Improved Financial And Commodity Markets Oversight And Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch). Chairman, you have done an outstanding job, along with the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz), in outlining what this bill does.

Before I begin, because this has been such a nonpartisan effort in so many respects and a commitment, first and foremost, on the part of the Oversight Committee to take a bill, whose genesis evolved out of the last session, and make it a better bill and perfect it, to those ends, along with Mr. Lynch and Mr. Chaffetz, I would especially like to thank Chairman ED TOWNS. Mr. Towns has done such a great job in marshaling this bill forward, along with DIANE WATSON.

I would further like to thank, on their staff, Mike McCarthy, Adam Bordes and Bert Hammond of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Austin Burns of the majority leader's staff; and BARNEY FRANK, MEL WATT and DENNIS MOORE for their ongoing efforts to reform the regulation of our markets and financial sectors and for their input into this legislation; my good friend TODD PLATTS, who also assisted in this; and FRANK LOBIONDO, who was a cosponsor of this bill almost 2 years ago. I especially want to single out for their efforts two reform-minded freshmen who have come to Congress, JOHN BOCCIERI of Ohio and GLENN NYE of Virginia, and especially to Amy O'Donnell of my staff and Jackie Sheltry.

We refer to this bill in the short form, just frankly, as providing an independent Inspector General for the financial services industries that are in such desperate need of this oversight, and I think the chairman outlined it well. The genesis of this bill actually took place from conducting a public forum back in my district and listening to former Republican mayor of South Windsor, Connecticut, John Mitchell, and our attorney general of the State of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal. When we were looking at speculation in the market and what was happening with the CFTC and oil commodities, when we realized that the more and closer we looked at who was regulating these agencies, it was somewhat a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse.

Many have asked when we went home over this break and since the financial collapse on Wall Street, people have been astounded in trying to answer the question of, how could it be that Bernie Madoff was scamming thousands of innocent Americans into giving up their life savings? Where were the regulators? Where were the agencies? Where were they when speculators were wreaking havoc on the oil markets?

I can think of no sector where honesty, independence and transparency are needed more right now than in our financial and commodity markets, yet the regulators of these markets have been allowed to work with no oversight of what they are doing and whether they are fulfilling their mission to protect the American consumer. That's because the Inspectors General, as the chairman outlined, who should be working on behalf of average Americans, were working for the heads of the agencies they should be overseeing. As I said earlier, this is a classic case of the fox watching the henhouse, and it's having a profound impact on the work of our regulatory agencies.

We have done a review, and this is something that we pointed out at the committee. The review found that offices of the Inspector General, that independent offices where they are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate, completed over 117 investigations in 2008 while their nonindependent counterparts completed just 12. That's 117 versus 12. The Inspector General of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released information, showing that despite the recent economic crisis and the turbulence in the oil market, his office completed just two investigations and updated one from October of last year through March. Simply stated, an independent watchdog ensures better performance from a government agency.

I commend the committee because what they've done is provide greater accountability and transparency. I also commend United States Senator Dodd, who will also be taking this bill up on the Senate side as well. Again, I thank everybody on the committee and especially ED TOWNS for his hard work and dedication to make sure this bill got to the floor.

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