Commodity End-User Relief Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chair, my amendment is simple. It really seeks to harmonize the regulatory regime for both the security- and commodity-based swaps. I am so pleased to be joined on a bipartisan basis with Representatives Rick Crawford, Bill Huizenga, and Sean Patrick Maloney in offering this amendment.

As we all know, Mr. Chairman, the regulation of the swaps market is under the jurisdiction of both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As such, legislation that amends the swap regulation must be addressed in both the securities law and the Commodity Exchange Act.

Mr. Chairman, I have worked with Chairman Hensarling, Ranking Member Waters, and the Committee on Financial Services, and we have offered the same language to amend the securities law section of a bill. This amendment in committee, Mr. Chairman, was adopted by a voice vote.

This amendment makes the same minor change to the Commodity Exchange Act section so that the regulatory regime is the same for both security- and commodity-based swaps.

This section of H.R. 2289 mirrors legislation, H.R. 1847, sponsored by Representative Crawford and has enjoyed broad bipartisan support and passed both the Committee on Financial Services and Committee on Agriculture without controversy and with the support and blessing of the SEC.

So why the amendment? Foreign regulators and some industry participants reached out to the SEC seeking to tighten the language to narrow the requirement to share data to clarify that swap data repositories are only required to share data related to the swap trade.

The amendment will in no way weaken swap regulation or inhibit the aggregation of swap data; rather, the amendment will make a narrow modification to protect market participant information. This change is supported by both industry and the SEC.

This bill has global impact on swap participants and regulators, so I think it is important to get it right. I applaud the SEC for working with industry to refine the bill, and I want to thank the chairman and ranking members of both the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Agriculture for working with me on this amendment and to the sponsor and cosponsors of this legislation for also working with me for their support on this amendment.

I do have some concerns about the underlying bill. The cost-benefit analysis, I think, will hamper the regulatory ability of the CFTC, but I do urge the adoption of this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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