Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, not everyone supports this legislation. Ranking Member Waters was mentioned. But she spoke eloquently today as to why she opposes H.R. 992. Mr. Frank is not here to speak for himself. So we cannot say that he, today, would support H.R. 992.

It may be that we have the AFL-CIO opposing H.R. 992, as well Public Citizen, and the Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition. It may be that we have them opposing it because we understand, as do many others, that this weekend marks the 84th anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929. It was that stock market crash that gave us Glass-Steagall in 1933.

Glass-Steagall provided the firewall between commercial banking and investment banking. It didn't let you use tax dollars in the sense that they are insured by FDIC to engage in investment banking.

Well, it seems ironic that it took us 66 years to repeal Glass-Steagall, 66 years to repeal that firewall that separated commercial banking from investment banking, and has taken us now little more than 3 years to repeal, by way of evisceration, section 716 of Dodd-Frank.

Section 716 provides a firewall. It is the firewall to protect investors--taxpayers, if you will--from those investors who engage in derivatives. This derivatives market that we are talking about is $600 trillion to approximately $1.2 quadrillion. No one really knows. Only God knows how big it is.

But what we are doing is exposing tax dollars to this derivatives market, and it is my hope that we will not pass this legislation because it will set us back.

Let's give section 716 an opportunity to function. Glass-Steagall functioned for 66 years. Let's not repeal section 716 in a little more than 3 years.

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