mr. kaufman: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. kaufman: madam president, i ask consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: madam president, i ask consent to speak as if in morning business for up to five minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: madam president, i rise today to speak once more about our nation's great federal employees. henry clay once said that government is a trust and the offices of the government are the trustees. and both the trust and the trustees were created for the benefit of the people. every dollar of the taxpayers' money that we in congress spend on their behalf must be accounted for and every program rigorously audited to prevent waste and fraud. that job belongs to the tireless and persistent employees of the government accountability office. since its founding in 1921, the g.a.o. has been called the taxpayers' best friend. it is the people's watchdog. the home of over 3,000 federal employees whose main task is to save th

mr. kaufman: the senator from ohio. mr.rown: i thank you for bringing out -- there is such broad as we're seeing support by economists as conservative as alan greenspan, as progressive as bob reich and others that say that too big to fail means simply too big. you said something -- so our amendment which will only affect the six largest banks, only affect their size. it will affect smaller banks and helping them be more competitive as you suggested, but you had said something on the floor yesterday, senator kaufman, that in effect the size of these banks gives them a subsidy, gives them 75 -- roughly three quarters of a percent, 75 basis points advantage in the capital markets. so this -- this amendment we have which is gaining increasing support -- we have gotten now, i believe, ten or 11 cosponsors to it. we're working with people on both sides of the aisle on this amendment. saying too big to fail is too big. talk to us for a moment of how these banks get their subsidies. in a sense, we're giving welfare to the wall stre

mr. kaufman: thank you. the mresiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr.senate is this major piece of legislation, the financial stability act. and i would say that all the many amendments which will be offered, this is clearly a game changer. and i am supportive of this amendment, even though i know that some of my frendles in the banking -- some of my friends in the banking industry won't be happy with that. what they're talking is about dealing with the concentration of wealth and the concentration of economic power to a level which can literally bring the economy down. that's what we went through leading into this recession. that's what led to the massive taxpayer bailout. and that's what the brown-kaufman amendment addresses four sp foursquare. soy congratulate them. i'd like to spheek a separate issue. 99 years ago a boat pulled into the harbor in baltimore, maryland. it had come over, passenger ship, from germany. and down the gang plank walked three individuals: my grandmother, my uncle, my aunt and my mother, two years old, in the arms of my grand

mr. kaufman kaufman: mr. presidi ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. kaufman: thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: urn the previous order, the senate will stand in recess until 2:00 p.m. >> supreme court nominee elena kagan is meeting with senators in advance of her confirmation hearing. learn more about the process and nation's highest court in c-span's latest book, the supreme court, pages of candid conversation with all the justices active and retired >> next, house speaker nancy pelosi holds her weekly legislative briefing. topics include u.s. job creation and the 2011 budget. from capitol hill, this is 15 minutes. >> our mantra here, jobs, jobs, jobs, the four-letter word we k

mr. kaufman. >> thank you mr. chairman.first of all secretary flournoy and general paxton thank you for your service to our country. general paxton, would you agree or argue that the center of gravity for the taliban is this ability to control the civilian population overtly or covertly through a shadow government and the exact revenues from them? >> i would agree with that sir. >> then in looking at the operation we are going to do next in kandahar, which is the basis of the taliban in terms of that is where they originated from, if we were able to deny them that, the ability to exercise governance over the taliban people as a shadow government or covertly, what does that do in terms of-- i mean from an overall perspective in terms of the war in afghanistan, in bringing it to a close? >> the first step obviously, it denies them the physical freedom of movement. it denies them the emotional, intellectual, the governance freedom of movement so if they have a populace that they can't reach or a populace who does not believe t

mr. kaufman: thank you. the senator from virginia, right from the beginning you have said -- and because of your great knowledge on wall street and finance, it came as a great source of encouragement to me. i have been on this floor and spoken repeatedly, and this is not a surprise. now, whether this actually turned out to be the worst case of what we're talking about, we don't know. but what happened over the years, we went from a market that was basically a floor-based market to a market that was digitalization and decimalization, where we began to have tenths using decimals as opposed to eighths. and what happened is that markets, people -- computer firms. if you want to read a great story, a book by steven jackson relays out. what happened is people came into the market and they began to develop these high-speed computers. so human beings were no longer doing the trading, the computers were. they developed these algorithms. the whole thing is run automatically. it grew and grew. now something like -- the

mr. kaufman: mr. president, i ask for subsequent to speak -- i ask for consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: this week once again we celebrate as we do every year public service recognition week. public service recognition week provides us all a chance to reflect upon the contribution by those who serve in government. all throughout the week the partnership for public service, a leading nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to honor those who work in government, will be hosting formative programs across washington, d.c. one of the most exciting moments during that week is the announcement of this year's finalist for the distinguished service to america medal. this year once again the crop of finalists is outstanding. the winners will be announced at the partnership's annual service to america gala in september. during last year's public service recognition week, i delivered the first in a series of weekly speeches from this desk hono

mr. kaufman. >> thank you mr. chairman.first of all secretary flournoy and general paxton thank you for your service to our country. general paxton, would you agree or argue that the center of gravity for the taliban is this ability to control the civilian population overtly or covertly through a shadow government and the exact revenues from them? >> i would agree with that sir. >> then in looking at the operation we are going to do next in kandahar, which is the basis of the taliban in terms of that is where they originated from, if we were able to deny them that, the ability to exercise governance over the taliban people as a shadow government or covertly, what does that do in terms of-- i mean from an overall perspective in terms of the war in afghanistan, in bringing it to a close? >> the first step obviously, it denies them the physical freedom of movement. it denies them the emotional, intellectual, the governance freedom of movement so if they have a populace that they can't reach or a populace who does not believe t

mr. kaufman: thank you. madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from dell debt. mr. aufman: i'd ask to speak has in if morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: i really -- the senator from virginia, as usual is modest. it is -- he is -- he has explained a lot to me about the intricacies of this area which is of great concern and his knowledge on this is -- is great and he is i am finding it incredibly rewarding working with him on this issue. so i would like to speak about that a little bit today and really follow up on the remarks that the senator from virginia made. as he said last thursday for one of the few times since 24 stockbrokers first gathered under a buttonwood tree in 1792, we had a stock market that for 20 minutes stopped performing its essential function: discovering the prices of securities based on a balance between buyers and sellers. our equity markets collapsed in a matter of minutes. liquidity dropped off a deluge of sell orders overwhelmed the buyers and the rug was pulled out from underneath millions -- millions --

mr. kaufman: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. kaufman: mr. president, i rise to discuss wall street reform because we must get this bill right if we are to prevent another financial crisis like the last one which almost destroyed our country. the newspapers are filled with reasons why this is so important. in europe, because the sovereign debt crisis is threatening to become a full blown crisis, the governments of the e.u. are using taxpayer funds to bail out greece. in hearings before chairman levin's permanent subcommittee on investigations have rivetted the nation on fraud at the heart of the financial crisis. the widespread use of fraudulent stated income loans by washington mutual, the abject failures of the bank regulatory agencies, willful neglect of the credit rating agencies and the hopelessly conflicted actions of goldman sachs which put its own trading activities above any sense of duty to its customers. in particular, over the past few weeks much has been spoken and written about solving the problem of banks that are too big to fa

mr. kaufman. >> general paxton, think you for your leader to the country. general paxton, would you agree or argue that the center of gravity for the taliban is the ability to control the civilian population overtly or covert for the shella government the exact revenue from -- >> i would agree. >> looking at the operation next and kandahar which is the basis where they originated from, if we were able to deny them the ability to exercise government's or covertly, what does that do in terms of an overall perspective in terms of afghanistan and bringing it to a close? >> first step obviously it denies them just so you have the physical freedom of movement it denies them the emotional government's suite of a populace they can't reach or a populist who does not believe the message or a populist and willing to follow them then the fertile ground that they seek to be fair control or institute through terror or provide of attacks, murder and intimidation, on questioning the sharia law so that they've lost that opportunity there. so what that does to both us and th

mr. kaufman. our first witness is ms. barbara roper, the cio, an alliance of 500 pro consumer organizations still representing approximately 500 individual consumers. ms. roper has a expensive consumer conducting studies of abuses in the financial funding industry and is an adviser on financial reform. earned her bachelor's degree from princeton university and has frequent witnessed before congressional committees. we welcome you here, ms. roper. i look forward to your testimony. >> thank you. thank you very much. mr. chairman, members of the committee, i greatly appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on an issue that i have been working on since i first joined cfa in 1986, which is believed to hold brokers to a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their customers. our primary focus has been on protecting average retail investors. as last week's hearing in the permanent subcommittee on investigations made clear, institutional investors are also in need of protection from wall street's increasingly

mr. kaufman: as i said before, when people say we can't compete overseas, do we really want to go where the royal bank of scotland went? the royal bank of scotland was 1 1/2 times the size of the u.k. economy whether it went down. when it went down. do we really want to get into this mix in europe? is this the place we want to be? , with these banks, based on the problems they're going to have right now, as we went through earlier? is this the place we want to be? i think we go back to what senator dorgan was saying earlier and the then we go backd i'd like to end with just a couple comments, and one is that once again i quote alan greenspan. he said, too big to fail, too big. too big to fail, too big. and the idea that we should turn this over to the regulators and let the regulators set the rates, that's the alternative. the alternative is let the regulators do it. and we've got good regulators now. i think that's fine. but just remember several things. number one, the regulators did nothing. the regulators had the power to do the kind of things we're talking about, most of what we had

mr. president, i have offered this amendment on behalf of quite a number of senators, senator reed, senator kaufman, senator durbin, senator harkin, senator leahy, senator levin, senator menendez, senator whitehouse, senator freng frankenfranken,senator feingoldr merkley and myself. this amendment provides that the decisions of the supreme court of the united states limiting claims under the securities act for aiding and abetting will be overturned by this legislation. this amendment is very similar to an amendment which was offered in the 107th congress by senator shelby, the ranking member of the banking committee. for many years, the federal law provided a private right of action against aiders and abettors. as of 1994, every circuit in the federal courts of appeals had concluded civil liability in a private lawsuit under the securities act. in a radical departure in 1994, the supreme court held in central bank of denver that aiders and abettors are not liable in private suits. the court's 5-4 decision in stonebridge in 2008 complicated the matter even further where the supreme court held that i