed to regulating wall street. well, that is disingenuous at best and totally false at worse. republicans are just as anxious as democrats to address what went wrong on wall street and, frankly, it is long overdue. why has the administration waited until 18 months to push financial regulatory reform? why are they trying to cut republicans out of the process? is it that they want an issue that will drag on into the election season, not a solution that will truly protect

customers on main street? i wish we were here debating a derivatives product that had input from senators on both sides of the aisle and perhaps a little less input from the administration. the american people expect the administration to implement the laws that congress passes, but they elected us to write those laws. i feel certain that we could have done a much better job had we been allowed to work in a more bipartisan way. unfortunately i have to encourage my colleagues to oppose the derivatives portion of this bill because i think it will have undesirable consequences for main street businesses and consumers who are already struggling in this weakened economy. we will have amendments to correct the deficiencies in this bill. and i hope that we will receive bipartisan support for those amendments because they truly will reflect commonsense solutions to the complex derivatives issue.

and let me close by saying, i know that senator dodd, senator lincoln, senator shelby, all of us, wanted at the end of the day to develop a bipartisan bill. and i hope that we can still do that. i see my friend, senator warner, is on the floor. he and i have had some conversations to try to meld some of our ideas together. i know he has worked closely with my dear friend, senator corker, from this side of the aisle. and now that we have this bill to the floor, i hope that we can get by the rhetoric that we can all say our peace and that we can all roll up our sleeves and do what the american people want to see us to do which is to work together for their best interest. they're the ones who are going to suffer from what comes out of here or they are the ones who will benefit from what comes out of the senate. senator dodd is a dear friend and we've had many, many

conversations about this brim. i know what's in his heart and i know he wants to get this done flight way, likewise with senator lincoln. as we move ahead right now i'm hopeful that we can settle down to the real business that the senate is famous for and that's having real hardcore debates on issues because these are extremely tough and there has not been a more complex issue that we've had to deal with and i'm going on now eight years in this body. but the minds here are very capable of resolving these issues and we can do so with good ideas from both sides of the aisle and i'm very hopeful at the end of the day that we will come out with a product that the american people can look back and say, wow, that's the way the senate is supposed to work and the people that we sent there to do the people's business have, in fact, put together a good product that's going to benefit, going to benefit american business and,

most importantly, will benefit americans. and, with that, mr. president, i would yield back. a senator: mr. president? mr. dodd: before we hear from my colleague, let me thank -- both of our colleagues, my colleague from arkansas who spoke, but also my good friend from georgia. i just thank him immensely for his comments. we worked together. we both sit on committees together and we have come to know each other and respect each other immensely, and i know he's going to do what we're really talking about here. this is an opportunity for us not only to get a bill right, but to get this institution right in a way. it ought to be the way that we can conduct ourselves. i said there is nothing wrong with partisanship. the country was built on partisanship, it was the contest of ideas. but to be able to have a civil debate on the partisan ideas and reach a common solution is the

purpose for our existence fall of this. i have great faith in our ability to do that. i know we'll be able to do that because there's a guy named sacks by chambliss -- saxby chambliss that will help us do that. mr. warner: i have 11 unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during the day, i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. warner: mr. president, i appreciate the opportunity to follow the chair and the ranking member of the banking committee and the chair and ranking member of the agriculture committee on this critically important debate. i want to commend their work, the great amount of work that has been done actually in a bipartisan way already on this important piece of legislation. there are differences, but there is an awful lot of work to go

into this product that can be aired on the floor of the senate. i want to pay particular compliments to my dear friend, someone i had an opportunity to work for close to 30 years ago, the chairman of the banking committee, who, while i'm a new guy in the senate, it seems to me on this bill has kind of done it the old-fashioned way. he's had an open door to any member of both sides of the aisle. as this issue got more and more complex, he asked various members of the committee to roll up their sleeves and take on portions of it. senator corker and i, and nobody's been a better partner than senator corker, and took on a major portion of the bill. and then as we kind of got to the floor, time and again, and i will come back to certain, specific examples, he's said, how can we find the common ground that so often seems to be missing from this debate. i want to commend the ranking

member, senator shelby, no one has been kinder and no one has spent more time with me trying to help me learn the ropes of this institution than senator shelby. but i also have to say that as we get into the substance that some of the dmeants have been a -- some of the comments that have been made from some of my colleagues on the other side don't resemble the bill that we're actually starting debate on. particularly some of the portions that -- that i personally have been very involved with. and i want to try to address some of those briefly. some of the comments we heard from my colleagues, they have talked about -- that we didn't put an end to too big to fail. if there was one overriding challenge that we were all tasked with, and i believe my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would completely concur with this, it was ending too big to fail and never again exposing taxpayers to the financial mistakes made by large, systemically important

institutions, made by wall street. and what i've not heard my colleagues, and i guess this will be a sense, that a lot of things that we put in this legislation, bipartisan, take us down that path. we've created a systemic risk council so the first time the regulators can get above their silo-like focus so they can look ahead of the crisis and create early trip wires to make sure that we don't get to the kind of catastrophic place that we ended up in september of 2008. the systemic risk council will make sure that this systemically important firms -- and there will be systemically important firms no matter what we do. but that the price of getting so large will actually be borne by those institutions and not by the taxpayer. so what are those speed bumps, as i've called them? increased capital requirements, making sure that there's a better management of leverage. making sure that they actually

have in place risk management plans. and then we've created two brand-new tools that regulators have never had before. in fact, the price of getting so large, one is a whole new -- and i apologize, my colleagues and those viewing, some of those are in the weedz, but the weedz here are the billion dollars of dollars that are made or lost. we have a new area of capital called contingent debt that many firms will have to put in place. that debt will convert to equity and dilute shareholders and dilute management if any firm even gets close to getting in trouble. there will be an immediate check by current management, i'm not -- from not getting too far over the edge. we also created and -- because we believe that the bankruptcy process should be the way that firms unwind themselves. if you get into trouble, go into bankruptcy, you may or may not come out at the other end, but you've got to have a plan in

place. i spent an awful lot of time looking back -- back to the bear stearns crisis, the lehman crisis, a.i.g., all of the stories showed that there was no plan in place for how to unwind these firms. so we have given this risk council the ability to require these systemically important firms to basically put forward a plan on how they will unwind themselves in bankruptcy at no risk to taxpayer. and if the regulators don't approve, they have the ultimate sanction of actually being able to break up these firms. now, time and again in this legislation -- and i hear some of my colleagues saying we're always going to default to resolution. if this works, resolution should never have to be called upon. but who would have predicted that we would get to the point of financial meltdown in september of 2008? so you can't go responsibly forward without also having -- and we heard this from people

across the spectrum -- without some form of a resolution plan in place? there's been great deal of comments made about the notion that the chairman's bill put forward that says we ought to go ahead and, in effect, ask these financially important firms to pony up a little bit of resources so that if one of them gets into trouble and has to be unwound, that there is some capital available to, in effect, keep the firm operating so that the market doesn't lose faith in that institution and create a financial run. we saw in 2008 institutions that seemed to be well capitalized because the market lost faith in them, their capital disappeared overnight. you have to have the firm to continue to operate and put out of business. wespent a lot of time, senator corker and i, looking at different options, and there are

different approaches. we thought perhaps the best way to have resources available, in the numbers of 50 billion as the chairman proposed or a lesser amount, subject to a valid debate, but perhaps the industry ought to be paying for that. i have heard others criticize that, but what i have not heard from my colleagues on the other side is if the industry is not going to pay to keep these firms alive through the process of being put out of business -- and again, resolution means your firm is going out of business, your management is gone, your shareholders are gone, your unsecured creditors are gone. no rational management team would ever want this to happen. they would always prefer bankruptcy. that's how we have tilted this whole process. but if you're going to do it, you need to put them out in an orderly way. you don't want to have happen what happened when there was no plan to unwind lehman. and what i would ask and i encourage and i hope that rather than simply criticizing we'll hear from our colleagues on the other side is if they don't like the prefund from industry or

some even in the treasury department don't like that, then who will pay and how do we make sure the taxpayers are not exposed? by two goals in this -- i snow senator corker would agree -- taxpayers shouldn't be exposed but you have some liquidity to keep the firm operating so you can put it out of business. i have also heard critiques made that somehow in this process, there is going to be -- and there is not too much specificity now, but i heard some critique that said there would be some preference of one creditor over another. nothing could be further from the truth in terms of what the dodd bill proposes. it's as if somehow a new process was created whole cloth as if somehow the firm that was going to be put out of business was choosing which creditor was being paid or not paid. nothing could be further from the truth. the model that i believe the

chairman's bill adopted was basically the model that the fdic uses day in and day out as it puts banks out of business through its normal resolution process. the facts are the fdic is charged as this resolution authority is charged to say you've got to maximize value as you put the firm out of business. so yes, you may have to pay the electric bill to keep the lights on but there will be a recoupment process at the end so the creditors balance out. this is not a new process. it has been used for decades relatively effectively. i also heard commends made about in a sense some new burk of office of -- some new bureaucracy of office of financial research. nothing could be further from the truth. one thing we heard time and again, as institutions came in, as regulators came in, was that

too often they didn't have current real-time data. so when a.i.g. was going down, nobody knew the extent of the interconnectedness. when lehman went down, nobody knew the state of their transactions. all this -- experts from across the field to make sure the regulators, not wall street but the regulators have realtime data on the state of interconnectedness of all the transacks that take place on a daily basis. to me, this could be one of the most effective tools in this whole piece of legislation, make sure that we have got that immediate snapshot of the market. in the consumer area, i think there is again broad agreement that we need to improve consumer protections, that we ought to make sure that financial products are regulated by the nature of the product, not by the charter of the organization that's making the -- issuing the product. now, there are still parts we need to work on. we need to make sure, particularly for community-based banks -- and i know the chairman

is open to this -- a community-based bank, a smaller institution that didn't create the crisis in the first place, doesn't have one regulator coming on monday on a consumer, another regulator coming on wednesday on safety and soundness and get conflicting advice. how we get the enforcement right is an issue we still have to work through. again, common ground can be found on this issue. i want to commend the agriculture chair, senator chambliss, on the issue on derivatives. i think there has been a lot of discussion here. i think there is an agreement that derivatives, while they have been oftentimes appropriately villainized as some of the tools that created the crisis, are also still a youthful way that legitimate businesses hedge risk. at the same time, as we try to put in place new rules around derivatives, we don't want to push this whole derivatives market offshore. my hope is that we can -- i commend the end use exemption that was created and the goal to

try to get everything cleared and on exchanges. my hope is that we can put some penalties in place, some of the penalties that the agriculture committee has put in place perhaps could be triggered if the banks do not end up meeting what they basically said, not overusing the end use exemption or not getting all their products cleared on the exchanges. my concern is that no matter how good the end use exemption we might write will be, there is always going to be more resources on wall street to find ways around even the best-written legislation on something where as much money was put in place. so putting in place trip wires that might then cause a draconian response would help self-police the industry i know the senator from california is here and wants to speak. i will wrap up very quickly with two or three quick points. one more example of the kind of, i think, the approach that chairman dodd has taken on this bill. my background as some of my colleagues know, i spent 20

years actually in the finance industry before i was governor. i was in the early stage, capital formation business, something that's very important to the tech community. a lot of firms that are thrown around on this floor and elsewhere. i have been a client of or worked with, worked against. and one of the areas that i had great concerns about on an earlier draft was anything that might stop or slow the ability for start-up companies to access capital. there were some provisions in the bill that looked at the definition of a qualified investor that could hurt the creation of angel investors who are so critical to creating new problems in this country. there are perhaps provisions put in around the s.e.c. in terms of new deals that might have to be vetted for a long period of time. i can tell you if you're a start-up company, you don't have 120 days to wait before you can raise your dollars to try to get to the next step to stay alive. i cite these two examples

because instead of simply saying no, the chairman and the staff have said yes, you raise good points and others have raised these points and they are changing the bill, and i think that spirit is what the chairman is going to bring to this debate. in the 30 years of being in the finance business -- or around the finance business, i came to this body, thinking i might know a little something about this subject. it was probably a month in that i realized that whatever i knew was incremental and that the last e.r.a. and a half i have had to go back and retest all of my cummingss. and it's been an enormously challenging but exciting experience, and i come away, though, from this year and a half -- again, particularly working with senator corker where we had everybody from across the political spectrum to talk to us and get us up to speed on these issues. i came away with a couple three conclusions. one, there is no democratic or republican slugs to financial regulatory reform.

if there is ever an area that shouldn't be broken down on partisanship, it's this issue. second, that what the market craves most is predictability. and that sometimes the overstatements if you do this, oh, my gosh, it is going to be the death knell of american capitalism. it has to be balanced, but oftentimes those statements are overstated. at the end of the day, what the market wants is a good commonsense bill that will set the tone not just for the next year or two but for the next 20 or 30 years. and finally, because of the good work of chairman dodd and senator shelby and so many others, i think that common ground is attainable here, and i look forward to spending as much time as needed and appreciate particularly those on the republican side who have agreed to bring this bill to the floor and no longer are going to have political hansen an governance but let's get to the don't. let's air the issues back and forth. there is a lot more to say about some of the critiques of the

bill. i look forward to that discussion. i look forward to making sure we end up with that common ground and end world cup with the 21st century financial rules of the road. i thank the chair and the chairman of our committee and yield back. mr. dodd: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut is recognized. mr. dodd: i just want to thank senator warner from virginia. he is a relatively new member of this body and a new member of our banking committee, but i can't even begin to aptly characterize his contribution to this product. it has been just from day one he has been at every meeting, been involved in almost every conversation and discussion about this bill, and particularly his focus that he and senator bob corker agreed to take on so many, many weeks ago in examining working on title 1 and title 2 of this 12-title bill, dealing with resolution authority and too big to fail. his background, his experience, his knowledge made a wonderful contribution to this product.

his interest, obviously, in the other matters is valued as well because he brings two decades of living in a world in which these matters are something he has actually grappled with. so i -- we have got a long journey in front of us here in the coming weeks to get through all of this, but his continuing involvement in this chamber on this subject matter will be invaluable to all of us as we go forward. so i just wanted to thank him for that. let me also thank my colleague from california. she also has a background in this subject matter. she has often b often talked about it. i want to thank her for actually offering our first amendment on this bill, something that i think brings all of us together on. so i thank her for her energy and interest in this subject. mrs. boxer: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from california is recognized. mrs. boxer: thank you very much, mr. president. i want to -- i want to thank senator dodd for all his work on so many issues. just the way things worked out, he has been so pivotal in health

care reform and now in wall street reform. this is an era of reform and my friend should be very proud that he happens to be here at this time because we can't go back to the days we just left, and as a reminder, i want to show you some of the headlines. senator dodd and senator warner, i think it's worth a minute of looking at these headlines. this is taken from 2007 and 2008, some of the headlines that we had to face in those times. "u.s. unemployment rate hits 10.2%, highest in 26 years." how about this one -- "nightmare on wall street." "the bailout to end all bailouts." "wall street's latest downfall: madoff charged with fraud." "credit crunch continues as lending rates climb." "jobs, wages nowhere near rock bottom yet."

"where do we go from here? nasdaq in biggest fall since the dot-com crash. dow dives 778 points." "u.s. loses 533,000 jobs in biggest drob since 1974." and you can see the look on this man's face. he is obviously standing in the middle probably of the new york stock exchange, and that explains how everybody felt as our constituents lost their wealth, they lost their wealth and with it their confidence in america. i want to continue with just one more chart because i think all of us want so much to put this behind us, and that's what we will do with this bill. but we have to remember, economy in crisis, what now? u.s. pension insurer lost billions in market." housing prices take biggest dive since 1991." "full of doubts, u.s. shoppers cut spending." "wall street employees set toge"

the bonuses during this time. and "how low can they go? home prices drop 42%." "carnage continues. 524,000 jobs lost in december." and the "san jose mercury news" from my home area, "foreclosure wave, san jose fights to protect neighborhoods." so the reason i take my colleagues' time to remind us of this is that what we're doing here is so important and i'm so proud of the work that, senator dodd, you did in your committee that has gotten us to this point, and i'm very grateful that our republican friends let this bill move forward. we will have our debates, and that's fine, but we can't afford to go back to those old days. and by the way, those old days could happen unless we act as our president has stated. i want to take the time to thank

senator dodd in particular for working with us as well as thank the administration for working with us to come up with an amendment which will synthesize exactly what this bill does, and the purpose of this amendment which is pending at the desk which i'm hopeful we'll vote on on tuesday says to prohibit taxpayers from ever having to bail out the financial sector. when i i knew it was false. and i went to senator dodd and heard my colleagues on the other side say senator dodd's bill colleagues on the committee and would ensure taxpayer bailouts, is that i had didn't understand why these comments were coming from the other side. it is like saying this glass of water a cup of coffee? no, this glass of water is a glass of water. it is not coffee. and if you say it seven, eight, nine times that it is coffee, somebody might believe it. that's how i viewed the comments from the other side that this is guaranteeing bailouts when in fact it is not. so i said to chairman dodd, i

have an idea that we should put together a very simple bill, an amendment to the bill that basically says what we know is true. that all financial companies that are put into receivership thupbd title shall be -- under this title shall be liquidated. no company is going to be kept afloat. all funds spended will be repaid to the taxpayers by the financial sector through assessments or the sale of the assets of the company. and then we repeat at the end, taxpayers shall bear no losses from the exercise of any authority under this title. i'm going to put up the boxer amendment. it simply fits right on this chart, i say to my friend. it's very simple. if a company is taken into receivership, liquidation must

follow. nobody is being kept afloat. no one's business is being kept afloat. they are liquidated. and recovery of funds, all funds expended in the liquidation of a financial company shall be recovered either from the disposition of assets of such financial company or shall be the responsibility of the financial sector through assessments. and lastly, just in case people really wanted it stated -- and i see some smiles on faces because we worked together to make sure no one could turn this around, "no loss to taxpayers. taxpayers shall bear no loss from the exercise of any authority under this title." so let there be no mistake, senator dodd's arms were open to this amendment. he said this reflects exactly what we've done. but he said, senator, if you feel better if we put it in one place, we'll do it. i just think it's important for the american people to understand the simplicity of this approach.

no loss to taxpayers. period, end of quote. so if somebody goes on tv this weekend and says this bill is about bailing out companies and keeping them afloat with taxpayer funds, it cannot be done under the bill. and this amendment certainly brings it home in a very simple, plain-english fashion. so i'm proud to be working with my colleague, senator dodd. i used to sit on the banking committee, and i was kind of lured off the committee because the people in california said we have to have somebody on the commerce committee. we have so much at stake there. and so it was tough for me to walk away, but i did walk away, but i still retain the relationships. i'm going to go through what's in the dodd bill that i think is so terrific. then i'm going to yield the floor because senator dodd has been talking about this by himself, and i think he deserves to have a bit of a rest.

the rest of us should come over here and talk about it. again, taxpayer bailouts are done, and we know that the bill itself does it. but we've made it clear. taxpayers are covered. we will have a cop on the beat for our consumers. we will know that a consumer financial protection bureau has only one job, and that's the job to look after our consumers so that they are protected from the kind of deceptive and abuses -- and abusive practices that fueled this crisis. and let's face it, this crisis was fueled by wall street, by speculation, no-leverage requirements, lots of things; dark markets. this bill takes these issues on. we see another part: brings disclosure to dark markets. the bill eliminates the loopholes that allows reckless

speculative practices to go unnoticed and brings real regulation to derivatives markets and the shadow banking system. i think we're going to have real debates over this, but i can say right now when i worked on wall street so many years ago, i have to say, too many years ago to remind myself of, but let's just say it was a long time ago and it was in the 1960's, those were the years when a 12 million share day on wall street was breaking all records. now it's a billion share day; it's not much. we didn't have these kind of instruments. we didn't have these kind of toxic instruments that were so complex that when i asked treasury secretary paulson about it -- he was george bush's secretary of the treasury -- he said it's hard for me to really explain this to you. that's a fact. it didn't build my confidence up very much. i have to say we need to have a

financial system that's understandable by everybody, but certainly the secretary of the treasury shouldn't have to hold his hand and say "i can't really explain it." the best way is sunshine. senator dodd, you did a great job in working to bring disclosure to the dark markets. and senator lincoln, working through the agriculture committee, i think brought us even more protection. and that's a very, very good thing. because i think the president said it well. the president said we want everyone to prosper. we want everyone to be innovative. but we don't want to put our people at risk. when people start losing in the ways we were losing, 20% of our net worth, 40%, 50%. the market went down, mr. president, 50% of its value.

a lot of people lost their dreams. it was unnecessary, but it happened because there were markets that were in the dark and there were people who were not really fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to their clients. so what else does the dodd bill do? it curbs risky behavior on wall street. the bill provides for strict new capital and borrowing requirements as financial companies grow in size and complexity and pose a risk to the financial system. regulators will restrict proprietary trading, speculative gambling by critical financial firms. we have situations where a firm that is advising a client -- we know this happened with goldman sachs -- advising clients to buy a particular instrument which happened to be worthless -- and i can't use the word that they, the traders used to describe it,

but let's just -- because this is a family audience. these were junk, and they called them worse than that. they were junk, and they were being sold to the customers of goldman while goldman was taking a short position -- in other words, a position that bet on these instruments failing. and the kind of e-mails that came out really were reminiscent of the e-mails that came out during the enron scandal, bragging about how widows and orphans were going to get hurt. well, if anything we should do here is protect our people, not put them at greater risk. there's going to be an early warning system created to prevent a future crisis, a financial stability oversight council to focus on the risks before they lead to a crisis. and as a last resort, the regulators can break up a company that's too big to fail. and, lastly, of the big accomplishments of this bill,

the bill protects against securities markets scams. it mandates management improvements and increases funding for the s.e.c. the bill creates a new s.e.c. office of credit rating agencies to strengthen regulation of credit rating agencies, many of which fail to correctly rate risky financial products. and i have to say i'm working on an amendment that is even stronger, because for me, as someone who relied so many years ago on the honesty of these rating companies -- these are the companies that say this is double a, this is triple a, this is a, this is b, this is bad. but they're getting paid by the people who have an interest in them giving a good rating that's wrong. and we have to do something here to insert some type of responsibility to the public. these rating agencies have a responsibility to the public.

and i'm working on some approaches. we don't have it ready. we're going to talk to senator dodd. we hope he'll be be amenable to it. but we have some thoughts about it. you know, in this area, the people of this country are really putting their hopes and dreams into the financial markets. and it's been a great thing in general over the years. it's been a great thing because america's a great country, and we have innovation and innovators, and we have venture capitalists that put it all on the line, and they hit. and we can all do very well if we invest, even if we do it through our 401(k) or our company does it through a pension plan, we know most americans have a stake in these markets. you know, i heard some things from goldman sachs, they said something like this: well, the

people we were selling to were sophisticated, and they should have known better. but they stopped short of the truth. maybe they were sophisticated and maybe they weren't doing their job either, and, therefore, it trickles down to the people who were relying on that so-called sophisticated investor. all we're saying is we need reasonable rules of the road. we want to know a rating agency is giving it their best shot to tell the truth about a security. we want to ensure that. we want to make sure that if there are new exotic instruments being traded, that's fine. but let's take a look at them in the light of day so that people are fully informed. and then if you take a gamble, if you're fully informed, that's one thing. but if you don't understand that you're taking a gamble, that's another. so, again, i am very pleased that we're at this point.

somebody said the only reason we got here is that we threatened to work through the night. maybe there's some truth in that. frankly, it doesn't matter to me what the reason. we are at this point, we can get to this bill. my republican friends who say they want to improve it, they didn't try to do it in the committee, it's my understanding. but if they want to do it now, i welcome them because i'm sure i'll support some of their amendments if they're in the spirit of this bill. and the spirit of this bill is protecting consumers, protecting taxpayers, making sure taxpayers are never on the hook, and stopping a situati like this one where every newspaper had pictures of people loss to understand how could this happen in america. and i get the chills thinking about the conversation many democratic senators had -- and i know republicans had the same

conversation with the secretary of the treasury and with the fed chairman, ben bernanke, in which they basically said we are on the brink of collapse. we may never come back from this situation. we can't forget that. and if we don't move to correct the system in ways that are not overly burdensome, but we get it right -- and i think senator dodd has pretty much gotten that sweet spot on this thing. he may want to move here or there with an amendment. if we can do this, if we did nothing else -- and, by the way, we have done other things and we will do more. this is crucial. it's crucial to consumer confidence. consumer confidence fuels 70% of the market. let's do this right. i want to thank my republican friends for deciding to work with us. i want to thank senator dodd for his patience, for his passion. and i'm very happy that he's

leading us on this because he's so effective and he knows what he's saying. thank you very much, and i would yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. dodd: again let me just commend our colleague from california and thank her for your involvement and for your ideas and suggestions. again, i think it's going to be helpful that we begin with a proposal that is going to, i think, bring us together. as i said, i can't speak for others but at least i've heard what i asked people to comment on your proposal. there seems to be almost unanimity around your idea. in a debate that is probably going to have us not without unanimity, i think it is always good to begin where we speak with one voice and i think that common voice making sure we never have that too-big-to-fail concept as part of that economic structure. we'll be be making a significant historic contribution, and i thank you. mrs. boxer: thank you,

senator. mr. dodd: a request for time to speak this afternoon on this bill, it's obviously a leadership call as to what their decisions are to go forward. again, i want to say to my friend and colleague from alabama, we've had a very good working relationship, and it will continue through this process. we've already been discussing several ideas. the angel investor idea is someone that needs to be changed. i know my friend an colleague from missouri, kit bond, has some ideas on this as well. i'm going to be get in touch with him and asking him and possibly others, senator warner, and others, to add some language to our bill. we know senator cork certificate working on some language -- we know senator corker is working on some language. ben nelson, senator sanders has some amendments, ted kaufman does. we have a lot of ideas that will

be coming up in the coming days, and so we've got a lot of work in front of us before we can complete action on this bill. i am grateful to senator shelby and the other members of the banking committee who have been very, very helpful over the months. wwe've had a lot of conversatios about this. each and every one of them made a constructive contribution to the process. i am very grateful to that. and i am very grateful to leader reid. none of this happens without the involvement of the leader and his very, very fine staff who are tremendously helpful in helping us get to these points by providing the structure and the thoorgs allows us to actual i -- the structure and the organization that allows us to get to the debate. i want to underscore something that senator boxer said a few moments ago. we spefnts a lot of time over the last -- we spent a lot of time over the last two weeks. there was a lot of

finger-pointing as to why we weren't starting. that's how behind us. if people want to flyspeck that debate -- the fact is we're on the bill and in the next few weeks my hope is we'll complete this work. with that, i'll note the absence of a quorum and let the leadership decide what they want to do. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: quorum call:quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent to dispense of the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: i ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for up to ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. wall street's crisis became the nation's crisis. lost jobs in toledo, foreclosed

homes in bedford heights, frozen credit for small businesses in lebanon, state budget shortfalls; the lists go on and on and on. it can't happen again. we must not let it happen again. one of the most disturbing aspects of the wall street reform process is that some policy-makers started with the premise that, first of all, wall street wealth must be protected. sure they have their lobbyists. sure they have their p.r. people spinning. but it amazes me to think that that's where some people start in this whole debate. they focus their energies on minimizing the safeguards put in place to protect our nation from another financial meltdown. this morning's "washington post," d.j. e.o.n. quotes an e-mail from an arrogant bank who works at goldman sachs who said what if we created a thing which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical in which nobody knows how to price.

at some point we've got to ask in this body, who do we report to, the mega banks who raked in millions by gambling with the livelihoods, retirement and homes of middle-class americans or do we report to middle-class americans themselves? is our job to protect wall street or our job to protect against more taxpayer-funded bailouts. in my view we must take the steps necessary to eliminate bailouts and establish fool-proof financial protections for the americans we represent. and we do it even if the behemoth banks don't like it, even if wall street lobbyists don't like it, even if most of my republican colleagues don't like it. that's what the amendment i will offer next on tuesday is all about. in the last few decades, the banking industry has become so concentrated it no longer functions as a competitive market. yesterday i met with kansas city fed president dr. tom honing. a observed since 1990 the 20 largest financial firms have increased their control of

banking assets. they once controlled 35% of those assets. today they control 70%. some firms are 30% to 40% larger than they had been just before the crisis. we're twiddling our thumbs as wall street once again places our nation at risk. 15 years ago, mr. president, the six largest u.s. banks had assets equal to 17% of g.d.p. 15 years ago, they had combined seats of 17% of g.d.p. today the six largest megabanks in this country have combined assets of 63% of g.d.p. from 17% 15 years ago percent of -- assets of g.d.p. 15 years ago. now they have $2,000 -- $2 trillion in assets on their balance sheet and over $1

trillion in liabilities. taxpayer funded bailouts are far more likely than if these banks were not so dominant. that's not l only down side t jeep dieses our small businesses which generate over 60% of new jobs. the current distortion in the market gives privileged large banks clear funding advantages up to $34 billion annually over smaller community banks. these large banks have -- these large banks could game the system far too often at the expense of the smaller banks. these larges banks have put a virtual freeze on lending to small business despite receiving this taxpayer bailout. three of the largest banks slashed their s.b.a. lending by 86% from 2008 to 2009. in ohio, s.b.a.-backed loans -- those are government-guaranteed loans to help small business, and i know that the presiding officer has fought for small

business in duluth and rochester and st. paul -- s.b.a. loans went from in my state in 2007, 4,200 of them, in 2009, only 2,100. they were cut in half. i've heard from manufacturers and entrepreneurs, energy start-ups and mom and pop corner stores, all small business owners who strive to be in the middle class and bring their employees up to the middle class who are struggling to get the credit they need to hire workers and expand businesses. they have the capacity. they have the customers. they simply can't afford -- they simply can't get the credit they need to etion spanned. it's clearly not the small banks who are cutting their lending. according to the kansas city fed, 45% of banks with assets under $1 billion actually increased their business lending in 2009. so what do the megabusinesses do instead of lending?

they've increased their trading by 23%. they're trading with each other because they can make money. they're trading with each other on wall street because they can make money. they're not making loans to main street because it simply isn't as profitable for them. last year we let 100 community banks fail across the nation. meanwhile we spend $165 billion of taxpayers' money to keep the big six banks afloat. but the cost of having these six megabanks is even greater. the bank of england estimates the true social cost has exceeded th 4 trillion. 4,000 billion dollars. if we don't want more small business failures, if we don't want more bailouts, we need to do something about the unprecedented concentration of wealth among a few large banks. that's why senator kaufman of delaware, senator casey of pennsylvania, senator merkley of oregon, senator whitehouse of rhode island, senator harkin of iowa, senator sanders of vermont, senator burris of illinois and i have introduced

this amendment modeled after the safe banking act of 2010. these senators come from the east and the south and the midwest and all over our country, and they rise with me in support of the brown-kaufman amendment. it would prevent any financial institution from becoming so large i that it could jeopardize our entire economy. too big to fail means too big to exist. the weement scale back the six largest banks in the nation -- just six banks but six medical gay banks. those six banks' total set as are 63% of gross domestic product in this country. this amendment would require them to liquidate some of their bank before it's too late. that would mean they could spin off one of our lines of work, they could reduce one of their lines of work, they could do less business in one region, whatever, so that they aren't these megabanks with too this kind of power over our economy. our amendment would place statutory limits on the banks.

our amendment imposes a sensible size constraint. the leverage ratio would be set in the vicinity of 16:1. it is about 6%, about 16:1. we saw on wall street renched ratios of 25 and 30 and sometimes even 35 or 40 to one. this bill -- this amendment would cap the concentration of deposits held by any one bank at 10% of nation's deposits, about $750 billion, not small but not so humongous as they are now. the amendment we're -- the bill we will be considering beginning next week is strong, but it needs to be stronger. it focuses on monitoring risk. that's the right thing, taking action -- and taking action should regulators believe the risk has grown too big. bur we know the regulators didn't exactly do it right during the bush years and that's why it's so important that we write legislation in a way to keep these large banks from getting too big.

we shouldn't just monitor risk until we're once again on the brink of trouble. we should learn from recent history and correct our regulatory mistakes by nipping risk in the bud. that means preventing the anticompetitive concentration of banks that become too big to fail and who bank on that to engage in high-risk behavior. not only would our amendment, madam president, help prevent bailouts and protect us against economic collapse, it would help boost lending to small businesses. i'm ginned in the chamber -- i'm joined in the chamber by the senator louisiana, who has specialized in finding twice help small businesses. she knows, as i do, that these small businesses have not gotten the cientdz of dlead they need to expand -- the kind of credit that they need to expand, that they have the capacity to groarks thegrow,they have the ct have not been able to get the credit. the brown-kaufman amendment would take action now to prevent economic collapse and taxpayer-funded bailouts in the future. we believe the american public doesn't want regulators to wait and see whether another crisis

develops. we should prevent it before it starts. too big to fail is too big. they saw -- the american people saw the arrogance of goldman bankers who seem without little regret, without second thought and who completely disregarded the public interest. they want us to teach wall street megabanks a lesson. they will never again gamble away the american dream. this isn't, madam president, about retribution. this about protecting the american public from banks that are too big, banks that are too big to fail, banks that are too big to exist. it will affect a relatively small number of banks, but these banks frankly have too much power over the economy and these banks, coupled with their risk, their size presents a real threat to the future prosperity of our great country. madam president, i yield the floor.

ms. landrieu: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. ms. landrieu: thank you, madam president. i'd like to ask to speak as if in morning business for up to 10 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. landrieu: before i begin on my topic, which is different than the topic of the senator from ohio, i want to thank him about his comments about our focus on small business and assure him, as the chair knows, that we're doubling our efforts this week to really hone in on a package of support and help for small businesses in america, because we believe that the recovery can take place and will take place, but it will be led, in large measure, by the small businesses in america, and we're going to do our very best, after we deal with this bill that's on the floor to really focus the senate's attention in that regard, and i thank the senator from ohio and look forward to working with him in the weeks ahead.

madam president, i rise today, though, to speak on an equallysa tragedy and a disaster that is occurring right now off the coast of my home state in louisiana. on tuesday, on april 20, as we all now know, at approximately 10:00 p.m., a tremendous and terrible smokes occurred aboard -- explosion occurred aboard a state-of-the-art drill ship, the deep water horizon. there were 126 men and women on board that rig. it was drilling in almost 6,000 feet of water, a real technological feat some 50 miles off louisiana's coast. the explosion, unfortunately and sadly, killed 11 men, 17 others were injured, three of them critically, and today one

remains in the hospital. we don't know what precisely caused this accident, but at present it appears that the blowout preventer failed. we do not know why. the blowout preventer is a very large piece of equipment -- i'd like to try to explain. it's of course very dark down in the depths of the ocean. this isn't the best picture, by the eight best one that weevment this is what the floor of the ocean looks like. this is a blow jousout prevented that is graph of it. it is a standard piece of equipment on all wells, and it is a huge piece of equipment on a well like this. it would weigh up to 500 tons, and it is about 18 feet in

length. and at some point, this piece of equipment, which is standard, this piece of equipment, which is tested every 14 days, as required by law, failed. this actual piece of equipment -- this blow juout preventer on this rig was actually tested 10 days before this tragic incident, and it passed the inspection. so the investigation thals fully under way -- so the investigation that is fully under way now and will continue for weeks and months will tell us more but what we know today is that the blowout preventer failed. the explosion that occurred ignited the oil and gas that flowed from a riser pipe that was connected to the well at the seabed. and i'll show that imen. this riser pipe is a very thick and strong pipe. right now today as we speak it's curled on the bottom of the

ocean floor, much like a garden hose would be, twisted in many places. but the well is not closed, and so today there are anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil leaking from this well. despite heroic efforts that have been under way now for days, this has not been closed, and this will continue to leech and leak until it is. the rig burned that issued forth for some 36 hours and then the rig began to take on water and ultimately sank to the sea floor. as i said, we know what the leak rate is and it is headed to shore. these are the facts, madam president. everyone agrees this accident was and is an unmitigated disaster. i know the hearts and prayers of

everyone in the united states are with the families that lost their lives, those that are injured and we continue to pray for them as they recover. but the issue for us is to acknowledge this, to understand it, and to make decisions about how to move forward. today the u.s. coast guard reports are that a rainbow sheen can be seen in the water -- i'm going to put up a map in just a minute -- about 33 miles by 42 miles in length. what's important about this sheen is that 97% of it is a rainbow sheen. only 3% contains emuls filed crude. i had -- only 3% contains emulsified crude. it is a thicker oil plotted in water but even in the area where the crude has beaded or gathered on the water's surface, it is a very thin layer. in fact, in a briefing with the coast guard yesterday, the oil slick in its thickest point is

about a millimeter or two in thickness, approximately the thickness of a couple of strands of hair. so it's important to understand why this is an unprecedented disaster. the oil slick is wide and covers a large sesks our ocean. it is a very thin -- 97% of it is an extremely thin sheen of relatively light oil on the surface. i do not say that to diminish the tragedy, but to accurately convey to the american people what we're dealing with. this is not the heavy, thick oil that stained santa barbara's coast or the pruday crude from a tanker in 1989. but what is immediate concern to the people of my state is that the oil sheen is approaching our shores.

the edge of the sheen is 120 miles off the coast of the parish. this could change in a few days. we don't know. but it looks as though the spill will move to the mouth of the mississippi river to the pass. in the mean time, i do know that there are 56,000 feet of flexible barrier that has been deployed to contain the spill. that's about 15 miles of barri barrier, an additional 31 miles are available to be deployed and 72 miles of barrier and buffer have been ordered. i also know that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of people. i've been on the phone with the man daunt of the -- commondante of the coast guard, i spoke to the department of interior, i kept in touch with local

parishes, i know there are hundreds who workout side of of hamand, louisiana, and they're doing everything they can to minimize the potential damage to the shore. we're investigating every hour. what more can be done? there are 70 response vessels in place, they're being used as skimmers and recovery vessels. 1,000 government industry response personnel are on the site responding to the incident. 65,000 of disbursement has been deployed and an additional 110,000 gallons are available. and today a controlled burn began. there are different views about how this oil can be eliminated. some of it is disbursed naturally. some of it can be burned. it has to be coralled and burned, and, of course, controlled. this has not happened in this

depth of water, so the industry and our government officials are using everything known at our disposal now to take care of it. some of it will be trial and error. but i want to spend a minute about what our options should be. we have seen disasters like this before. we've seen them in the oil industry when tankers explode or hit ground. we've seen them in shipping when ships, for no apparent reason, sink in the middle of an ocean much we've seen them in the nuclear power industry and, in fact, madam president, we've seen them in our space program. we must react to this disaster in the measured, but right way. we must apply the lessons of past tragedies to this one so we can make the best an wisest decisions -- and wisest decisions that will instruct us about how to move forward. i don't believe we can react in fear. i don't believe that we should retreat.

one option would be the way we dealt with -- and i think it was a poor choice after the three mile island nuclear power plant disaster, there was no death or injuries, but the disaster was so frightening to people, there was so much concern that basically we brought all new nuclear power plant applications to a screeching halt. in hindsight, madam president, that was not the right decision. today we are 30 years behind the french and nuclear technology. france gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, we get less than 20%. france is the largest net exporter of electric power, it's exporting its -- and its electricity cost is the lowest in europe. today areva, a french company, is the world's leader nuclear company. could have been a u.s. company,

but it's not because we ran, we retreated out of fear. we did not, in my view, respond the way we should have. for those of us who are interested in reducing carbon emissions, and i'm one of them, consider that france's carbon emission per kilowatt hour is less than 1/10th of germany. the sulfur dioxide has been reduced by 20% over seven years. it's emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur has been reduced by 70% even though production has tripled. but because of our poor and really inappropriate and wrong reaction, our united states has largely sat out of the nuclear renaissance at great expense to

our country. we've allowed foreign companies to step in as global leaders and 30 years later now we're trying to make up that ground. so treat is not an option. by contrast we can look at how we, the united states, responded to the 1986 disaster of the space shuttle challenger. i can remember exactly where i was, as many americans can remember, when that incident happened. and we all remember the joy of the takeoff and of the launch and then the unbelievable visual of that space shuttle exploding into a billion pieces in space. losing all seven lives and, remember, there was a teacher on board. christie mcauliffe. the horror of that disaster shocked us all. however, what we did not do was end the space program.

we didn't stop launching. we didn't stop exploring. and as we go through with this disaster and we handle it, whether it takes us a week or several weeks or a month or several months, we have to find a way to make sure it never happens again, strengthen our resolve, strengthen our technology and continue to be the world leader in clean technologies in this world. we did not declare the risks were too great and the benefits of the program were too few and we moved forward. as a result, the united states remains a global leader in the space race and we must continue to remain a leader in energy production even as we transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar and other offshore opportunities. no one has ever claimed, including myself, who's an unabashed opponent -- proponent of the industry that trilg is

risk -- that drilling is risk free. the people of my home of louisiana know these risks better than anyone both to the safety of the rig workers and to the environment itself. but we also know that america needs 21 million gallons of oil a day to keep this economy moving. 21 million gallons of oil a day are necessary for this economy. this well is leeching right now 5,000. that is less than one-fourth of 1% of the oil that is necessary. write that down for me. so we must continue to drill for advocates that say we can't afford to drill off of our coast, then what coast should we drill off of? should we have all of our oil coming 100% from saudi arabia or venezuela or honduras or west

africa? we have to take responsibility to drill where we can safely out away from our shores is as safe as we can be. we obviously have to improve our technology, and that we will. retreat, we won't. let me give just a few more facts and then i'll wrap-up my comments. it is more risky to import our oil and tankers than it is for us to drill it offshore even considering this disaster that we're dealing with today. according to a report by the national academy of sciences, spill from tankers bringing oil in from overseas accounts for four times as much oil spilled as does offshore drilling. compared to how much oil we use in this country, the industry spill rate is quite low. minerals management service reports offshore operators have a spill rate of only .001% since

190. that means 99.99% of all oil is produced, transported an consumed -- and consumed safely. again, i'm not saying that to minimize this disaster. we know the browout prevent -- the blowout preventer failed. there are other safeguards that need to be put in place. the investigation will show that. there may be those who will need to be held accountable. the investigation will show that as well. but the fact of the matter is natural seeps as much as 150 times more oil into our oceans that does offshore drilling. i agree we don't want to drill everywhere. i don't believe we want to drill inin yosemite national park. but whether we drill 50 miles,

100 miles, using up-to-date technology and backup blowout preventers, something i'm learning about that goes on in norway, and other countries, might also reduce these risks even further. but let me say one more word before i close, a word about revenue sharing. i've been probably the most outspoken advocate in this senate and will continue to be and proud of my advocacy on part of coastal states. particularly the states of texas and lose lieu and mississippi and alabama who have been hosts to this industry for the better part of 75 years. we've lived through its ups and downs. we've lived through disasters like this and periods of relative calm. we've benefited from the millions of dollars that have benefited our state and directly through jobs. but, madam president, with all that we've done, with all that we've done generating almos

almost $5 billion in taxes off of the gawft, out of this -- gulf coast, out of this gulf coast, $5 billion a year, the fishermen in plackman parish, the school children in orleans and jefferson have not received one penny even though our whole state today, many people along the coast are standing watch to keep this oil spill from our shores. we have come here time and time again and said, we are proud to be partners in this industry even today in the midst of this disaster we still are. but you must understand the risk we do and we'd like to have a portion of that funding to help us either have the kind of technology in place to invest in our wetlands, to fill up some of these canals that have been left even as we make the industry reach to higher and better standards. i hope that as people watch this

disaster unfold they will hear again the call of the gulf coast senators and house members to allow us to share these revenues in a fair way so we can all benefit from the up side and most certainly share the down side as we will do in the next weeks and months ahead. so we're going to continue tomorrow monitor -- continue to monitor, to react, to do everything we can to save the environment, to investigate the accident, to continue to nurture an care for those that are -- and care for those who are still injured and to comfort those who have lost members of their family. a young mother i spoke to who lost her 21-year-old husband and will be raising a 3-month-old and 3-year-old by herself at least for the foreseeable future. and many stories like that. but we are proud to be part of producing the resources that

this country needs as we work on technologies to prevent these kinds of disasters in the future. and we don't believe that moving this production completely off of our shore is the answer. we don't believe that burying our head in the sand and pretending that the country does not need 21 million gallons of oil a day or pretending that we can get this energy tomorrow from somewhere else. we may get it somewhere else in 20 or 30 years, but not next week and not the month after and not the year after. so let's be careful in the way we move forward. let's be measured. let's be open to hear the facts. let's hold people accountable for what happened and understand what happened and prevent it again. and in the mean time i know the coast guard, the military, louisiana's agencies and our local officials are going to do everything we can to protect our people and ourtheloor. a senator: madam president?

the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. a senator: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak up to 10 minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. franken: thank you, madam president. i rise today to support the democracy is strengthened by casting light on spending in elections act, or the disclose act. senator schumer's bill to fight the effects of the citizens united decision. i want to tell minnesotans listening at home why i support this bill. i want to talk about the problem that this bill addresses and how this bill fixes that problem, and i want to talk about a part of this legislation that came from the bill that i introduced earlier this year. now, a lot of people don't follow the supreme court very closely, so i want to summarize

what citizens united, that decision did. in a nutshell, it allows corporations to spend as much money as they want whenever they want in any election in this country. it lets corporations spend their shareholder money to do this. and what's worse, it will allow foreign subsidiaries, wholly owned by foreign governments, to spend just as much money as their american competitors. madam president, this decision changed our election laws in a radical way. in a single decision, the supreme court reversed a century-old legal standard, two federal laws, 24 state laws, including a 20-year-old minnesota law, and two of its own decisions, one of which it

handed down just six years ago. now, i am not a lawyer and i don't speak latin, but unless the term stare decisis means overrule stuff, i think we have got an activist court on our hands. but i don't want to talk about legal precedent. i want to talk about how this decision will affect people's everyday lives. i want to talk about the crisis that citizens united has created for our communities, for the safety of our communities and for our ability to run them without a permission slip from big business. let me give you a couple of examples of policies that might never have been enacted if citizens united had been the law of the lapped. as of 1965, when america's population was about -- about half as large as it is today, 50,000 people died every year

from car accidents. believe it or not, the auto industry knew full well that it could prevent a large portion of highway deaths just by installing seat belts in every car they sold, but as late as the early 1960's, they refused to do that. they said safety doesn't sell. and they lobbied against legislation to require seat belts. fortunately for all of us, in 1966, congress passed a law requiring all passengers to have seat belts. by the year 2000, the fatality rate from car accidents had dropped by 71%. here's another story. in the 1920's, oil companies started adding lead to gasoline. they did this even though they knew that lead was a poison. in fact, 80% of the workers at standard oil's very first leaded gas plant died of or got lead

poisoning. but this didn't stop oil company representatives from testifying before this very body repeatedly that leaded gasoline and lead pollution in the air were totally safe. that's what they said. but congress doesn't take the bait and finally in 1970, congress passed the clean air act and phased out leaded gasoline over the next two decades. by 1995, the percentage of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood had dropped by 84%. by 2000, the level of ambient lead in the air had dropped 98%. a lot of people know that the national traffic and motor vehicle safety act and the clean air act of 1970 are two of the pillars of modern consumer and environmental safety laws. here's another thing that they have in common. they were both passed about 60

days before midterm elections. do you think that the seat belt bill would have been as strong if g.m. could have run a million dollars in attack ads against vulnerable congressmen, by name in the last months before those elections? do you think that the clean air act would have been so aggressive on lead if standard oil could have spent $10 million against lawmakers in texas? these kind of corporate expenditures would have been made possible by citizens united, and this is what the disclosed bill will fight. and so here's my point, madam president. at the end of the day, this bill is not about election law. it's not about campaign finance. it's about seat belts. it's about clean air, in minnesota and new hampshire. it's about protecting our right to improve our lives without

some corporation saying no, you can't do that. i want to talk a little bit about how the disclose act is going to temper the effects of citizens united. first of all, the bill will make sure the voters know who is really behind any advocacy group's election ad. both the head of an advocacy group and its top contributors will have to appear in and approve every ad. these groups will also have to disclose their top donors to the federal election commission. secondly, the disclose act will enhance accountability to shareholders. corporations will have to disclose their political expenditures in periodic reports. they will have to post this information on their websites. i have worked with senator schumer on getting strong disclosure provisions, and so i'm particularly pleased to see these provisions in place.

thirdly, under the disclose act, government contractors receiving more than $50,000 will be banned from spending money on our elections. the same goes for recipients of tarp funds who have yet to pay the taxpayers back. this makes sense. if companies are getting taxpayers' money, they shouldn't be able to turn around and spend that same money to tell taxpayers how to vote. now, i want to talk about a fourth part of the bill which i think is crucial. as president obama said in his state of the union address in january, the citizens united decision won't just open the floodgates for special interests, it's going to open the floodgates for foreign interests. under citizens united, foreign companies with subsidiaries in the united states will be able to use those companies to spend without limit in american elections.

as president obama said, american elections should not be bankrolled by foreign entities. can't we all agree on that? and that's why that day, a few hours before president obama stood before the combined houses of congress, i introduced the american elections act, a bill that would close the loopholes in our current laws that allow foreign companies to spend freely in our elections, or that would because of citizens united. now, i'm thrilled to say that the disclose act contains three of these core provisions, of the core provisions of my act, and i'm so thankful to senator schumer for reaching out to work together to include them and for his remarks this morning. he has been a true champion on this issue. so let me summarize these provisions. first, the disclose act bars election spending by companies in which a foreign national controls political

decisionmaking or the company's operations. this effectively codifies an existing regulation. secondly, it bars election spending by companies in which foreign nationals make up a majority of the board of directors. finally, it bars election spending by companies in which a foreign entity owns a controlling share of stock, defined by the leading delaware definition for a controlling share, which is 20% stock ownership. now, this may seem low, but, in fact, 31 out of the 32 states that define a controlling share with a number define it as 20% or less. actually, almost all of them define it as 10%, including minnesota. they all boil down to this. if a foreign individual, foreign company or foreign government controls your company, your company should not be spending freely in american elections.

american elections should be controlled by americans. now, my republican colleagues are saying that we're fighting a paper tiger here, that we shouldn't be concerned about foreign influence in our elections because the law already prohibits it. well, the day after president obama delivered his state of the union, the minority leader came to the floor to talk about this, and he said that president obama was wrong and that the law was actually crystal clear on foreign spending, that contrary -- this is a quote -- contrary to what the president and some of his surrogates in congress say, foreign persons, corporations, partnerships, associations, organizations, or other combinations of persons are strictly prohibited from any participation in u.s. elections, just as they were prohibited before the supreme court's citizens united decision. strictly prohibited from any

participation. yet, in fact, because our current laws are vague and out of date, even citgo, a wholly owned subsidiary of the government of venezuela, could easily spend freely in our elections because of citizens -- before citizens united. current federal law has three main provisions against federal influence. first, companies must be incorporated and have their principal place of business in the u.s. citgo's parent company is located in venezuela, but citgo itself is organized under the laws of delaware with its principal place of business in texas. citgo passes that test. second, the federal elections commission requires that any political spending by foreign subsidiaries be drawn from profits made in america. no problem for citgo. the latest s.e.c. filings, 10-k

filing we could obtain show that $625 million in annual profits here in the united states, citgo passes that test, but it can only spend spend $625 million on american elections. finally, current regulations require that all political decisionmaking for a company be made by americans, not foreign nationals. do you think that because citgo's board of directors has no americans, it's just four venezuelan citizens, that it couldn't pass this test, but believe it or not, a july, 2000, decision from the federal elections commission said that even this would not disqualify a company. as long as a board of directors forms an elections committee with only american members, that company can still spend on elections, even with 100% foreign born membership. so there you have it.

if our current laws can't stop hugo chavez, who can they stop? far from expanding the rights of american companies and leaving foreign ones behind a legal firewall, citizens united has expanded the existing rights of american companies and foreign subsidiaries equally. both american companies and foreign subsidiaries can now spend as much money as they want whenever they want in our elections. we need to act now to protect our elections against foreign governments. we need now to act now to protect our consumer safety and our environmental laws against a corporate veto. we need to act now to pass the

disclose act, which i am proud to join as an original cosponsor. thank you, madam president, and i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

ms. landrieu: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. lavin lan i ask unanimous consent to dispense with the readinms. landrieu: i ask unanis consent to dispense with reading of the role. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. landrieu: and ask to speak five minutes as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. landrieu: thank you. madam president, i come for a few minutes today to pay tribute to a great civil rights leader of our nation, a woman who was memorialized today at the national cathedral here in washington, d.c. and of course i'm speaking of dr. dorothy height, who was a tremendous trailblazer, a true heroine of our time, a great leader of the civil rights movement. she had tremendous courage and tremendous determination that allowed women all over our nation and in fact the world to

break through irrational limits set by society at large. she was a inspiration to me and, i know, madam president, to you and other women who serve in this chamber and to women leaders in all 50 states. she was the chair and president emeritus of the national council of negro women. the council was founded, as we know, by mary mcleod bethune when she brought 28 women's organizations together to improve the quality of life for women. dr. height embraced that vision and continued her work, her crusade for justice. through her leadership, she changed our nation by shining a light on discrimination and injustice which was all too common in the century that has just ended. and we still find versions and unfortunately visions of it here taofpltd she was a member of -- today.

she was a member of many other organizations that have come to represent so many good things about america: the ywca. and she was a very proud member of delta sigma theta sorority and traveled here frequently with her sorority sisters that i know are in true mourning for her today as well. through her dedication and commitment to these organizations, she encouraged women leaders in national and community organizations and on college campuses. she had an extraordinary presence, a very, very big and warm heart. and she was a great intellect. she had a passion for people. and in her own quiet but very forceful way, she brought great change to our nation. she's received a number of awards. many of those were mentioned today and the past weeks as we remember her fondly. the presidential medal of freedom award, the congressional gold medal award. and i was proud to join many of my colleagues in introducing a

resolution honoring the life and legacy of dr. height. she will be greatly missed. she will be fondly remembered. and there are very few women that will live in this century and have the kind of impact she's had on many of us. our prayers and thoughts are with her family, her closest of friends. but i wanted to give a moment of honor to her on the senate floor today. and i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from newerse menendez: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. menendez: madam president, i rise today as i'm pleased that we are finally moving to wall street reform, something i've come to the floor several times about to speak about, and that is critically important to our country, critically important to our economy, critically important to investors and consumers to have confidence.

and i'm glad we're moving to that, as a member of the banking committee. but at the same time there is an enormous environmental challenge taking place in our country, one that i think portends the consequences of offshore drilling. and i rise today to discuss the tragedy in the gulf and looming environmental disaster that threatens the gulf. first, i want to remember those who lost their lives in the tragic fire and explosion of the deep-water horizon oil rig in the gulf of mexico last week. our thoughts and prayers are with the workers and their families. the loss of life and the injuries are truly horrific. but this is also an environmental tragedy, one that threatens to reach historic proportions. over 1 million gallons of oil have already leaked into the

gulf, and each hour that passes without a solution, without a way to stop it leads us to wonder what the extent of the damage will be. it's a wakeup call to all who are trying to weigh the benefits against the risks of offshore drilling as part of our energy mix. it certainly leads this senator to wonder about the wisdom and the necessity of drilling off the coast of my state of new jersey. and i would argue off the coast of any senator of a coastal state. as i stand on this floor today, this is the fire that the deepwater horizon oil rig was engulfed before it sunk, before it sunk and then had all of the oil spilling into the gulf -- as i stand here on this floor today, an oil slick bigger than the state of delaware, over

4,000 square miles, is drifting towards shore. drifting towards show. to give you some perspective of what that means, this is how big this oil sheen is when compared to my home state of new jersey. all of the yellow. all of the yellow. if this spill in the gulf were happening, for example, in virginia waters right now, my whole state would be holding its breath because noaa has shown my office haw a spill in virginia waters could easily wash up on the new jersey shore. now, madam president, i don't know if you visited new jersey, but we have magnificent pristine beaches. the dunes along the coast, they're breath taking. wildlife is abundant. tourism depends on it.

and it would all -- it would all -- be in jeopardy. all be in jeopardy. now, the next photograph i want to show is what happens to wildlife in these oil slicks. this is a photograph in the aftermath of the exxon valdez spill. now, we hope and pray the spill in the gulf stays offshore, but the reality is it could make landfall any day now. and this photograph could be repeated 1,000 times. madam president, now we learned the spill from the deepwater horizon is worse than it was originally reported. far worse, at least five times worse. the coast guard and noaa revised their estimate of the leak. they now say it's not 42,000 gallons per day, but 210,000 gallons a day.

imagine if the leak continues for two months, which seems like a real possibility at this point. in two months it will have exceeded the amount of oil spilled in the exxon valdez disaster. well, let's keep something in mind. the exxon valdez was a tanker with a finite amount of oil aboard. this is virtually a bottomless pit of oil. when asked to compare this spill to previous spills, the coast guard compared it to the ixtoc 1 spill. on june 3 of 1979, an exploratory well called the