Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2289, Commodity End-User Relief Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the underlying bill, H.R. 2289, the Commodity End-User Relief Act. This bipartisan bill is the result of a series of hearings in which the Committee on Agriculture heard from stakeholders that do business with the CFTC as well as every CFTC Commissioner.
As chairman of the committee last year, I began the process of CFTC reauthorization, which resulted in the House-passed bipartisan bill, and I laud our committee chairman, Mr. Conaway, for his efforts in tackling the same subject and coming to the full House with another bipartisan CFTC reauthorization that passed the committee by a voice vote.
A chief selling point of this bill is its commitment to good governance reforms at the CFTC to increase transparency and efficiency. First, the bill closely follows an executive order by President Obama to improve the cost-benefit analysis performed by the Commission prior to promulgating rules. In addition, the bill would improve this oversight of Commissioners over activities which are outside the normal rulemaking process that still impact many futures market participants. Many of these activities, such as policy statements, guidance, and interpretation rules released by CFTC, would also be subject to public comment under the provisions of the bill when they have the force of law. Furthermore, H.R. 2289 establishes an office of the chief economist at the CFTC to provide objective economic data and analysis.
The committee also heard from end users during this process and included several provisions to provide relief to those end users, such as a more workable definition of bona fide hedging and relief from burdensome recordkeeping rules for many businesses.
The CFTC has gone unauthorized since 2013, and it is time many CFTC activities were reformed by Congress. This rule will make possible the underlying bill that will improve the CFTC in many important ways. I urge all of my colleagues to support it.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source