a french legislator wrote that instill to rationalize is that when you steal. all of these people with a lot of money for sitting here in congress and needed money for a campaign. there are hard-core perot lifers. they are saying, socialist -- socialism does not work. that is true. it does not work. it is stealing. that is the other side of the argument. it is wrong to be stealing. that is what you see going on. when you see corporate bailouts going on, we are looking at economic regulation bills to take care of the problems of fannie mae and freddie mac the deal was none of the problems but consolidates the power is such

>> socialism is a way of getting the government to steal. it is time for people to wake up to the basic principles of our country was founded on, a rule by law and not april by men. limited government. what we are dealing with and all of these political beings deal with with god and men, who is god? the liberal government messes up everything it touches. it can't figure out how to put a stopper in: the bottom of an ocean.

they can't figure out how to put a plant to put a stopper in the bottom of the ocean. in st. louis a day ago in a big hearing about the veterans hospital, they were not cleaning dental instruments and people were exposed to hiv and hepatitis these democrats were outraged that their government debt from medical system was exposing people. did it ever crossed there might admit that the government should not be in the medical business to begin with? who has killed more people in all the words of history? his government's killing their own citizens. -- it is government killing their own citizens they don't want to acknowledge the real god and they don't want the government to be the servant of the people. that is what we believe in.

you made to make sure that people know what socialism is so when they see it they vote no on it. i brought a chart along. you said bush spent too much -- too much money. he did. this is his last year under nancy pelosi. i voted no on a bunch of things that would run the deficit up including the wall street bailout. take a look at that level of deficit compared to what we have with obama, three times more. what we are talking about -- [laughter] we are talking about bankrupting the country. i have been an office 22 years and never been as frightened as i have been the last 18 months largely because of this.

they are trying to drive the country off the cliff economically. they don't understand. they want government to do everything for everybody etiquette done and it won't work and it will destroy all of our lives if we allowed to continue. god bless you and thank you for your work. [applause] >> thank you very much. we appreciate your good work at your poster. we will now have a break and take a picture. we want a picture of all you have the faces. line up just outside the room here. if you go out, you can talk to each other on the way. [general chatter]

>> before you leave, [unintelligible] if we can have the congressman made his remark before you disperse. we don't want you to miss the opportunity to hear him. >> thank you for the change of planes. ns. the congressman have to be back for about jason comes to us from

california. he was a part -- football player. he is a fighter and issues we care about. he started out with his first campaign and i am told that when he won that first congressional race he did not have bettie page step or did polling or have a campaign office. he did not -- he did not have a campaign staff or did polling or at a campaign office. nevertheless, he won. this shows that sometimes you can win over incredible odds. we appreciate work in his areas like in the area of immigration. please welcome congressman jason chavitz. >> is truly an honor and

privilege to be here. it is an honor to serve in the united states congress. you see that don't and you walk onto the floor of the house of representatives and you get this chill down your spine. i hope that never goes away. if it goes away you know you have been here too long. is truly an honor. after i was the member-elect and i visited with a guy named jim hansen who has served from 22 years from the state of utah. i asked him what it would be like. it happens just the way he said. he said, "when you get there, you pitch yourself -- to pinch yourself a." ." it's true.

at month 6 something happens. there is an added phenomenon. you start looking around and ask out they all got here. [laughter] we have great representatives like mr. akin and jim jordan but there are many people i worry about. i worry about this country. the united states of america is the greatest country on the face of the planet. our freedoms and liberties are under attack. i think you know that and that is why you are here. i am here to tell you that it is good old fashioned people who raise their hand to make the difference. i truly believe that so few people raise their heads but those that do make the world of difference. they change the world. you can do that and be part of

that. i did not grow up thinking i would be on the united states -- in the united states congress. i found myself in a few different spots where simply raising my hand helped and throwing my hat in the record i had no paid staff and i refused to go into debt. i was outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars. i refuse to buy any people any free meals. we have too many in washington, d.c. i was running into 12-year incumbent. i said if you want different solutions, you have to come up with different people. if you want the status quo, do that. i thought he was wrong about a different -- i host of different issues including immigration. i was operated on policy.

it had been big dollars equals big victory. we argued that policy and principle matters. combine that with old-fashioned hard work and you can achieve anything. we were very blessed and fortunate. along the way, those principles were based on the constitution. please, go back and read the constitution. his amazing how it is a small stock to an end it is inspired, but just read it. it is there. when i campaigned, i argued there were four conservative principles that our future was based on -- fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense. until we return to those court's conservative principles, we would continue to suffer as a

nation. we would not achieve an even greater degree of greatness for our country that we could achieve. in the constitution, it talks about a uniform rule of naturalization. how does this fit into those principles? accountability is critical. it is absolutely critical not only for our office holders and elected officials but for individuals. there is a wide range of things that fall under this umbrella of accountability. there is something we don't seem to talk about in this country as it relates to restitution -- as it relates to immigration which is restitution. restitution is an important principle in a civil society. you still a candy bar, you give it back. you break a window, you fix it. you trespass, you leap. ve.

these are things you learn in first and second grade. it took me longer, third grade. these are things we learn in life. if you do something wrong, you make it right. let's talk specifically about immigration. everybody is up in arms with arizona and everything. at the end of the day, it comes down to a basic principle -- we are going to enforce the law and we should never, ever have to apologize to the idea that we are a nation of laws and we enforce laws and we insist that people abide by the law. we should not reward illegal behavior. in my own campaign, you try to summarize things down. you can't get everything and a bumper sticker. there are seven points that i made in my campaign and it was very fascinating that running against another republican, i

won the people that were on both sides of the issue. it was absolutely fascinating. i argued that there were seven key things -- it starts by fixing legal immigration. does that mean that we open up the border and let everybody in? no, absolutely not. statistically, you need to understand that the united states issues more green cards, allows more people in our country legally banned all the other countries combined on an annual basis. if you take every other country combined at look at what they do in terms of immigration and allowing people to immigrate to their country and take all of those, the united states still does more than 1 million people coming to these -- this country. we have programs out there like the lottery which is ridiculous. we have over 50,000 people per

year tt will be granted immigration status based on a lottery. that is probably not the best way to determine who will become the next united states citizen. we should based it on family made an economic maids but to throw in a lottery and take people into the country that come from terrorist states is abdamentally wrong. fixing legally immigration is very complicated. we can go into that in greater detail. i fundamentally and totally reject amnesty. it just cannot and should not happen. we absolutely need to reject amnesty. we need to lock down the border. it seems so simple when you say

it out loud. should we locked in our border? yes. should we enforce the vises? yes. many of the people who come here on may the said never leave. -- on eight of the sub never leave. -- on a visa never laid. we have 29 counties in the state of utah. sometimes people leave or get transferred but we typically have less than 25ice officers to deal with the immigration. there are laws on the books and that is what the errors of law is all about is a mirror of the federal law. we have the 287g program would

allow a local city or county to enforce the immigration law. the state of arizona is saying that we will make this happen statewide. that seems like common sense. we need to remove the rewards and incentives for people to be here illegally. again, we don't want to reward illegal behavior. get the businesses to stop operating illegally. verify, verify, verify. i am opposed to the real id act. i am totally opposed to that. i do not want to local business community to be the local immigration officer. we should very simply and easily be able to verify social security numbers in this country. i look to the banking industry and everyday we transfer billions and billions of dollars safely and securely. does that mean we should give up

our dna? should we do fingerprinting? no, if you are a lawful united states citizen, i don't thing you should have to do that. i tell them to mother's maiden name and my dog's name and what is my favorite color. when i use my american express card at the gas station, it asks me for my zip code. these are easy things you can control and change but without giving up our own freedoms and liberties. i do not trust the federal government. i just don't trust them and i don't think we should be giving them our vital personal information. that is not what this country is all about. finally, i would insist on assimilation. i believe that english should be the official language of the united states. by that most americans agree with that. it is a complicated question,

but to make it a simple based on very basic principles of accountability. it is something our federal government is absolutely failing to do. congress has pointed this down the road and is being held hostage by this comprehensive immigration reform instead of dealing with things we know we can agree upon now. border enforcement should be at the top of that list. there are too many interests that want to see amnesty. if you look at the big picture, people want to change the equation as to who gets to vote in this country. there are many interests that want to see felons vote, illegal aliens, and i want to open it up to puerto rico and other types of places that truly change the demographic and two votes in this country. that would have severe impact on who we are as a nation.

i don't want to ramble on but what i would like to do is answer some questions and thank you for having me here. i appreciate it. >> we do have [applause] ] questions. [applause] you said you are against amnesty. i get tired of allies of people who -- i get tired of the allies of people who are against tennessee but for citizenship. >> citizenship is not for sale that is far too easy. becoming a citizen of the united states of america truly means something. i don't think you do it by paying a fine. everyone will need to go home and go back to their country of origin, get in line in a uniform way and with the right way. -- and do it the right way.

do you agree or the person who broke block? -- do you reward the person who broke the law? if you look at the state department report issued every other week, you will find there are some people who have been waiting for 20 years to go through the process. in my mind, i believe to is the moral higher ground to prioritize those people than somebody who's not across the border or came here on a visa and will not leave. even though they agreed to leave, they just don't. i think there is a consistent effort to try to redefine or confuse the issue as to what is amnesty. it is restitution. >> in the back in the paint. -- in the pink3

this is the hottest issue at the present time. >> when i go to the polling place, there are signs in every language and you can get a ballot in spanish. they were out of english stickers so my boyfriend got a spanish one. do you see that being resolved anytime soon? >> what state are you from? >> i live in southern california. we deal with that every day per [laughter] the food is good by but -- >> i belve that english should be the official language of the united states of america. i, as a taxpayer, do not want to pay for all these materials to be translated and printed. i cannot imagine what it costs. if we're spelling million -- spending millions of dollars,

can you imagine what we're spending for translation? i think there are enough other services out there but i don't think the taxpayers to pay for them. >> who has the microphone? get the microphone to somebody with their hands up. >> on the topic of english as a national language -- what is your response to those on the left who say that doing so would make our culture close minded and less receptive to foreign cultures? >> i think we can celebrate a person's heritage and background matter where it is in the world. i think you can do that within your own family. who should pay for that? i don't that we should have to pay for that. there is a strength in the united states of america by having a common thread of communication in the english language. can we celebrate the heritage whether you are from iceland or

mexico or japan? absolutely, that is the richness of the united states of america. at the same time, english as the officials i good to go a long way and save us a lot of money. >> what are your feelings on putting limits on legal immigration in america as far as numbers are concerned? >> again, you have to look at the net number. that will have a huge impact. one of the biggest problems or challenges i see right now that needs help and adjustment is a visa reform. we have 40% of the people coming here on of these is don't leave. -- visas don't happen.

when 9/11 happened, the fbi was trying to find 1000 people that they wanted to immediately talk to who were here all visas. many of them could not be found because they went to their address and they could not be found. i went to australia for one year and it is so strict. it is crystal clear -- you better report what your doing and where you are. it seemed reasonable. i was a guest at a visitor in their country. i had no intention of staying there long term. i don't see any reason why we can't do it. it works well for australia. in terms of the overall numbers, we have to enforce what we have now. if you get rid of the rewards and incentives and start doing some of those things and to implement and verify, there will be a self-deportation element that comes in there. we are taking in over 1 million people right now and i would

have a hard time making some of those adjustments to those numbers. can we have a guest worker program? yes, if we are enforcing. ok, but have been called, 50 minutes on the clock. let me take one question. >> you talk about the president issuing an amnesty by executive order. is that legal? >> i cannot imagine that is legal. i hope and pray it is not legal but i don't think the president has the unilateral decision making process to be able to say that millions of people can become legal. that is why we need to be diligent. i have to go. thank you very much a [applause] . thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

tions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> our coverage continues on c- span 2 at 9:00 in the agenda and includes conservative activism on campus and remarks from had gis hannah giles who did undercover reporting on the activist group acorn. >> senators christopher dodd and richard shelby's debate on the immigratiosenate finance bill on thursday. we will talk about worker safety and the administration's new plan to combat hiv aids. live at 10:30 eastern, a brookings institution discussion by u.s.-israel security and cooperation. the senate yesterday passed the financial regulations overhaul bill, 60-39. the bill's supporters said but

restricting certain practices and expanding consumer protection it will prevent another economic meltdown. part of the debate included comments from banking committee leaders. this is a half an hour. dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. shelby: madam president, i rise today to offer some remarks on the dodd-frank regulation conference report which is now before the senate. madam president, nearly two years ago, the financial crisis exposed massive deficiencies in the structure and the culture of our financial regulatory system. years of technological advances, product development, and the advent of global capital markets rendered the system ill-suited to achieve its mission in the modern economy. madam president, decades of insulation from accountability distracted regulators from focusing on that mission. instead of acting to preserve safe and sound markets, the

regulators primarily became focused on expanding the scope of their bureaucratic reach. and after the crisis which cost trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, it was clear that significant reform was necessary. but despite broad agreement on the need for reform, the majority decided it would rather move forward with a partisan bill. the result is a 2,300-page legislative monster i believe before us that expands the scope and the power of ineffective bureaucracies. it creates vast new bureaucracies with little accountability and seriously i believe undermines the competitiveness of the american economy. unfortunately, the bill does very little to make our financial system safer. therefore, i will oppose the dodd-frank bill and urge my colleagues to do the same.

madam president, this was not a preordained outcome. it is the direct result of the decisions made by the obama administration. had they sincerely wanted to produce a bipartisan bill, i have no doubt that we could have crafted a strong bill that would have garnered 80 or more votes in the senate. if the american people haven't noticed by now, that is how -- not how things work under the democratic rule. unfortunately, madam president, the partisan manner in which this bill was constructed is not its greatest shortcoming. one would have assumed that the scope of the crisis, trillions of dollars lost and millions of jobs eliminated would have compelled the banking committee to spend the time necessary to thoroughly examine the crisis and develop the best possible legislation in response.

unfortunately, madam president, such an assumption would be entirely unfounded here. the banking committee never produced a single report on or conducted an investigation into any aspect of the financial crisis. in contrast, during the great depression, the banking committee set up an entire subcommittee to examine what regulatory reforms were needed. the pecorra commission, as it became to be known, interviewed under oath the big actors on wall street and produced a multivolume report. unfortunately, this time around, the democratic-run committee gave wall street executives a pass, i believe. there were no investigations, no depositions, and no subpoenas. in fact, madam president, chairman dodd, my friend and colleague, never called on the likes of robert rube rubin, lld

blankenfein, or mozillo to testify before the bank committee. not a single individual from a.i.g.'s financial products division was questioned by the committee or its staff. also congress did establish the financial crisis inquiry commission, we did here, to do the work the majority party i believe refused to do, the commission's work will not be completed, madam president, until the end of this year. most amazingly, the banking committee did not hold even a single hearing on the final bill before its markup. the committee never took the time to receive public testimony or survey experts about the likely outcomes that the legislation would produce. we know that the majority heard from wall street lobbyists, government regulators, and liberal activists but they clearly decided what they did not want the american people to

have a chance to understand and comment on their bill, the bill before us today, before it was enacted. the question is why. the majority knows that this bill, i believe, is a job killer and will saddle americans with billions of dollars of hidden taxes and fees. allowing to public to weigh in on this bill would have spelled the end of the democratic version of reform that's before us today. madam president, i believe we owed more to those who lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings. this truly i believe it was a missed opportunity. the difference, madam president, between what we needed to do, what we could have done and what the majority has chosen to do is considerable and i will speak on this. congress could have focused this legislation on financial stability. it could have utilized the findings of the financial crisis inquiry commission.

instead, the democratic majority chose to adopt legislative language penned by federal regulators in search of expanded surf. they chose to legislate for the political favor of community organizer groups and liberal activists seeking expansive new bureaucracies that they could leverage for their own political advantage. the result here is an activist bill that has little to do, madam president, with the recent or any crisis and a lot to do with expanding the government to satisfy special interestsment congress could have written a bill, madam president, to address the problem of too-big-to-fail once and for all. in fact, the shelby-dodd amendment began to address this problem right here on the floor. unfortunately, the democrats once again overreached i believe at the 11th hour and undermined the seriousness of our efforts by emphasizing social activism over financial

stability. democrats insisted that the overall financial stability mission of the financial stability oversight council i believe was less important than the political needs of certain preferred constituencies. this dangerous mixing of social activism and financial stability follows the exact same model, madam president, that led us to the crisis in the first place; that is, private enterprise co-opted through political mandates to achieve social goals. fannie and freddie proved that this definition can be highly destructive. oochecongress could have writte, madam president, legislation to address key issues that played a role in the recent crisis. on government-sponsored enterprises, fannie and fredy, the bill is silent aside from a mere study. on the tri-party repo market, the bill is silent. on runs in money markets, the bill is silent.

on the reliance of market participants on short-term commercial paper funding, the bill is silent. madam president, on maturity transformations that allowed the shadow banking system to effectively create money out of aaa-rated securities, thereby make the system much more vulnerable, the bill is silent. on the financial system's overall vulnerability to liquidity crisis -- crises, the bill, again, is silent. madam president, we know with certainty that all of these factors, none of which are addressed in the bill, were integral to the recent financial crisis. and while we do not want to write legislation that only deals with the last crisis, we do want to enact a law that addresses what we know are systemic problems. this bill fails to do so. congress could have written a bill to streamline regulation and eliminate the gaps that firms exploit in the race to the

regulatory body. this bill does the opposite by making our financial regulatory system even more complex. we will still have the fed, the fdic, the s.e.c., the cftc, the o.c.c. and the remainder of the regulatory alphabet soup. in fact, most of the existing regulators that so recently failed us have been given expanded power and scope. this bill also will add new letters to the already confused soup, such as cfbp and o.f.r. in addition to increased regulatory complexity, there will be new special activist offices with each regulator for almost every imaginable special interest. madam president, congress could have set up reasonable new research capabilities in its new stability oversight council to complement financial research performed by the financial

reserve and others. instead, the democrats decided to establish the office of financial research with an unconstrained director and a focus on broad information collecting and processing. i believe that this office will only -- not only fail to detect systemic threats and the asset price bubbles in the future, it will threaten civil liberties and the privacy of americans, waste billions of dollars of taxpayer resources, and lull markets into the false belief that the new government power will protect the financial system from risky trades. congress could, madam president, could have been transparent in identifying the bill's fiscal effects and costs. instead, the majority wrote a bill that hijacks taxpayer resources but hides that fact from public view. and just as the administration refuses to acknowledge trillions of dollars of contingent taxpayer liabilities residing

with fannie and freddie, this bill provides americans with a transparent view of the cost of the new multibillion-dollar consumer protection bureaucracy. according to the report on the bill offered by the majority, the consumer bureaucracy's budget is, and i quote -- "paid for by the federal reserve system." madam president, make no mistake, paid for by the he fed means paid for ultimately by the taxpayers. taxpayers will be on the hook for billions of dollars of unchecked, unencumbered and unappropriated spending financed by the inflationary money printing authority of the federal reserve which will be hidden from the american people in the arcane federal budget. congress could, madam president, have also used this legislative opportunity to begin the process of reforming the failed mortgage giants fannie and freddie whose

ever-growing bailouts have no upper limit. when it became clear this system was not the intention of the democrats, republicans sought to address the current and worsening conditions of the g.s.e.'s. we established -- we suggested establishing taxpayer protections such as portfolio caps on the mortgage giants. we recommended making the costs of fannie and freddie bailouts transparent to the public, that is to the taxpayer. we offered initial steps toward the never -- inevitable unwinding of these institutions. yet, madam president, at every turn the democratic majority blocked efforts for at least establishing reform here. the democrats prefer approaching this bill in reforming the mortgage giants is a stay. let me repeat that notion. in order to address a bailout that has already cost american taxpayers roughly $150 million to date with unlimited future

taxpayer exposure, the democrats proposed a study. it does not take a study to determine, madam president, th that $150 billion in unlimited loss exposure needs to be addressed immediately, now. congress could have focused, madam president, on securities market practices that were known to have contributed to systemic risk in our financial system. again, democrats overreached, i believe, once again. for example, the bill gives the securities and exchange commission, which has failed to carry out its existing mandates, a new systemic risk mandate to oversee advisors to hedge funds and private equity funds. yet, no one contends that private funds were a cause of the recent crisis or that the demise of any private fund during the crisis resulted in a systemwide shock. congress could have acted, madam president, to curtail wall street's speculative excesses

and enhance main street access to credit, but instead here in this bill large financial firms on wall street seem to have benefited. judging by the behavior of their stock prices while the legislation almost surely will increase uncertainties and costs for main street and america's job creators. madam president, the actual provisions in the bill will benefit big wall street institutions because they substantially increase the amount and costs of financial regulation. only large financial institutions will have the resources to navigate all of the new laws and regulations that this legislation will generate. as a result, this bill, i believe, disproportionately will hurt small and medium-sized banks which had nothing to do with the crisis. and madam president, while the largest financial institutions get special regulation under this bill, the unintended result will be lower funding costs for these firms. that will benefit the big banks

and hurt the small banks. therefore, this bill will result in higher fees, less choice, and fewer opportunities to responsibly obtain credit for blameless consumers. moreover, this bill raises taxes, which as we all know ultimately are borne by consumers. make no mistake, when wall street writes a check to pay higher taxes, the ones that end up paying those taxes are american consumers and workers. madam president, congress could have written legislation for consumer protection that respects both american consumers and the need for safety and soundness in our financial system. instead, the dodd-frank bill was basically constructed by architects in the treasury department who have a certain condescension, i believe, for american consumers and their choices. the ultimate goal is to substitute the judgment of a benefit he have leapt bureaucrat for that of the american consumer, thereby controlling

consumer behavior without regard for the safety and soundness of our banking system. the american people, i believe, madam president, are being told not to worry, however, because it's all being done for their own good. and while a consumer protection agency might sound like a good idea, the way it's constructed in this bill will slow economic growth and kill jobs, i believe, by imposing massive new regulatory burdens on businesses large and small. it will stifle innovation in consumer financial products and it will reduce small business activity. it will lead to reduced consumer credit and higher costs for available credit. less credit at a higher price will dampen the very small business engine of job creation that our economy desperately needs right now. that is a price i'm not willing to pay. congress could, madam president,

could have implemented reforms to improve derivatives market activities. instead, the bill's derivative title seems to have been inspired by the desire to be punitive or to provide short-term political support during an election or both. instead of imposing a rational and effective regulatory framework on the o.t.c. derivatives market, the bill runs roughshod over the main street businesses that use derivatives to protect themselves every day. madam president, the dodd-frank bill will increase companies' costs and limit their access to risk-mitigating derivatives without making our financial system safer in the process. as a result, there will be fewer opportunities for businesses to grow, fewer jobs for the unemployed and higher prices for consumers. congress could, madam president, have written a bill to put an end to overreliance on credit rating agencies and underreliance on their own due diligence. instead, the dodd-frank bill

sets up new regulations and liability provisions to give the impression that ratings are accurate. it then takes a contradictory direction and instructs regulators to replace references to ratings with other standards of creditworthiness. to make matters even more confusing, the bill also provides for the establishment of a government-sponsored body that will select a credit rating agency to perform an initial rating of security issue. i anticipate that the net effect of these conflicting provisions will be a redution in competition among credit rating agencies and potential competitors either will be deterred by all of the new regulatory requirements or be destroyed by the liability provisions set up in the bill. the lack of competition led to poor quality ratings in the runup to the crisis. this bill perpetuates and in fact worsens that problem. madam president, the congress could have eased regulatory burdens on small and bead yum-sized businesses that are not integral to the recent crisis or any crisis.

instead, main street corporations will be subject to a panoply of new corporate governance and executive compensation requirements. these new requirements will be costly and potentially harmful to shareholders because they empower special interests and encourage short-term thinking by managers. these features were included solely for the purpose of apiecing unions and other special interest lobbyists, and there is no demonstrated link between these changes and the enhanced stability of our financial system, our improved investor protection. we're getting toward the end here. congress could have held hearings or analyzed a number of changes that this bill makes to the securities laws. instead, dramatic changes in the laws were written with little discussion and no analysis. madam president, throughout this process, there has been a lot of talk about the influence of wall street on this bill. to be sure, in the early stages of negotiations, wall street and the big banks were very engaged.

i think the american people know, however, that in the end, the real influence peddlers on this bill were not wall street lobbyists but rather liberal activists and washington bureaucrats. wall street and the big banks just happen to be the incidental beneficiaries of their success. when chairman dodd and i began this process, we agreed that the bureaucratic status quo was unacceptable and that radical changes were necessary, and with that in mind, we agreed to consolidate all the financial regulators and constrain the fed to its monetary policy role. this was not a result the big banks wanted. the last thing a large regulating financial institution wants is a new regulator. after all, they spent years and millions of dollars developing a relationship with their current regulators. a major regulatory organization would have seriously upset the status quo and cost them a great deal of money. neither chairman dodd nor i were persuaded, however, that the necessary change was going to

come. unfortunately, that provision of reform again denies the bureaucrats and the liberal left begin to exercise their influence over the bill. when it became apparent that i was not willing to embrace the left's expansive consumer bureaucracy, it also became apparent that actual regulatory reform was not what the majority was seeking. all other serious reform was scuttled by the democrats in defense of the new consumer bureaucracy. that was the point at which chairman dodd and i began to seek a new negotiation -- negotiating partner, ultimately to no avail. as the fed and other regulators began to regain their foothold with the democrats and the administration left consolidated, it supported around an expansive new bureaucracy. all the democrats will succeed in doing with the help of republicans is to give the failed bureaucracies more power, more money and a pat on the back with the hope that they will do

a better job next time. this is not real reform, madam president. that is just more of the same. we had an opportunity to lead the world by creating a modern, efficient and competitive regulatory structure that will serve our economy for years to come. instead, i believe we squandered that opportunity by barely expanding an obsolete, inefficient and uncompetitive system. to make it even worse, they have added to the bureaucratic morass several more unrestrained and unaccountable agencies. it became apparent early on to me that the administration, the democrat majority are not really interested in regulatory reform. all they were really trying to do is exploit the crisis in order to expand government further and award special interests. the dodd-frank bill will not enhance systemic stability. it will not prevent future bailouts of politically favored institutions and groups by the government. the bill serves to expand the

beryl bureaucracy and government-controlled private sector. it will impose large costs on the taxpayers and businesses. for these reasons, i urge my colleagues to reject this bill. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. mr. dodd: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. dodd: well, madam president, let me thank my colleague from alabama once again. i say this with respect, but i almost feel like i'm listening to the same speech i heard back in november when i offered the original proposal of this bill. i'm wondering whether or not we have been in the same chamber, in the same city over the last several years. i'm not going to go in the time between now and 11:00 a.m. when we'll vote on the cloture motion. i won't go through the long list here, page after page after page of amendments that were adopted as part of this bill offered by my good friends on the minority side. 80 hearings held over two years.

countless efforts to reach out and bring people in. you can make a lot of accusations i suppose about the bill, but this was a very inclusive process. half the amendments that were adopted on the floor of this chamber during the consideration of the four weeks were ones offered by the minority were accepted and bipartisan amendments. there was never an alternative offered. there was never a substitute offered. it was really a question of whether people wanted to amend this legislation we had before us. it is not a perfect bill. i will be the first to admit that. we don't know ultimately how well the ideas we have incorporated here will achieve the results we all desire. it will take the next economic crisis, as certainly it will come, to determine whether or not the provisions of this bill will actually provide this generation or the next generation of regulators with the tools necessary to minimize the effects of that crisis when it happens, but we believe we have done the best we could under the circumstances to see to it we never have another bailout of a major financial institution at taxpayer expense. in fact, it was the shelby-dodd

amendment adopted in this chamber as the second amendment to be considered that actually completed the process of seeing to it that there would be either bankruptcy or resolution of financial institutions that got themselves into so much trouble they put the entire system at risk. we have set up an oversight council to make sure we could observe what was occurring, not only here at home but around the globe, matters such as greece or spain that could put our economy at risk. so it isn't just one set of eyes, but having those responsible for seeing to it that our economy remains safe and sound, have the opportunity to provide the early warning that never occurred. you didn't need a commission to find out what was going on. you had mortgages that were being sold in this country to people that couldn't afford them, marketing in a way that would guarantee failure, securitizing them so you could be paid and then skipping town in a sense. i don't need to have hours of hearings to find out what was the cause of it. it's how to put a system in place to minimize the kind of

future risks our nation would face t. wasn't just to deal with those who created the problem but rather to look ahead, not in a punitive way but to try and set up an architecture and structure that would allow to us get to that point where we could be confident that we were addressing these issues. thirdly, of course, we tried to deal with the exotic instruments that had caused so much of the difficulty. the derivatives market was a $90 billion market and it mushroomed in less than a decade to $600 trillion, putting our nation at risk because of a lack of transrency and accountability to determine what was occurring in those markets. we considered it a radical idea that we might want to have transparency and accountability i find rather remarkable considering what our country has been through. and also we provided a consumer protection bureau. what a radical idea that s. the idea that people who -- what a radical idea that is. the idea that people who buy mortgages, have a student loan, a credit card, a car loan, they might have some place in this

city that watches out for them, for their jobs, their homes, their retirement accounts were lost. and so while this bureau is in place in this bill, the idea was at least to see to it that people when they have the problems they've been through or are going through, someone is watching out for them. we have a consumer product safety commission, when you buy a faulty product, what happens when someone abuses or takes advantage, as happened so many cases in financial areas that people have a chance to have a redress of their grievance or to at least in the outset have an opportunity to address that before it becomes a broader problem. mr. president, again, we've debated this -- madam president, again, we've debated this and we spent four weeks on the floor of this chamber. amendments were offered. never once -- i get on one occasion did we have a super

majority vote. there was only one tabling motion that i know of. i did everything i could to make it as inclusive a process as possible. and the fact that i understand people don't like the bill. it saddens me in a way that once again it's become sort of a mindless partisan argument rather than talking about what we need to be doing. this is not the end of all of it, obviously. oversight will be required, consultation in the coming weeks and months and years to make this work well. but, madam president, i can't imagine another process that has been as inclusive. my colleagues will recall going on ten months, almost a year ago that i invited both democrats and republicans on the banking committee to assume responsibility for major sections of this bill which they did do, by the way, and made a significant contribution to the product. and so while i expect those who want to vote against the bill, that's their right to do so. find some arguments based on the

merits rather than arguing about whether or not this was a process that was inclusive or allowed people the opportunity to be heard. now, again, we have the right to be heard. you don't have a right to necessarily have your ideas become the law of the land. that's what a body like this is for. and so this is a major undertaking, one that is historic in its proportions, that is an attempt to set in place the structure that would allow us to minimize the problems in the future. i can't legislate integrity, i can't legislate wisdom. i can't legislate passion or competency. what we can do is create the tools and the architecture that allow good people to do a good job on behalf of the american public. and theatsd what a bill like this -- and that's what a bill like this is designed to do. i regret i cannot give you your job back, put retirement moments back in your account. what i can do is see to it that

we never, ever again have to go through what this nation has been through. and that's what this effort has been about over the last several years, to try and create that structure, that architecture it will be incumbent now on the present administration and those that follow to nominate good people to head up these operations, to attract good public servants who will fill the jobs in these various regulatory bodies to see to it that they do the job we all want them to do. again, i can't legislate that. i can merely create the opportunity for that kind of protection to occur, to modernize our financial system, to lead the world, if we can, in harmonizing rules so we don't have the kind of sovereign shopping that has gone on with regulatory bodies, where major financial institutions shop around the world as to the nation of least resistance or the regulator of least resistance to see to it we have the unanimity and at least the harmonization of rules that will allow us to have a more orderly

system in our globe, because as we've all painfully learned, matters that can occur thousands of miles away can affect the economy in our own country. so for all of those reasons, madam president, i thank my colleagues for their efforts over the last two years. i thank the leadership for providing the opportunity and time for to us do this in this chamber. i thank my colleague in the house, barney frank, and his colleagues for the work they engaged in in order to produce a bill there. the two weeks we spent, some 70 hours of debating the conference report, again, where more amendments were adopted, again, offered by my colleagues, republicans and democrats, to make this as good a bill as we could in all of this. so with that, madam president, again, i'll reserve some comments for later but as we approach this vote in the next few minutes, i urge my colleagues to invoke cloture, to allow us to then have an up-or-down vote on this bill, to do what we can to restore some trust and confidence and optimism in the american people that in the midst of the worst

economic crisis of the lifetime of most americans, this institution, the united states s senate, rose to the occasion and crafted a bill and a proposal to address the financial service structure of our nation to give us once again that hope that we can see wealth created, jobs produced and an economy that will offer opportunities for the next generation of americans. i urge my colleagues to support that cloture motion, and i urge them to support the bill when the vote occurs later "washington journal [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> live atomic clock 30 eastern, a brookings institution discussion on u.s.-israel cooperation. we will look at jobs in the economy with a representative from george mason university. a reporter will focus