Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act Of 2009

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Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Mr. Chairman, I rise this evening, as one might expect, in my opposition to H.R. 4173 certainly as written, as the gentleman from Massachusetts says, this massive financial regulation bill.

Once again we have 1,200-plus pages, a so-called ``reform'' bill before the House of Representatives that would dramatically increase government involvement in our economy. If this Congress is serious about economic recovery, then we should be reducing burdensome regulations, not increasing them.

I have heard from many Kansans about their inability to access credit from their local community-based lending institutions. Small businesses and farmers rely upon these loans to make payroll, expand, and to make their ends meet. Local lending institutions would love nothing more than to make these loans, but the overly broad regulations and the inconsistency with which different examiners enforce those regulations, together with higher FDIC insurance premiums and increased reserve requirements, has greatly restricted family and small business access to capital. This House should be more focused on the credit crunch and helping institutions cut through the bureaucracy and lend money, not creating more layers of regulation.

Among the provisions I oppose within this legislation is the creation of a permanent TARP-like bailout authority. This authority will continue to shield large financial firms from their mistakes and pass those costs of their miscalculations on to the American taxpayer. The legislation takes an overly broad approach, disrupting markets that have performed well and placing more regulatory burdens into places where they are not needed.

One example of these changes that this legislation would make is the commodities futures market known as designated contract markets. These are not the over-the-counter derivatives markets you will hear most Members discuss during this debate. In the wake of last fall's financial collapse, these regulated contract markets performed relatively well under the current core principle regulatory regime. This regime allowed both regulators and exchanges the ability to adapt their regulatory approach to changing market conditions.

Rather than recognize the success, this legislation replaces those core principle regimes with an antiquated rules-based structure that has failed at the SEC. This legislation also redefines the definition of a bona fide hedging transaction in the contract markets so narrowly that it will be difficult for many commercial market participants to properly hedge their risk. These changes will hurt, not help, our economic recovery and introduce more, not less, volatility into the marketplace.

For these and many other reasons, I urge the House to reject this legislation.

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