Black History Month

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I think I now understand what Dr. King meant when he said that the truest measure of the person is not where the person stands in times of comfort and convenience, but rather, where do you stand in times of great challenge and controversy.

This is a time of challenge and controversy that will measure our truest measure as people of goodwill. I ask anyone to show me the empirical evidence connoting that we should reduce funds to get better service, to get better scrutiny, to get better cops on the beat with the SEC.

Every police department in this country has some problem or has had some problem. No one would say let's eliminate the police department because it has not performed up to a standard of 100 percent. The SEC is not perfect but what it does is this: It oversees 38,000 entities, 11,450 investment advisers, and these investment advisers are managing $33 trillion. Some things bear repeating. These investment advisers, 11,450 of them, are managing $33 trillion. Do we really want to take the cops off the beat? Would we ever make such an announcement as it relates to any police department in this country?

Let us stop for just a moment and take a deep breath and understand what is about to take place here. We are about to send a signal to those who would perform dastardly deeds that we are going to allow you to do this with impunity, not because we want you to do so, ostensibly, but because there will not be the deterrent in place that we know should exist to prevent them from doing these dastardly deeds.

So I'm going to ask all of my friends on both sides to stop, take a deep breath, and let us ask ourselves: In this time of challenging controversy, will we prevent the SEC from overseeing the 7,600 mutual funds as they properly should, from overseeing the 5,000 broker-dealers as they properly should, from overseeing more than 10,000 companies as they properly should, 35,000 entities as they properly should?

This is a time of challenge and controversy, and I am proud to say that I am going to stand for making sure that those who invest are properly protected. This is our time. This is a moment to stand up and be counted. And I hope that every investor out there will look to see who stood for making sure that investments are properly protected and that the integrity of the system is properly in place. I stand for doing the right thing, and the right thing is to make sure that this SEC has the right amount of capital in place to protect our investors and our investments.

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