Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m. on Monday, May 3; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate resume consideration of S. 3217, Wall Street reform.

Mr. President, there will be no rollcall votes during Monday's session of the Senate.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. President, we are beginning debate on the floor of the Senate of a matter that has obviously been the subject of great discussion and debate over the last couple years. My remarks will be very brief. I have talked a lot over the last week or so about the bill. I presume I will be spending a lot of time in the coming days. I do not need to spend a lot of time now. My colleague and friend from Alabama, Senator Shelby, wants to be heard and others want to be heard this afternoon. I will be here to engage them.

I begin by thanking and commending my colleague from Alabama. We have disagreements about this bill. He is a good friend and someone I work with closely, as we will on this bill as we move forward. We want to accommodate Members on all sides to be heard, to offer their amendments, to have a good debate. We would like to accommodate and accept amendments where we can. If we cannot, we will try to lay out why or offer alternative ideas as we move through this debate.

Obviously, it is very important we get this right. Senator Shelby has said that many times, and I agree with him. It is very important. Literally, language, punctuation marks can have implications. It is that delicate as we work through language. My intention is to get there.

Today we are going to have general debate on the bill; tomorrow possibly some additional debate. We will pick up our first amendments on Tuesday when we get back. I wish to address that point in a minute, if I may.

I wish to begin the debate with a message for those who have seen the acrimony in the Chamber over the past couple weeks and have concluded that the Senate is not up to getting the job done on legislation of this import and this size.

I will be the first to admit that sometimes we become discouraged and disappointed with each other. That is the nature, I suppose, of a legislative body when we have as many different and strongly held views. I, myself, was frustrated with how long it took to bring the bill up on the floor. Others are frustrated by what they see in the bill. All of this can be a rationale for why we express our frustration.

The thing that made it possible to get to this point is the same thing that will make it possible to get to the finish line on this important legislation; that is, the trust we have, that we are each committed to getting the job done.

As Senator Shelby and I both pointed out last evening, we have worked closely over the past 37 months that I have chaired the Banking Committee. I mentioned we brought 42 measures out of our committee, 37 of which have become the law of the land. While we do not agree on this bill or at least not all of it, we are both confident this legislation can become law as well if we work hard and together and achieve common ground, even if it is not exactly as we would want if we were writing it on our own. I think it is what our colleagues in the country think of us.

Simply put, we have no other choice but to do so. The status quo is unacceptable. We cannot leave the American people vulnerable to the present construct of our financial regulatory system. The American people have paid too high a price for the failure of our system to stop Wall Street greed and recklessness from undermining the stability of our economy.

We heard over and over that we have lost 8.5 million jobs and 7 million homes lost to foreclosure or are in foreclosure. Trillions of dollars--some say $11 trillion, some say $13 trillion, some say higher--trillions of dollars of household wealth has been lost in the last 18 months; home values--again, the number everyone agrees on--a 37 percent decline in home values across the Nation. In some States, the numbers are much higher. We have seen a decline in retirement income by some 20 percent as well across the Nation.

All this was not cause by one particular event or set of circumstances. There was a variety of circumstances, the culmination of which and the expansion brought us to the brink of financial collapse and disaster.

I described the aims of our legislation. First, it ends ``too big to fail.'' Senator Shelby and I have been working on that issue. We have had long discussions agreeing on principles and what needs to be done. My hope is, in the first part of next week--our staffs are going to work over the weekend to take the principles on which we have reached some agreements and then do the delicate job of writing the language that reflects those principles and ideas.

I thank my staff as well as Senator Shelby's staff for trying to get us to a point where we reach a level of comfort, that we have done what we said we were going to do; that is, to end too big to fail. No longer will there be an implicit understanding that if a major financial institution or even a less-than-major financial institution starts to fail somehow it is going to get propped up by taxpayer dollars. Our colleague from California, Barbara Boxer--we heard already the language of her amendment which will once again add a voice to this effort to say, when losses occur, too big to fail will never expose the American taxpayers to writing a check to have to underwrite that cost.

I presume there may be others who have ideas on how best to nail this

down. We welcome those ideas. Again, Senator Shelby and I will work on an amendment we intend to offer the first part of next week that reflects those values as well. I thank him and his staff and others for the time already spent. I cannot count the hours we have spent sitting with each other, talking about these ideas and how best to achieve them.

Obviously, we want to involve as well the Treasury Department and others for their advice and counsel because they ultimately will be asked to implement a lot of what we have talked about. We will be busy over the coming days as well on those issues.

Senator Boxer's idea--I discussed this with Senator Shelby already, and without committing anyone at all, there seems to be, at least at this juncture, a relatively good response or reaction to what she intends to do. Too big to fail has been a subject of major conversation. We all agree what we want to achieve. The question is, Can we do this? I am confident we can.

I would like us to begin on a positive note as well. There will be times during this debate where we will be at very different sides. That will happen, as it should be. There is nothing wrong with that. I think it is better to begin a process where you can agree on issues and sit down and come to common understandings. Too big to fail is an area where there is no disagreement about what we are trying to achieve. That is a great starting point. My hope is we can do that in the coming days.

We create an early warning system. This has not been the subject of a lot of debate. I think we all agree that to have the ability to watch and monitor what is occurring, both domestically and internationally, is very important.

We have established what we call a systemic risk council that will allow us to observe what is occurring on a regular basis so we can spot these problems before they metastasize and grow into, as we have seen, problems that created as much harm for our economy as the present recession has. I will not go into the details of it, but I think there is a general agreement that this makes a lot of sense.

We bring derivatives out of the shadow and into the sunlight so Wall Street is accountable for actions. I do not sense a lot of disagreement on what we are trying to achieve. There is some disagreement on about how this is best worked.

I am hopeful that in the coming weeks we can resolve these differences as we deal with these exotic instruments. Clearly, getting more sunshine, more transparency we think will be a great asset as well.

Finally, we put cops on the beat with consumer protection so Americans can make smart decisions based on full information when they are planning for their financial futures. There is general agreement having a consumer protection agency or bureau or division makes sense. There is disagreement on what the powers of that agency will be, how it should operate, how it can be working. We have to work on that issue to see if we can reach common ground. If not, we will have votes on whether one is for it or against it, with additions or subtractions, what it can do and over what jurisdiction it has authority.

These are the principles. There is not much disagreement with what we are trying to achieve but there will be on how best to do it in certain areas. There may be disagreements on how to actually accomplish these goals.

I said before that we agreed to move forward on this bill and that I will allow each Member in this Chamber to offer his or her suggestions, air their concerns, vote up or down on ideas.

What I would like to see occur during this debate is not only are we taking on a large issue, but this institution has been damaged over the last number of years. It amounts to this: Senator Jon Kyl and I engaged in a colloquy the other day--not a planned one--about the issue of trust, which is what people are concerned about. We need to restore that trust if we can. It is incumbent we try to understand each other's motives, not question them, and then deal effectively with ideas as they come up.

My hope is not only will we end up with a good bill at the end of all this, but we can also end up repairing some of the tensions and stress that exists in this legislative body. When I said I want Members to be able to offer their amendments, to debate those amendments, and have votes on those amendments, I mean it--I know my colleague from Alabama shares that view as well--and that people with limited time--obviously, we do not want filibustering occurring--ought to have it to express those ideas and then vote on the ideas.

I mentioned last night the amendment proposed by Senator Boxer. I have discussed that amendment already. Others will have amendments to come next week as well.

I cannot promise that the final product will be a bill that all 100 Senators will feel they can support. I understand that. But my goal is to get the best, most effective legislation we can. My belief is we can make that happen by acting like Senators, listening to each other, ensuring our debate is as civil as it is passionate, as factual as it is fierce.

To paraphrase our President: We did not ask for the job of saving our financial system from its inefficiencies and excesses, but that is our job today. That is what we have been asked to do. I have the greatest confidence in my colleagues that we can get that job done. I look forward, again, to working with my colleague and friend, Senator Shelby, moving forward as well with the leadership and others to achieve the desired results with this bill.

I yield the floor to my colleague and friend from Alabama.

Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, other than what you heard from my good friend from Alabama, he likes the bill. So we will have some work to do.

Let me again assure him and my colleagues here that we have had very productive talks, my friend from Alabama and I, particularly in the too-big-to-fail area. My two colleagues, Mark Warner and Bob Corker, did a tremendous amount of work in our committee over many weeks as we divided the labor to try to address these issues as thoroughly and as comprehensively as possible. I think we have done that work, but I respect the fact that others may have additional ideas to make this work even better. I know he raised the issue here, and we are going to try to work over this weekend to try to put together the legal language, the language that has to be drafted here, to reflect some of these ideas we can incorporate as part of this bill. My colleague and friend from Alabama has my word on that. We will work on that to do that. Again, I thank him. We have worked well together over these last 37 months.

I make this offer to my colleagues too. I just had a brief conversation with Senator Chambliss. I say this on my own behalf, but I hope Senator Shelby might agree with me. If Members have amendments, it would help, even in the next day or so, if you could let us know what those amendments are. Even though we may not get to them for a while, we can start to work with our colleagues on their ideas. We may be able to accept some.

I see my colleague from Arkansas here, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee. I don't know whether she shares that view, but it would be helpful. If people have ideas, the earlier we know about them, the better we will be able to respond to them or modify them in some way so they are acceptable. I hope Senators will take advantage of that offer; that the chair of the Agriculture Committee, myself, and I presume Senator Chambliss would share that view as well. Let's see these amendments early on so we can try to be helpful to our colleagues early on, if at all possible.

I commend my colleague as chairperson of the Agriculture Committee. She has taken over that job over the last number of months and done a great job at it. I look forward to working with her, hopefully, in the next week or two on this bill as well.

Mr. President, before Senator Chambliss leaves the floor, before we hear from my colleague from Virginia, let me thank both of our colleagues: my colleague from Arkansas who spoke, but also my good friend from Georgia. I thank him immensely for his comments. We have worked together, not as often, and we do not sit on committees together. But we have come to know each other and respect each other immensely. I know he is going to do exactly what we are talking about. This is an opportunity for us not only to get a bill right, but to get this institution right, in a way. It ought to be the way we can conduct ourselves.

I have always said, there is nothing wrong with partisanship. In fact, the country was not built on anything but partisanship. It was the contest of ideas. But the ability to have a civil debate in the context of some partisan ideas, with the ultimate goal of resolving those issues so that we reach a common solution, is the purpose for our existence in all this.

I have great faith in our ability to do that. I know we will get closer to that because there is a guy named Saxby Chambliss. So I thank him.

Mr. President, before we hear from my colleague from California, I thank Senator Warner of Virginia. He is a relatively new Member of this body and a new member of the committee, but I can't even begin to aptly characterize his contribution to this product. Since day one, he has been at every meeting, been involved in almost every conversation about this bill, particularly the focus that he and Senator Bob Corker agreed to take on in working out title I and title II of the bill dealing with resolution authority and too big to fail. His background, his experience, his knowledge made a wonderful contribution to this product. His interest in other matters is valued as well, because he brings two decades of living in a world in which these matters were something he absolutely grappled with. We have a long journey in front of us in the coming weeks to get through all of this, but his continuing involvement in this Chamber on this subject matter will be invaluable to all of us as we go forward. I thank him for that.

Let me thank my colleague from California. She also has a background on this subject matter. She has often talked about it. I thank her for what will be our first amendment on this bill, something I think brings all of us together. I thank her for her energy and interest in the subject.

Mr. President, again, I commend our colleague from California and thank her for her involvement and her ideas and suggestions. Again, it is going to be helpful that we begin with a proposal that I think is going to bring us together. As I said--I cannot speak for others; but at least I have heard, when I have asked people to comment on the Senator's proposal--there seems to be almost unanimity around the Senator's idea. In a debate that is obviously going to have us not with unanimity, as we move forward in a number of areas, I think it is always good to begin where we speak with one voice. I think that common voice is making sure we never again have that too-big-to-fail concept as part of our economic structure.

The Senator will be making a significant and historic contribution to this effort, and I thank her.

Mr. President, I do not have any other requests for time to speak this afternoon on this bill. But it is obviously a leadership call as to what their decisions are to go forward.

Again, I want to say to my friend and colleague from Alabama, we have had a very good working relationship, and it will continue through this process. We have already been discussing several ideas. I appreciate Senator Warner raising a couple of issues. The angel investor idea is one that needs to be changed. I know my friend and colleague from Missouri, Kit Bond, has ideas on this as well, and I am going to be getting in touch with him and asking him, along with Senator Warner and others, to work on some language we can add to our bill. I know Senator Corker is working on some ideas as well and, again, we want to be cooperative. A number of my colleagues over here have been submitting amendments, including Ben Cardin and others, Sherrod Brown. I know Senator Sanders has some amendments. We have a lot of ideas that are going to be coming up in the coming days, so we have a lot of work in front of us before we complete action on this bill.

Again, I am grateful to Senator Shelby and the other members of the Banking Committee. They have been very helpful over these many months, and we have had long conversations about this. There are a lot of different ideas as to how this all can work, but each and every one of them made a constructive contribution to the process, and I am grateful to them for that. I am very grateful to Leader Reid. Obviously, none of this happens without the involvement of the leader and his very fine staff who have been tremendously helpful in us getting to this point by providing the structure and the organization that allows us to actually begin a debate. Many thought we couldn't even get to this debate. I wish to underscore something Senator Boxer said a few minutes ago. We spent a lot of time over the last 2 weeks; there was a lot of acrimony and finger-pointing as to why we weren't starting. That is behind us. We have now started. Some people want to flyspeck that debate. The fact is, we are on the bill and we are moving forward. That is good news. My hope is, over the next few weeks, we will complete this bill.

With that, I will note the absence of a quorum and let the leadership decide what they want to do.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Coltsville National Historic Park Act, which provides for the designation of the Coltsville Historic District in Hartford, Connecticut, as a national park. I would like to thank my colleague, Senator Lieberman, for supporting this legislation, as well as my good friend, Congressman Larson, who recently introduced an identical version of this bill in the House.

I recognize that when most of us think of national parks, we picture the vast, sprawling landscapes of Yellowstone and Yosemite. Clearly, Connecticut's smaller size precludes it from having a national park on the scale of these sites. In fact, Connecticut itself is only about twice the size of Yellowstone National Park and currently has only one national park, the Weir Farm National Historic Site, which spans 60 acres in the towns of Ridgefield and Wilton. But, while Connecticut may not possess the physical grandeur of our nation's largest parks, it is home to a rich national heritage that must be made accessible to every American.

Located in Hartford's Sheldon-Charter Oak neighborhood, Coltsville grew around Samuel Colt's firearms factory, a landmark red brick building with a blue onion dome, during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Colt made Hartford the center of precision manufacturing. While Americans may associate the name Sam Colt with firearms, the Colt legacy goes far beyond. Colt was a key figure of the Industrial Revolution, contributing to the development of waterproof ammunition, underwater mines, and the telegraph. He was also the first American manufacturer to open a plant overseas. Colt set the standard for a nation that fast became known for its technological innovations and industrial productivity. It is also a little-known fact that after Colt's death in 1862, his widow, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, successfully managed Colt Industries for 42 years and presided over the company during its most prosperous years in a period when men dominated the industrial world.

Today, the Colt armory remains a beacon in the Hartford skyline, and Coltsville still boasts grand Victorian homes, including Armsmear, the home of Sam and Elizabeth Colt. Other nearby attractions include old mill housing, the Church of the Good Shepherd, and the Colt Memorial. A national park at Coltsville would be the main venue on a tour of Hartford that could include sites such as the houses of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe and the riverfront. It would also be a prime destination for anyone taking an extended tour of historic and scenic New England.

A national park at Coltsville would include more than 200 acres and be comprised of both public and private space. The centerpiece would be a museum within the armory celebrating Sam Colt and the growth of American industry. The museum could hold the vast collection of Colt firearms that currently rests in the Museum of Connecticut History as well as other machinery and memorabilia from the Industrial Revolution. Private property which is currently located within the proposed boundaries of the park, such as artists' studios and condominiums, could remain private. In fact, a museum and visitors' center in the Colt armory itself would take up only part of the building, the rest of which could be left open for private development. The armory already houses a business that manufactures replica Colt firearms, which would only enhance the proposed museum.

In my capacity as Connecticut's senior Senator, I have fought hard alongside my colleagues in the State's Congressional delegation to help realize the goal of including this testament to America's industrial and manufacturing prowess within the National Park System. In 2003, we were successful in passing legislation that required the National Park Service to conduct a study assessing the feasibility of designating Coltsville as a national park. On July 22, 2008, Coltsville reached another critical milestone in this effort when it was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior.

Unfortunately, Coltsville has not been immune from the devastating effects of the global financial crisis that began later that year. While the Park Service's report, which was finally released last November, found that Coltsville is nationally significant and suitable for inclusion in the Park System, its determination of feasibility largely hinged on the ability of a private developer to manage the site in conjunction with the Park Service. Given the challenges currently facing our Nation's economy, Coltsville has run into some difficulties with this requirement. As a result, the Park Service was unable to conclude that Coltsville met the feasibility standards for inclusion in the Park System.

That is why the legislation I introduced today with Senator Lieberman is so timely and important. The Coltsville National Historic Park Act authorizes the establishment of a national park in Coltsville when the feasibility issues outlined in the Park Service's November 2009 study, namely those surrounding private management of the site, are resolved. Our bill also sets standards for administration of the park, and creates a local advisory commission to develop and implement an overarching management plan for the park. This legislative approach is supported by a variety of State and local stakeholders, and in my view, provides us with a great opportunity to jump-start efforts to bring Coltsville into compliance with Park Service feasibility standards.

I firmly believe that one of our most important obligations as Senators is to ensure that our Nation's vast array of natural treasures and historical landmarks are managed responsibly and preserved for the benefit of future generations. I urge my colleagues to join me in extending these protections to the Coltsville Historic District.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Coltsville National Historic Park Act, which provides for the designation of the Coltsville Historic District in Hartford, Connecticut, as a national park. I would like to thank my colleague, Senator Lieberman, for supporting this legislation, as well as my good friend, Congressman Larson, who recently introduced an identical version of this bill in the House.

I recognize that when most of us think of national parks, we picture the vast, sprawling landscapes of Yellowstone and Yosemite. Clearly, Connecticut's smaller size precludes it from having a national park on the scale of these sites. In fact, Connecticut itself is only about twice the size of Yellowstone National Park and currently has only one national park, the Weir Farm National Historic Site, which spans 60 acres in the towns of Ridgefield and Wilton. But, while Connecticut may not possess the physical grandeur of our nation's largest parks, it is home to a rich national heritage that must be made accessible to every American.

Located in Hartford's Sheldon-Charter Oak neighborhood, Coltsville grew around Samuel Colt's firearms factory, a landmark red brick building with a blue onion dome, during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Colt made Hartford the center of precision manufacturing. While Americans may associate the name Sam Colt with firearms, the Colt legacy goes far beyond. Colt was a key figure of the Industrial Revolution, contributing to the development of waterproof ammunition, underwater mines, and the telegraph. He was also the first American manufacturer to open a plant overseas. Colt set the standard for a nation that fast became known for its technological innovations and industrial productivity. It is also a little-known fact that after Colt's death in 1862, his widow, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, successfully managed Colt Industries for 42 years and presided over the company during its most prosperous years in a period when men dominated the industrial world.

Today, the Colt armory remains a beacon in the Hartford skyline, and Coltsville still boasts grand Victorian homes, including Armsmear, the home of Sam and Elizabeth Colt. Other nearby attractions include old mill housing, the Church of the Good Shepherd, and the Colt Memorial. A national park at Coltsville would be the main venue on a tour of Hartford that could include sites such as the houses of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe and the riverfront. It would also be a prime destination for anyone taking an extended tour of historic and scenic New England.

A national park at Coltsville would include more than 200 acres and be comprised of both public and private space. The centerpiece would be a museum within the armory celebrating Sam Colt and the growth of American industry. The museum could hold the vast collection of Colt firearms that currently rests in the Museum of Connecticut History as well as other machinery and memorabilia from the Industrial Revolution. Private property which is currently located within the proposed boundaries of the park, such as artists' studios and condominiums, could remain private. In fact, a museum and visitors' center in the Colt armory itself would take up only part of the building, the rest of which could be left open for private development. The armory already houses a business that manufactures replica Colt firearms, which would only enhance the proposed museum.

In my capacity as Connecticut's senior Senator, I have fought hard alongside my colleagues in the State's Congressional delegation to help realize the goal of including this testament to America's industrial and manufacturing prowess within the National Park System. In 2003, we were successful in passing legislation that required the National Park Service to conduct a study assessing the feasibility of designating Coltsville as a national park. On July 22, 2008, Coltsville reached another critical milestone in this effort when it was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior.

Unfortunately, Coltsville has not been immune from the devastating effects of the global financial crisis that began later that year. While the Park Service's report, which was finally released last November, found that Coltsville is nationally significant and suitable for inclusion in the Park System, its determination of feasibility largely hinged on the ability of a private developer to manage the site in conjunction with the Park Service. Given the challenges currently facing our Nation's economy, Coltsville has run into some difficulties with this requirement. As a result, the Park Service was unable to conclude that Coltsville met the feasibility standards for inclusion in the Park System.

That is why the legislation I introduced today with Senator Lieberman is so timely and important. The Coltsville National Historic Park Act authorizes the establishment of a national park in Coltsville when the feasibility issues outlined in the Park Service's November 2009 study, namely those surrounding private management of the site, are resolved. Our bill also sets standards for administration of the park, and creates a local advisory commission to develop and implement an overarching management plan for the park. This legislative approach is supported by a variety of State and local stakeholders, and in my view, provides us with a great opportunity to jump-start efforts to bring Coltsville into compliance with Park Service feasibility standards.

I firmly believe that one of our most important obligations as Senators is to ensure that our Nation's vast array of natural treasures and historical landmarks are managed responsibly and preserved for the benefit of future generations. I urge my colleagues to join me in extending these protections to the Coltsville Historic District.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that the time of the Democratic side has expired, is that correct?

I don't have a Republican colleague to ask unanimous consent to speak for a couple of minutes. I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for 5 minutes.

I thank the Chair.

Let me first thank my friend from Iowa for his tremendous work on so many issues but also his deep interest in this subject matter. Obviously, the subject of exotic instruments--derivatives and the like--is a critical issue for all of the country but particularly in the farm State of Iowa where he has played a considerable role. All of us have a higher degree of interest in one subject matter or the other, but I am grateful to him for his longstanding interest. His is not an interest that emerged with the problems that spiked 18 months ago, but go back 8 years. In fact, he has written legislation and held hearings in his former capacity as chairman of the Agriculture Committee, so he knows the subject well. I appreciate his kind comments about the effort of the Banking Committee and the effort of Blanche Lincoln, our colleague from Arkansas, and the Agriculture Committee she now chairs and where she has been working on a very important piece of our efforts here.

There are only a few minutes left before this vote will occur again. As are most people, I am somewhat mystified. I have heard my colleagues over the last day or so raise issues, concerns they have with the bill. It is no great shock that would be the case. That is normally what happens with a bill of this size and obviously this complexity, covering as much of an area as we do across the economic spectrum of our country. I am somewhat mystified. I understand having objections to parts of the bill and wanting to be heard and wanting to have an opportunity to change the bill, either add to it or subtract from it; that is how we normally engage in the legislative process, but I can't very well help on that front if I am not allowed to get to the bill.

This morning, the major newspapers of the country of course reported about the hearings yesterday here in Washington. I don't need to say much more about it. Again, the headlines: Looking into mortgage deals and the like have reached a certain crescendo. Most people are probably aware of those things.

There was another headline, however, that wasn't at the top of the newspaper but underneath it. In this case, the local paper here in Washington had the headline ``Greek debt downgraded to junk.'' It says, ``European crisis deepens. Dow falls 2 percent on global sell-off.''

The reason I mention that here is that obviously the Goldman Sachs story was the one that got the attention, but there are problems emerging around the world that affect us as well. Our legislation doesn't write international rules, but the United States has led, historically, in financial services. If we are unable to get a bill passed to change the rules, give us a greater sense of fairness and transparency and protection, then we are missing an opportunity to correct what over the last number of years helped create some of the problems we are now facing and then to lead globally so that other nations will harmonize their rules with ours so that the problems that exist in a Shanghai or a Greece can't affect us here.

We have a lot of work to do. I expect that if we get on this bill, we are going to be working for weeks engaging in several amendments and ideas to try to strengthen this bill--make it better, if you will.

I am one of the authors of the bill. I don't claim this is a perfect piece of legislation. I have never seen one of those in my 30 years here. Normally, you bring out a bill and do the best you can. Obviously, others have different points of view. It would be presumptuous of Senator Shelby and me to suggest that we can come to some great agreement here and tell everybody else that, whether you like it or not, this is the deal. That is not what we get elected to do here.

I have colleagues on my side who are sympathetic to what I have tried to do, but they want to change this bill. There is one amendment by my colleague from Vermont, and I think it

has 33 cosponsors, two-thirds of whom are on that side of the aisle and a third are over on this side. They ought to have the right to offer an amendment to change this bill, which is what they want to do.

I am fully prepared as a manager of this product to allow that amendment process to go forward, engage in that debate. But I cannot get there if you won't even allow me to bring up the bill. So the incongruity of complaining about the product and simultaneously saying: I am not going to let you vote on it, I don't know how you explain that to people in this country.

At the end of the day, if you want to vote against the bill, do so. If you want to vote for or against amendments, do it. I am not suggesting that anything I am offering at this juncture would preclude you from that conclusion, but you cannot get to that conclusion unless we have the product in front of us.

All we have had is a series of speeches over 3 days, denying us the necessary votes in order to move effectively. In effect, a filibuster is ongoing here. The only way to break that is by getting 60 votes that will allow us to move to the product. Fifty-seven of us have said: Let's get there.

I have said this before, and I will say it again. At this juncture, this ought not to be a partisan issue. It may get partisan over some of the ideas. I am fully aware that there are a number of my colleagues here who believe we ought to get to this debate. We ought to get there sooner rather than later. That is not to suggest they agree with the product by taking that position. In fact, I suspect they don't agree with at least some parts of this product. I think they understand the importance of getting to a point where we can try to change this in some way.

I will conclude. I make that appeal once more. We have been through this twice already. I hate coming and getting into a partisan debate about this. We should not do this. It doesn't reflect well on this institution on a matter of this import not to allow this to go forward.

I yield the floor, and I yield back all time.

Let me begin by thanking the majority leader for his work. I thank the minority leader as well. This has been a bit acrimonious over the last 10 days or so as we tried to get to the floor with this bill.

Of course I thank Richard Shelby. He and I, as he points out, have been working together over the last about 37 months during my stewardship of the Banking Committee that I inherited in January of 2007.

I noted the other day there are some 42 measures we brought out of our committee and 37 of them have become the law of the land. This is a good result. We will now be on this bill, which the American people want us to be on. This is an important issue. As I pointed out this morning, we had the headlines, the hearings here yesterday involving mortgage deals and the other headlines about Greece and its debt. Its bonds were sinking, causing economic problems in Europe and potentially here.

These problems are huge. As Senator Shelby has said and I have said over and over, this is a complex area of law we are talking about and it has to be gotten right. We have had very good conversations on a number of issues, but on this over many weeks, going back, obviously, and clearly we both share, as everyone does in this Chamber, our determination that we never again have institutions that become too big to fail where there is that implicit guarantee that the Federal Government will bail them out.

I am satisfied that our bill does that already, but I appreciate that there are others who would like to see it tighter, who think we can do more to make it better and more workable. I am anxious to hear them.

I know our colleague from California, Barbara Boxer, has some ideas on this as well that she has raised and I mentioned those with my friend from Alabama. He has raised issues with me that I like as well, and he can help us get there. As he rightly points out, we have not sealed anything but we have had great conversations, as two people of good will can have, that I think will allow us to get there.

We are going to have a very busy couple of weeks coming up now. There are a lot of Members who have very strong feelings about this bill. My job--our job--will be to see to it people have a chance to offer their amendments, to debate them, to go through that process.

I may sound pretty old-fashioned in this regard. I pointed out last night, I first got involved in this Chamber as a young person sitting here in the same outfits as these young people in their blue suits, as a page, watching Lyndon Johnson sitting in that chair where you are, Mr. President, and watching Mike Mansfield in that chair over here and Everett Dirkson in that chair.

I remember sitting there and listening to the debates on civil rights in the early 1960s, when this Chamber, in difficult moments, worked together to achieve great results for our country. I have great reverence for this institution and I want to see it work as our Founders intended, where you have a great, important debate--and this is one--that we work together as American citizens chosen by our respective States to represent them in this great hall. That is what I intend to do as the manager of this bill, to make sure that each and every one of my colleagues--whether they sit on this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle--are all in this Chamber together to try to improve the quality of life for the people who have been so badly hurt, homes

lost, jobs that have evaporated, retirement accounts that disappeared for people. They want to see us work together to get a job done to make a difference for our country and I firmly believe we can do that. I will do my very best, I say to my friend from Alabama, I say to the minority leader, as I said to the majority leader, to act with fairness, to work together to try to resolve matters so we can have a good outcome on this bill.

Obviously we cannot predict that. I know there are some who want to make this a great fight--that this is a great, great issue, maybe, for the day or the week you do it--who wins, who loses. That is a great story. But this is not an athletic contest we are involved in. It is a decision to try to put our country on a far more sound and secure footing than it is today. I look forward to the opportunity to work, as I have, with Senator Shelby. We are good friends. I admire him immensely. He was chairman of this committee before I was. He understands the job of being a chairman.

I am determined to get this job right. I encourage our colleagues who have ideas and amendments to come forward and share them with us. We are going to set up shop over the weekend to make sure we are there. So we have ideas to consider, accept, maybe modify, make it work right. If that spirit comes forward we can do a good job here and we can leave this Chamber at the end of this Congress, knowing we confronted a serious problem and stepped up to the best of our ability to try to solve it for the people we seek to represent.

Again, I thank the majority leader and the staff and others for their work. I thank Senator Shelby in his work. This conversation will continue. We have a lot of work to do. It has been very worthwhile and very productive over these last number of weeks and we intend to keep it in that form. I thank the minority leader as well and the Republican Conference. I know it must have been probably a healthy, good, vibrant conversation for the last hour and a half in there. But for those who question whether we can do this, I want this institution to get back again to the idea of listening to each other, debating the issues, taking our votes and putting together the best product we can.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I will take a few minutes, if I can, recognize myself for 10 minutes, if I may, and ask the Presiding Officer to notify me when that time has expired.

Madam President, I have great affection for my friend from Nebraska and I appreciate his comments about the bill. He wants to fix the bill. That is a noble goal. And the way to fix the bill, of course, is to begin debating the bill. So I am delighted to hear he would want to fix the bill. The problem I have is I cannot seem to get enough people on the other side to get us to the point where we might give them an opportunity to do exactly what they claim they want to do.

I am happy to yield, just for a second.

Kansas. Excuse me. I am sorry.

I apologize to my colleague.

But in basketball, you do very well, so it is OK.

Kansas, not Nebraska.

I thank my friend.

Anyway, my point is, we want to get to the bill. And whether it is my Senator friend from Kansas or Nebraska, we want to get to the bill, if we can. That is all this is about now. I am going to talk about the bill a bit here in the brief moments I have before we actually get to the vote this afternoon on this matter.

The American public is sitting there in sort of stunned disbelief. Here we all acknowledge this huge problem that needs to be addressed for the 8.5 million people who have lost their job, the 7 million who have lost their homes, their retirement income. We know from all of the statistics what this financial crisis has caused.

Over the last year and a half, we have been busy trying to come up with the answers on how to solve this problem in the future. Here we are, with about 14 weeks left to go before the close of this Congress, with a bill on the floor of the Senate that we put together over many weeks and months--on a bipartisan basis, I might add. Here it is, Madam President. Now we are being told, despite the fact that 58 of us believe we ought to at least begin the debate--I am not asking anyone to vote for the bill. I am not asking you to vote for an amendment on the bill. All I am asking you is, Can we begin discussing this bill here? It is the job of this body to do so.

So I am delighted to receive all the lectures I have received from people from about whether they like the bill or do not like the bill or what they want to add to it or subtract from it, and that is all very interesting conversation. But the fact is, until we actually move to the bill--which will be the matter once again before us this afternoon--all that talk is nothing but talk.

If you have an idea on what you want to change in this bill, tell me about it. But, more importantly, let's debate it, discuss it, and then vote on whether to add it to this piece of legislation, or to take anything out you wish to take out as well. But I cannot even begin that process if, in fact, you continue to object to us getting to a debate.

So that is what this is all about.

I guess it does not pay to get your hopes up in this town, but I was still disappointed yesterday when we ended up coming up short with the votes necessary to proceed to the bill.

To be honest, I am still mystified by the reaction of our colleagues. Yes, we have heard all the rhetoric from the minority leadership. We have seen the thundering horde of Wall Street lobbyists descending on this community, having been paid millions of dollars to do everything they can to stop this, including the motion to even proceed to debating the bill. They had a victory yesterday. Congratulations to the Wall Street lobbyists. You had a great day yesterday. The American people do not even have a chance to hear a bill discussed that might avoid the kind of catastrophe that has befallen them over this past year and a half.

And, yes, we are all familiar with political considerations that seem as inevitable as the sunrise in this community. But still, I cannot bring myself to believe that every single member of the minority caucus wants to stand with the large Wall Street financial institutions that are the major objectors to this bill going forward.

This morning, as Goldman Sachs executives were testifying--including this afternoon--before a Senate committee, we all got another chance to understand why they feel so deeply wronged by this legislation.

As Frank Rich said in the New York Times this weekend--and I quote him--

[S]omething is fundamentally amiss in a financial culture

that thrives on ``products'' that create nothing and produce

nothing except new ways to make bigger bets and stack the

deck in favor of the house.

Our prosperity in the country was built on the hard work of generations of Americans. It was grown in the cornfields of Nebraska and Kansas, engineered in the laboratories of Massachusetts, forged in the foundries of Chicago, and manufactured, if I may say so, in textile plants such as in my home State of Connecticut.

It is deeply ingrained in the American ethos that, in this land of great opportunity, you build wealth by creating something: an idea, a product, a service.

This economic crisis was not caused by the creators, the producers, the small businesses, and the working men and women who abide by that guiding principle. It was caused by some on Wall Street who wanted to get rich without contributing a thing, by executives who simply come up with ways to circulate money around in a large circle, taking a piece for themselves every time that circle spins.

Operating in the shadows of our economic structures, in the places where regulators were not equipped to do their job, firms such as Goldman Sachs found ways to game the financial system, reaping unheard of profits and rewarding their executives with huge bonuses.

Understand exactly what these bankers were doing. They were not just trying to predict the future; they were betting on the failure of the mortgage market, a failure they themselves were in a position to cause.

Earlier this month, National Public Radio and the nonprofit journalistic organization ProPublica reported on another firm, a hedge fund named Magnetar. This hedge fund, according to the report, saw the housing market begin to decline in the year 2005, bought up enormous amounts of doomed bonds composed of bad mortgages--thus, keeping the market artificially inflated--and then made huge bets on the failure of the very bonds they had bought, now knowing how worthless they were.

Thanks to this scheme, the housing bubble grew bigger and collapsed harder. Magnetar walked away with billions of dollars in profits. Other institutions saw an opportunity to run the same scheme. The American people ended up paying the price, of course, as we all painfully are aware.

I am the chairman of the Banking Committee. I believe in the vibrant financial sector of our Nation. Small businesses need capital and credit. There are many honest people on Wall Street who, I believe, have helped others to build wealth in our country. So the problem is not that these executives got rich without contributing to America. The problem is that these executives got rich betting against America. They did it in secret where no one could see what they were doing, let alone stop them, until it was too late. They took outrageous risks with money that did not belong to them because they could, in their view. By the time anyone realized what was going on, they had managed to destroy much of the prosperity Americans had built over the course of generations.

Maybe I am naive, but I do not believe any Senator wants to be on their side in this debate. And do you know what. I have seen firsthand that there are Republicans who deeply want to get to this bill and get it done. That is why the legislation we want to bring to the floor reflects broad bipartisan agreement. This bill was not written by this Senator alone or a handful of Democrats on the committee. This bill was written in large part with the cooperation of my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans.

The bill creates an early warning system so we can see and stop the next wave of dangerous financial products and practices before it threatens the economic stability of our Nation. It brings derivatives out of the shadows and into the sunlight so that Wall Street is held accountable for its actions. And finally, it puts a cop on the consumer protection beat so Americans can make smart decisions based on full information when they are planning for their financial futures and those of their families.

To listen to the minority leader, the main point of contention, over the last week or so, the reason he has given for his caucus to try and kill this bill as a bloc, is a disagreement over the provisions of our bill that end too-big-to-fail bailouts.

But I have to tell you, I do not believe that is the case. No fair reading of this bill allows you to claim with a straight face that it perpetuates taxpayer bailouts. It is not true. I have debunked that idea before on this floor, and I will do it again.

The morning after the minority leader made that claim, McClatchy Newspapers wrote:

McConnell--

Speaking of the minority leader--

had accused Dodd of drafting partisan legislation, even

though the Banking Committee chairman has worked for roughly

half a year with key Senate Republicans and incorporated many

of their ideas into his bill. McConnell also said the bill

continues controversial bank bailouts, but it doesn't.

If you do not believe the press reports, here is what our friend, the head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair, had to say. She, as I said, is the head of that organization, the Federal Deposit Insurance Organization-- former legal counsel to the minority leader Bob Dole, a Republican in good standing, I might add, as well. She shuts down, by the way, failed banks for a living. She is a Republican. She said:

The status quo is bailouts. That's what we have now. If you

don't do anything, you are going to keep having bailouts.

Further, talking about our bill, she said:

It makes [bailouts] impossible, and it should.

Sheila Bair says:

We worked really hard to squeeze bailout language out of

this bill. The construct is you can't bail out an individual

institution--you just can't do it.

Madam President, I will speak a little bit more. I know my other colleagues will want to be heard. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes, if I can.

How in the world the minority leader can come up with that argument does not make any sense at all. He quoted, of course, from the infamous Frank Luntz memo. The memo, of course, by Frank Luntz was written before the bill was written. Frank Luntz's political memo said the following:

The single best way to kill any legislation is to link it

to the Big Bank Bailout.

So he provided political recommendations and strategies even before this bill was written. The memo, of course, confirms that because of the date of it. So no matter what he wrote, that was going to be their political argument here. So the minority leader blindly followed the political memo here: Make that argument. Whether it is true is irrelevant, just say it often enough. And the old adage goes: If you repeat it often enough, people will begin to believe it, despite what the facts are. So again, that is the language of others.

But let me, if I can--because sometimes talking about it is not enough--let me quote from sections of the bill.

Section 204 of the bill says:

(1) Creditors and shareholders will bear the losses in the

financial company;

(2) Management responsible for the condition of the

financial company will not be retained.

Let me translate: You get fired.

(3) The Corporation and other appropriate agencies will

take all steps necessary and appropriate to assure that all

parties, including management and third parties, having

responsibility for the condition of the financial company

bear losses consistent with their responsibility, including

actions for damages, restitution, and recoupment of

compensation and other gains not compatible with such

responsibility.

Section 206 of the bill:

In taking action against this title, the (FDIC) shall

determine that such action is necessary for the purposes of

the financial stability of the United States, and not for the

purposes of preserving the covered financial company; ensure

that the shareholders of covered financial company do not

receive payment until after all other claims and the Fund are

fully paid; ensure that unsecured creditors bear losses in

accordance with the priority of claim provisions in section

210; ensure that management responsible for the failed

condition of the covered financial company is removed--

Again, fired, if you didn't understand those words--

and not take an equity interest in or become a shareholder of

any covered financial company or any covered subsidiary.

Lastly:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the

Corporation, as receiver for a covered financial company,

shall succeed by operation of law to the rights, titles,

powers, and privileges described in subparagraph (A), and

shall terminate all rights and claims that the stockholders

and creditors of the covered financial company may have

against the assets of the covered financial company or the

Corporation arising out of their status as stockholders or

creditors, except for the right to payment, resolution, or

other satisfaction of their claims as permitted under this

section. The Corporation shall ensure that shareholders and

unsecured creditors bear losses consistent with the priority

of claims provisions under this section.

We seem to agree on the problem, and we seem to agree on how to solve it. So, again, I quote from the legislation.

Let's get to this bill. We have written the provisions that stop too big to fail forever. There are other very important provisions in this bill that deserve consideration.

Again, I am not asking anyone to vote for the bill at this juncture or to vote for the amendments that come up. For the life of me, I don't know how we explain to anyone in this country, in light of what we have been through, that we can't even begin the debate and the discussion.

By the way, no two Senators are going to write this bill. There are 100 of us who serve here, and every single Member of this body has a right to offer amendments and be heard. As chairman of the committee, I will insist upon that. Every Member who has an idea and has an amendment will be heard. But, please, let's get to it.

With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I am told there are others who want to be heard, so I would at this juncture note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I see my friend and colleague from Oregon. I will yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Oregon.

Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to our colleague from Washington.

Let me thank my colleague from the State of Washington. I appreciate very much her comments and her leadership.

I see my friend, Senator Brownback, as well. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the last 7\1/2\ minutes be reserved for myself before the vote. Is that the correct time; 7 or 7\1/2\ minutes? 7\1/2\ minutes.

I thank the Senator from Arizona. My intention was--let me say a couple of things.

I have reserved the last 7\1/2\ minutes. I think otherwise we might run out of time, I say to my friend from Arizona. I will just take 1 minute, if I may.

I want to tell him and say this to him. I have been here 30 years. I have chaired bills on the floor. I never chaired a committee before 36 months ago when I became chairman of the Banking Committee under our system. But I want to say this to my friend from Arizona and I want him to convey this to his colleagues through this vehicle: I would never deprive another Senator of the opportunity to offer amendments on the floor. I revere this body. I began my service in this body sitting on those steps over there as a page. And how the Senate works is because we all participate in the debate.

I know there are those who have this concern and fear. Obviously, you do not have unlimited debate forever. But the point is, amendments ought to be offered. I have colleagues on my side, politically, of the aisle who want to make this bill stronger, in their views. I know there are people who think I have gone too far with the bill and want to water it down a bit. That debate can only occur if we are on the bill. But I want my colleague to know, as one of the leaders of the minority, that I would never deprive another colleague of the opportunity to be heard, offer their amendment and their thoughts in that process.

Secondly, on the too big to fail, this goes back and forth. Senator Shelby and I have worked on this. I see the possibility that--if there are some workability amendments that tighten that up, I am all for that. Senator Boxer of California has an amendment that would say that nothing in this bill can ever allow taxpayer money to be used. I am for that amendment. I don't know how many different ways we can say it. I think all of us agree we don't want to see our country go through that again. So the only limitations here are, do we think we are finding additional language here that will satisfy us that we have done the job we think we have intended to do? Senator Shelby and I talked about how to do this. Again, if that is the holdup, that should not hold us up because we are both committed to that.

Thirdly, I want to say that there is a document circulating with some ideas of a Republican alternative that includes getting into the government-sponsored enterprises. I say to my friend, it is a huge issue, the GSEs. It is not just Fannie and Freddie; there are others. It needs a lot of work.

But this proposal I have read--and it is not legislative language--a lot of it, I don't have any problem whatsoever. I am not sure who the author of this is, but it has been circulated. Again, I am not endorsing everything here because it is just a concept, but if that is an amendment, the better part of what I have seen, about 90 percent of what I have seen here, I have no problem with at all. That can be an amendment included as part of our bill. But, again, I have to get to it. The difficult problem I have is everybody is coming with things they would like to add to or subtract from the bill, but, as my colleague knows, having been a leader around here for a long time, you have to get to the product. That is my frustration here.

Lastly, I am not going to bore him with too much detail here, but in section 1027--and I won't read all of it--the last lines on limitations, because of

the concerns people have about dentists or other people being drawn into our consumer protection section say:

Notwithstanding subparagraph (B), the Bureau may not

exercise any rulemaking, supervisory, enforcement, or other

authority under this title with respect to a merchant,

retailer, or seller of nonfinancial goods or services that is

not engaged significantly in offering or providing consumer

financial products or services.

And, again, to insulate against the very worry you would have, and others have talked about, the NFNIB, someone who has four installment payments--it may be your local grocer, people who show up and buy food and do not pay for it, but usually at the end of the month or the end of 6 months, you have to be in the business of financial services or products to be affected by the legislation.

Now, again, I know there are Members who have problems with that part of the bill. People on my side who want to strengthen it think I have not gone far enough on the bill. One of the difficult jobs is trying to reconcile differences that exist. But I cannot even begin to do so if we cannot even talk about it.

So that is my frustration as the chairman of a committee, trying to get us to a point where all of us want to be, I am sure. We do not want to leave here having said we did not really deal with this problem that everyone in the country--I know, Arizona, what you have been through in your housing issues is staggering. Florida, California, Arizona, I think Nevada probably rank in the most difficult States where housing prices have declined and foreclosures have occurred.

I know my friend from Arizona feels as strongly about this as I do. But I assure him, I will not deprive anybody of an amendment to be offered at all in the process. Secondly, we will try the workability issues on too big to fail and, again, language we have worked on on the consumer protection, and we think we took care of those dentists and others who were worried about it.

But, again, others may have amendments and ideas. I will have to consider them on the Senate floor, and all of us will have to vote on them. But I appreciate him giving me a little time to express my thought.

Mr. President, let me thank the distinguished Republican leader for his comments. Part of what he just said is worthy of note. This institution suffers. We operate on unanimous consent. That is the way it works. And inherent in unanimous consent is trust. It is the only way this institution has ever operated.

There has been, I think we would all have to acknowledge, a breakdown for a lot of different reasons. We have to get back to it. This is an opportunity to do that.

Senator Shelby and I have a very good working relationship. We trust each other. We talk to each other. We spent an hour together. We are meeting again at 5:00, after this vote today, to talk about one way or the other where the bill is. There has to be a return to that comity and understanding, while we have differences of opinion.

If the American people believe we cannot trust each other, when I say I will--I was asked at our conference lunch, again, the very question that my colleague from Arizona raised: Will I be allowed to offer an amendment, Senator Dodd? Absolutely, you will.

So it is a concern I know that everybody has about whether they can be heard on these matters. I would never,

as a person who reveres this institution, want to deprive anybody of an opportunity to be heard on a matter as important as this.

We have amendments I know are offered. I heard them--the cosponsors-- one Senator today listed the cosponsors of an amendment he wants to offer. There are more Republicans than Democrats on the amendment dealing with the Federal Reserve System. I have some concerns about that amendment. But the fact is, it has bipartisan support for an amendment they want to offer. There are a lot of these ideas. I know within the Republican circle there are divisions as well as to what ought to be in this bill. We have them on our side as well. It is not as if there is some bright line here, and there is one solid thought process over here, and an alternative one over here. We have about as many different views on this bill as there may be Members in this body.

But all I ask for is to get to this bill. Let's get to this debate. Again, the leader got up and said this was a partisan bill. I have worked very hard to avoid that. Back in November when I introduced the bill, there were objections on the minority side as well as on the majority side. We put it aside. We have spent from November up until just a few days ago trying to put a product together that would reflect all of this different thinking. It is a vastly different bill from the one I introduced in November. I know it is not yet to everyone's satisfaction, but we need to debate this bill, in my view.

It will take a long time. This is not going to be a short debate. I know that. But we need to allocate the time talking about what is in the bill or not in the bill rather than questioning each other's motives as to why we are not on the bill, it seems to me.

So my plea is, again, as Senator Shelby has said, I think we are about 80 percent in agreement. I believe that to be the case. If we are 80 percent in agreement, that ought to be enough of a basis upon which to move forward. If we were all in disagreement about everything, well, I might still believe we ought to debate it. So, again, I see my colleague--I realize he has to go, and we are going to vote in a couple of minutes. But I thank him for spending the time with me and to hear me out on these points. I am grateful to him for that.

Mr. President, those are sort of the points that I intended to make in these closing minutes of this discussion, once again. We had it yesterday, and here we are again this afternoon. With all of the things that people are going through in the country, it seems to me, again, this bill, which has been the product of a year and a half of work-- this was not drafted over a weekend or some short period of time trying to reflect the interests of my colleagues--is deserving of our consideration.

I am not asking to vote for this with this next vote. No one will be asked to vote for this. No one will be asked to vote for any of the various amendments I am sure will be offered, and I will welcome, as part of this debate, and that Senator Shelby and I as managers of the bill will consider them.

All we are being asked to do, in the next 7 minutes or less, is to give this product a chance to be discussed. This product reflects a year and a half of effort to answer the question: What went wrong that caused our economy and our Nation to go through the worst economic crisis since the early part of the last century? That is a legitimate question being asked. What are the gaps? What steps are we taking to fill in those gaps? Are there cops on the beat to protect us? Do they have the authority and the resources to do the job? Is there an early warning system? These are all issues upon which I suspect, based on my conversations over a year and a half--or more than that now--on which we have a lot of agreement.

I do not know of anyone in this Chamber who wants to support a bill that does not end too big to fail. If they exist, I have not heard their voices. I do not think there is anyone here who does not believe we should not have an early warning system so we can identify problems before they become the large ones that cost us as much as it has over the last year and a half.

I think all of us--I have heard my colleagues say they are for a consumer protection agency. I believe them. We have a consumer protection agency in this bill. There is a debate about how much authority we want to give them, the interface, the interaction with prudential regulators. Those are all arguments within the context of whether we ought to have a consumer protection agency.

There is not a position over here that I know of--maybe some have it--that they are just flatout against a consumer protection agency. Senator Shelby has told me, and others on the Banking Committee: We are for a consumer protection agency. They have differences about what ought to happen within that. That is the purpose for having the debate. We are told again, we heard it a moment ago: We ought to have the bright sunshine on derivatives, these exotic instruments that were used, went from $91 billion in 1998, to close to $600 trillion--that is with a T--11 years later.

That shadow economy contributed significantly to what we went through. Based on what I have heard, everyone thinks we ought to do something about that and not leave the situation as it is today, as it was 18 months ago, because nothing has changed since then, putting our Nation at risk once again. So we agree on that as well.

Let's have transparency. Let's have accountability. There are differences; I would be naive and foolish to suggest otherwise. But everyone seems to agree we ought to do something about it. So if we look at the major thrust of our bill--end too big to fail; set up an early warning system to avoid the problems we saw in the past; deal with these exotic instruments out there and have some agency that at long last might keep an eye out for the average citizen in this country, that watches their credit cards, their mortgages, and so many other financial activities they engaged in that became deceptive and fraudulent, that they suffered terribly.

So we all agree on the basic goals outlined in this bill. Differences exist, at least in one or two of the years. Too big to fail, I do not think there is any real disagreement. I do not think there is any disagreement on the early warning system, as I have heard the debate. The differences exist in what happens inside the consumer protection agency and what happens in the area of the shadow economy and dealing with the derivatives and other items, but not whether we want to do something.

So that is what we ought to be doing.

I ask unanimous consent for 30 additional seconds.

We have spent the last day debating whether we ought to have this. Let's vote to invoke cloture and begin the long debate we need to have. I urge my colleagues to do so.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?

Mr. President, as I understand it, there is a vote scheduled at 5 p.m., is that correct?

And the time between now and 5 p.m. will be for general debate on the matter of the motion to proceed, is that correct?

Mr. President, I see my friend and colleague from Delaware, Senator Kaufman. How much time does the Senator need?

I yield 16 minutes to the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I suspect sometime over the next hour and a half, Members will come to the floor--including the Presiding Officer-- and I will be glad to take a few minutes and share some opening comments and then give him relief so he can be heard on this matter.

I thank Senator Warner and my colleagues on the Banking Committee, both Democrats and Republicans. We have spent a lot of time together over the last 2 years now--longer, in fact, going back even before the arrival of my friend from Virginia.

When I became chairman of the Banking Committee in January of 2007, I was asked to pick up this issue. We began to look at the issue of the mortgage crisis in the country through all of 2007 and, of course, the following year when events began to unfold, culminating with the disaster we encountered in the fall of 2008.

The members of the committee have worked very hard. We have had literally hundreds of hearings and meetings, listening to people across the spectrum of how best to address these issues, filling in the gaps that led to the near collapse of our economy; what steps we ought to be taking to provide intelligent, thoughtful, commonsense regulation, as well as to see to it, in the process of doing so, we do not stifle the ability of this country to lead in the financial sector globally; as well as provide for the innovation and creativity necessary for our country to grow and prosper economically, the wealth creation that is necessary for our country. It has been a long and arduous journey.

I was speaking with Bob Corker of Tennessee, with whom I spent a great deal of time, as I know the Presiding Officer has as well. I thank Senator Shelby, my colleague and former chairman of the Banking Committee, who is the ranking member on our committee. We have spent a lot of time on these issues, including some time earlier this afternoon, and we will be meeting again depending on the outcome this evening one way or the other. We will continue our conversations to try to resolve some of these outstanding matters in a very long and complex piece of legislation.

I will not enumerate every member of the Banking Committee, but suffice it to say, to this juncture, the work they have done has been tremendously helpful and has produced a good and strong bill on financial reform.

Today the Senate faces its first vote on the issue, which will occur in a little less than 2 hours from now, deciding whether we can even go forward and debate the matter. My hope is our colleagues will allow us to debate this issue.

I understand there are differences. There is hardly unanimity in caucuses, let alone in the Chamber, on the way

to go, particularly in areas involving systemic risk, dealing with the so-called too big to fail provisions, dealing with the provisions of how we administer the notion of exotic instruments, the derivative community, and the like. Significant discussions have gone on. The assumption we are going to resolve all of those issues prior to debating the issues is somewhat unrealistic if we are trying to reach accommodation on all the various matters that are included in the 1,400 pages of the proposal which we will have before this body.

Today my plea is not so much on the substance of what is here, although I am willing to discuss all of that because it is important our colleagues know what we have tried to achieve and accommodate in our legislation, but a plea to let us get to the debate.

I do not think the American people understand this. Regardless of where you come out on the issues, whether you stand on the various provisions of the bill, I do not know how to explain to people to make them realize how vulnerable we are today in the waning days of April 2010 as we were in the fall of 2008 when we saw what happened to our economy. Nothing has changed except, of course, jobs have been lost, homes have gone into foreclosure, retirement incomes have evaporated, and housing values have declined. Almost $11 trillion in household wealth has been lost. That is what has happened over the last 18 months.

We have yet to stand and address what caused that to happen in our country, to fill in those gaps to provide the regulation, put the cops on the beat, create provisions that would minimize the next economic crisis. And it will occur. There is nothing I have drafted that can protect our country from future economic difficulty.

As certain as I am standing here today, we will face yet another crisis or crises in the future. The question is, Are we going to be better positioned to minimize that crisis so we do not see the collateral damage that has been caused to businesses, individuals, retirement, homes--all of the things that we have suffered because we did not have in place the kind of safeguards that might have put a tourniquet on this problem in its earliest stages, not to have eliminated the crisis but certainly eliminated the damage it caused because we did not have the cops on the beat, we did not have the regulation, and we did not have what is exactly included in this bill to minimize the danger in the future.

I have tried to explain this issue. Obviously, it is complicated when you start talking in these words that are archaic; talking about credit default swaps and derivatives and systemic risk and all the other terminology that is used to talk about financial services. But let me try to phrase this in more graphic terms, if I can.

Imagine coming home from a weekend away. You have been away. You have taken your family out on a trip and you come home to find the front door swinging wide open, flapping back and forth. When you walk in the house, you realize you have been robbed. Your TV is gone, your furniture, your jewelry, important documents, cash, and family photos, all have been stolen out of your home. Maybe worst of all, there is broken glass and shattered pottery. Not only did they steal, but they decided to wreck the house as well. So you are angry and frightened, wondering what is coming next and how much it will cost you to replace your TV and your stereo. Then you find out, at the end of all this, that they have identified the robbers who have broken into your home and stolen everything and, by the way, you have to write a check to them. The very people who caused the damage are now going to get a check written out to them--those who caused the problem in the first place.

Well, that is what happened, in effect, 18 months ago. People came in and robbed our homes, in effect. In fact, they took the home, they took the income, and they took the retirement. They watched jobs go out the window. The very people who were responsible for it, of course, were stabilized because we wrote a check for $700 billion to stabilize those institutions. As we did so, and, of course, we got them back on their feet, the very leaders of these industries began to reap massive bonuses to put themselves on solid footing. So they have benefited from this financially. Yet 8\1/2\ million jobs were lost, 7 million homes ended up in foreclosure, there was a 30-percent decline in home values and a 20-percent decline in retirement of working families, all who thought they were protected. All that is gone, and somewhere between $11 trillion and $13 trillion--not ``b'' as in billion but a trillion dollars--in household wealth has been lost in 18 months.

If that is not wreckage of your home--your economic home--I don't know what is. Today, we are as vulnerable as we were 18 months ago. Our house is still unlocked, in a way. What happened 18 months ago could happen again. The difference this time is I don't think there is an ounce of willingness on the part of the American people to write that check again. What they are asking is for us to step up, to think carefully--as we have tried to do over the last year or so as we have gone through this process--and craft some ideas that would minimize that from happening again so there is not a huge part of our economy that is totally unregulated, as we had with real estate brokers who on their Web site had as their first rule to brokers, convince the borrower you are their financial adviser, when they were anything but their financial adviser. So they were luring people into mortgages they couldn't afford and convincing them they could pay for it, knowing full well they never ever could. Of course, the banks themselves were then bundling these mortgages, only holding them for 8 or 10 weeks and then selling them off, branding them AAA to unsuspecting investors, and that created that bubble that ultimately was the major cause of the collapse.

Today, that same problem can exist in the absence of the law we are putting before our colleagues. Maybe I should have said this at the outset, but we hardly claim perfection in what we have written here. Hardly. But we believe they are sound ideas that deal with these very issues that caused the problem in the first place, and what we need to do is to be able to debate those ideas. If my colleagues disagree, as many do--some think I have gone too far, some think I haven't gone far enough, and those are maybe two legitimate points--how are we to resolve our disagreement if we can't bring up the bill and have the debate this Chamber was designed to engage in? What is the point of having 100 seats, coming from 50 States, when a major issue affecting our country cannot even be the subject of a debate?

So I urge my colleagues--I urge them--to let us get to this debate. Let us do our best to resolve these matters as adults, as people who have strong views and feelings, many of which we agree on, by the way. I mentioned my colleague from Virginia, the Presiding Officer. I don't know how long Mark Warner and Bob Corker spent--hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours--to make sure that in this proposal never again would a financial institution in the United States of America reach such a status that it would be guaranteed implicitly that the Federal Government would bail them out when they engaged in excessive risk and put themselves in great jeopardy. Our bill does that. Without any question whatsoever, those entities, if they reach that point, will fail. They will go into bankruptcy, they will go into receivership, and management gets fired. They don't get a bonus, they get fired. Shareholders lose their resources or their investments, as well as do creditors, not to mention other problems associated with it. But the idea is, those entities go out of business, and we wind them down in a way that doesn't jeopardize other sectors of our economy.

Nothing could be more clear in our bill than that. If there was one issue I think we all agreed on, it was to make sure that didn't happen. Again, the Senators from Tennessee and Virginia, and there were others, by the way, who were engaged in that debate in writing this bill to achieve that desired result by the American people.

We also said: Look, one of the problems that happened over the years leading to this crisis is that we didn't even know what was going on out there. We heard Bob Rubin, the former Secretary of the Treasury, and we heard Alan Greenspan and others--whether you believe them--who said we

didn't understand how this was happening or why it was happening or even that it was happening.

Well, that excuse ought to never occur again. So we create in our bill that early radar system--again, maybe a more graphic description of what the Systemic Risk Council does. This is made up of various Federal agencies, so that there is not just one but a multiple set of eyes with differing backgrounds and experience to deal with the economic issues of our Nation; to be constantly watching and monitoring what is occurring out there and not just in our own country, by the way, but around the world. How many of us have read headlines over the past few weeks about Greece and what problems it may pose to Europe and other parts of our global economy or what happened in the Shanghai stock market a number of years ago, where a decline in value in that exchange put the entire world in a tailspin for several days. So the notion that it is just what happens here at home on mortgages or other issues is not limited, it is also what happens around the world today that can affect us.

Anyway, this part of the bill is designed to be that early warning system--that radar system. Again, I wish to thank my colleague from Virginia and my colleague from Tennessee. One of the provisions in that early warning system is data collection on a daily basis, so we know what is happening economically literally on an hour-to-hour basis. That will be a great value as we sit there and try to make these assessments and pick up on these problems in the earliest stages before they can occur.

Consumer protection. This ought not be a radical idea--to protect consumers from any problems financially. How many of us, of course, read the tragic news over the last few weeks about an automobile manufacturer that had a defective accelerator? What was the first thing you heard? Those cars are being recalled so you would not be at risk in driving them. We hear of recalls all the time on products we buy. You buy that nice TV and it doesn't work, you can send it back, you can recall that product, and you will be protected as a consumer.

What happens when you get a financial product that doesn't work or is defective or certainly producing results that were never intended but are causing major problems? Where do you go to get a recall on a faulty mortgage or a credit card deal that is corrupt or fraudulent or deceptive or abusive? Why shouldn't we deal with financial products that can bring someone to financial ruin? We can do it with a toaster, a TV or an automobile. Well, our bill sets up a Consumer Financial Product Safety Commission or bureau or division that we have established in this bill. So consumers themselves can have someplace to go to get redress.

Rules can be written to protect them against abusive practices. I appreciate my colleague from Delaware mentioning my credit card bill, but we shouldn't have to write a bill every time there is a deceptive or fraudulent practice that does damage to consumers. Why does it take writing a bill every time there is a problem? Why not have regulations in place that would protect consumers?

Let me mention what else that does. It isn't just protecting the consumer from a faulty financial product. One of the most important elements in our economy is consumer confidence--having a sense of optimism and confidence or faith that our institutions will be there to work for them and not against them. One of the great damages to our country--and I don't know how you put a number on it. I can't cite the number on home values lost or wealth lost or mortgages or foreclosures or jobs lost. Tell me what price we put on the loss of the American public's confidence in our financial system. What is that number; that people no longer trust or have deep questions about whether they are going to be protected with their hard-earned dollar with that insurance policy or that stock they want to buy? Not that they ought to be guaranteed a return on it but that there isn't going to be some deceptive, abusive practice that will put them at risk. To me, that is about as important an issue as you can have--confidence of the American people that the architecture of our financial system is one they can have faith in, that they can have confidence in. That reputation has been damaged severely over these last number of months.

I don't claim what we have written in this area of consumer protection solves every problem. But for the first time in our Nation's history, for the very first time, we will have a consolidated consumer protection agency with the principal responsibility of watching out for the consumers of financial products. I think that is a major achievement for our bill.

Lastly, let me mention the old issue of these exotic instruments that I mentioned earlier that have complicated definitions of what they do and how they work. One of the major problems is, of course, it has been an unregulated area. It has been what they call the shadow economy. To give an idea of how the issue has exploded, in 1998, the area of derivatives generated about $91 billion in activity. That is 12 years ago. Last year--I think it was 2009 but the last year we have numbers on this, the amount of activity in this area jumped from $91 billion to almost $600 trillion--$91 billion to $600 trillion in 10 years in unregulated activities, in this shadow economy. It was those activities that also contributed so much to the economic difficulties we are going through.

The Agriculture Committee, run by my good friend from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln, and the members of her committee and our Banking Committee have worked out a sound and solid proposal on how we can protect the American consumers from these very risky instruments if they are not subjected to some basic rules of margin requirements-- capital. Let the Sun shine on them in the exchanges, where people can see the value. The market can determine that. All those things are critical. Derivatives are not a bad thing. They are needed, in fact, to have economic growth and prosperity. The problem isn't using them, it is how they are used and whether they operate in the shadows or in the bright light, where everyone knows what they are and how to value them. That is in our bill as well.

There is a lot more in this legislation, and my intention was not to go through and enumerate every section of the bill--all 12 sections of the bill. My point to my colleagues is: Let us get to this debate. Let us have a chance. If you don't like what I have done on consumer protection, on derivatives, if you don't like what we have done on too big to fail, if you don't like what we have done on other provisions in the bill, then come and bring up amendments. Let's debate them and let's have that ability to at least try to shape this legislation.

At 5 o'clock this afternoon, for the very first time since the crisis hit--other than the credit card bill and a housing bill that we had come out of my Banking Committee--this is the first chance we will have in 18 months, since the worst economic crisis in 80 years--which we are still suffering from. I know the markets are doing better, I know corporations are doing better, I know the stock market is making more money, but for most of us in this Chamber, we know it hasn't quite reached down yet--the economic recovery--to average citizens who have lost their jobs, who have lost their retirement, who have lost the wealth they built up over the years. All that is gone. For a lot of them it is not going to come back. So what we need to do is step up and try to provide some answers the American public is looking for. A lot of the rage and fury and anger we are seeing around other issues happened in no small measure because of what happened to our economy and because of the failure to have regulatory procedures in place, to have cops on the beat to enforce those regulations, to be able to have the early warning system to identify problems before they spun out of control.

Our bill, we believe, steps up and addresses those issues. Again, give us the opportunity to at the very least debate them. We cannot get to the resolution of these matters if the matter is not on floor. Senator Shelby and I have been talking. We talked over the weekend. We talked already this afternoon. We will meet again. Even if we get this done and move to the bill, we have to sit down and work out how to manage all of this, so I thank him again for his willingness to do that. I deeply believe Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama

wants to get to a bill, as I believe do most of my colleagues here, but we cannot ever get there if we do not have that debate.

I did not mean to speak this long but I wanted at least to let my colleagues know how important I believe this issue is. Frankly, I don't think it serves our interests well to be screaming at each other about who cares more about this issue than the other. I think it unfortunate that a number of my Republican friends who I know care about this very much would be branded that somehow they don't care about it to such an extent that they would not even let it get to a debate. They have ideas on this legislation. They want their amendments considered and they don't want to be told you cannot even do that because we do not have some large, sweeping agreement on a bill here.

Senator Shelby and I are very close on some issues that we think we can reach an understanding. Basically we are there in a lot of these matters. I had hoped maybe we would get there before this afternoon, but there is no reason to stop all this, in my view, and not get to the adoption of the motion to proceed.

For all of those reasons, I urge my colleagues at 5 p.m. to vote to proceed to this matter and let us take the next few days to consider this legislation.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire. We are great friends and have worked together on a number of issues over the years together. In a matter of months, both of us will be former Members of this institution. Let me express my gratitude to him for his service over the years and his commitment to these issues.

He has focused his attention on the particular matter coming out of the Agriculture Committee, of which we are all very much aware. That proposal was supported by Democrats as well as, as my colleagues know, a Republican on the committee. As my colleague from Arkansas pointed out and as I am sure we have heard already, there was at least an appearance of bipartisanship on this bill.

The Senator from New Hampshire raises some very important issues. There are a number of our colleagues who have very strong feelings, different than those of my friend and colleague from New Hampshire, as we know; otherwise, it wouldn't have come out of the committee with the vote it did, and, therefore, the subject of a debate in this Chamber. I should, of course, begin by thanking him as a member of the Banking Committee for his participation involving our product in the Banking Committee.

The issue before us in the next few minutes is whether we can have this debate on these issues. Again, as my colleague from Alabama has pointed out on several occasions, we are 80 percent or 90 percent, whatever the number he wants to talk about, there in terms of agreeing to a major part of what our bill proposes. Obviously, we are not all there. You can't ever get ``all there'' in one of these debates, before you have the opportunity to do exactly that, where Members have a chance to be heard, to raise their ideas, a different point of view, and my friend from New Hampshire feels as passionately as do others about their point of view. That is the purpose of having a debate and an institution such as this for that debate to occur.

My hope would be, again, that when this motion to proceed occurs, though some may share the views of my friend from New Hampshire or some may have an alternative view, as is certainly the case in major parts of this bill as I have written it along with my committee members--that is the purpose for which this institution exists, to have that debate. No one Member, no one committee, no handful of Members should even suggest that they have the right to write the legislation without the consideration of others. So there is a difference of opinion on these matters.

I see my colleague from Vermont.

What time is the vote to occur?

The Senator from Vermont better take the next 3 minutes.

Mr. President, let me first begin by saying if Harry Truman were here tonight, he would be very proud of his successor sitting in that chair in the back of this Chamber. I wish to thank my colleague from Missouri for her passion, her eloquence, and her common sense, something that Harry Truman was noted for. My father actually seconded the nomination of Harry Truman at the convention in Philadelphia in 1948, and I cherish the letter thanking my father for that nomination now hanging on the wall of my home--a wonderful personal letter thanking him for that seconded nomination. He didn't have many people in

1948. My father had not been elected at that time. He couldn't find elected officials to stand up for him in 1948. My father had a great relationship with President Truman and was always proud of it. He had a wonderful, direct--some would call it blunt--relationship with him. Frankly, at moments such as this, I think that is what is needed, because as the Senator from Missouri articulated, this is not a complicated moment.

Maybe there are those who don't appreciate how an institution such as this is supposed to operate. It isn't always a pretty process when we engage in debate, with 100 people in this Chamber of different political persuasions, ideologies, and interests. We try to come together as a committee system chosen years ago in order to try and be efficient about our work, so we split up into various groups to consider various matters under certain headings. We sit as Democrats and Republicans, Independents, and try and work our way through a hearing process, listening to experts, gathering informally, talking with one another, reading and educating ourselves, whether it is agriculture or defense or the environment or energy or, in this case, banking, over a period of weeks and months--particularly after a moment in time in our history that nearly brought us to the brink of financial collapse--and then through our collective judgments try and frame to the best of our ability our answers to nagging questions: Why did we get into this mess? What was missing? What did we do wrong? What can we do right? How can we make this better so we don't go through this again, so we don't strangle the system, so we won't lack the creativity and imagination that have been the hallmark of our financial sector and not lose our financial leadership in the world as a nation? How can we harmonize those rules in a global economy today so we don't end up racing to the bottom the various nations who offer the least resistance to some of the practices that brought us to the brink in our own country?

That is basically what we have engaged in for the last 38 or 39 months since I have been chairman of this committee beginning in January of 2007. We didn't agree on everything, but we tried to fashion the best we could. I introduced a proposal back in November. My colleagues said that is a good beginning, but we ought to try some different ideas, so between November and this April, I divided up the committee labors. I asked Democrats and Republicans to take on subject matters because it was a highly complex area of the law dealing with derivatives, dealing with systemic risk, dealing with corporate governance, dealing with consumer protection and other matters; thinking that if we broke it up into groups, Democrats and Republicans would become invested and knowledgeable about the subject matter so we could then frame a proposal that would enjoy the kind of bipartisan support needed to advance the cause.

Well, I wish to compliment my colleagues. Many of them worked very hard. While we didn't achieve a complete understanding in all of these matters, I think the bill reflects a lot of that labor, to such a degree that the proposal we tried to move to today is so fundamentally different than the bill I introduced in November as a result of that labor.

I thank my colleague from Missouri for identifying what occurred a few weeks ago, and that is, of course, the committee markup. Again, my colleagues on the committee made a judgment. They thought that maybe it might be better--there were an awful lot of conflicting amendments, some of which didn't make a lot of sense, quite candidly, from the other side, and I say that respectfully. It was their determination that they would decide to go further in the process without engaging in the amendment process.

So here we are. We need to get to this. I have listened very patiently this evening to some wonderful remarks. I wish to begin with Mark Warner, who spoke earlier this afternoon on the bill and has made a remarkable contribution to this body and to the Banking Committee. He spent about 20 years in the financial services area, so he speaks from a base of knowledge and personal experience. Bob Menendez of New Jersey as well was eloquent in his comments. Senator Klobuchar, and Senator Kaufman, who spoke on this before; Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire as well, and Senator Burris of Illinois, and the Presiding Officer, Sheldon Whitehouse, a good friend who has been invaluable in these debates. We worked together on the health care matter for weeks and months over the last year and, again, his thoughts and ideas on this bill as well I am thankful for; Mark Udall of Colorado, Senator Merkley of Oregon, Al Franken and, of course, Senator McCaskill, who I spoke about as well. It is quite a group here, these new Members, their first or second terms in the Senate. I hope my other colleagues and their staffs were listening this evening. It wasn't just eloquence, it was common sense. They are people who have gone home and listened to their constituents. While we all may not agree--and I can't suggest that every amendment they have talked about is one I would necessarily even be supportive of when the debate begins--I firmly believe every Senator has equal status in this Chamber. Whether you are a chairman or a new Member, you are a Senator, and you deserve the courtesies of this institution. You deserve the history of this institution. You deserve to be heard and respected for your ideas and to be given the time to present them, to debate them, and to have an up-or-down vote on your proposals.

That is how this institution is supposed to operate. I have been here for three decades, and in all of my three decades here, I have never gone through a period such as we have over the last couple of months where we can't even get to debate some of these critical matters.

I am still optimistic. I guess that explains why I have been here for 30 years. I still want to believe this is going to work, that all we have been through is not for naught. As does my colleague from Missouri, I have great respect for my colleagues in this Chamber, Democrats and Republicans, and I have over the years, even with people I have had basic and fundamental disagreements with. I am convinced the majority of us here--an overwhelming majority--want to be associated with passing legislation that we believe will make a significant difference in the economic life of our Nation by at least limiting or prohibiting the kind of activities that led us to the problems and economic difficulties we are in.

I hope in the coming days we will have a chance to move to this bill. I hope sooner rather than later. It may be a matter not well known by many, but we only have by my count about 45 or 50 legislative days left in this session. We are working about 3\1/2\ days a week. We are here for about another 14 or 15 weeks, when you exclude the August break, the break for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and, of course, our departure sometime I presume in early October for the elections. That does not give us a lot of time. Last week we spent the entire week on five nominations that, as I recall--and I may be corrected--passed I believe overwhelmingly when the votes finally occurred. So 5 days on 5 people who were filibustered and delayed. That is all we did last week. That was it: five nominations that were ultimately agreed to--not controversial nominations, just ones where votes were designed to slow the process. I don't think the American people want us to leave our work in this Congress without having addressed this issue.

I will end on this particular note. If, for some reason, Lord forbid, a major financial institution were to begin to fail this evening, we are in no better shape than we were in the fall of 2008. There is an implicit guarantee that such an institution would receive the backing of the them and our economy. Despite what I perceive to be overwhelming objections to that kind of a bailout occurring, that is one issue on which there seems to be unanimity. Yet, if tonight a problem began to emerge, we would be in a similar situation as we were 18 months ago. I don't know of a single Member here who would want that to occur. That issue alone ought to cause every one of us to move to get to this debate. That is a principal part of this legislation. There are other features as well, but that alone ought to be motivation to begin this debate, listen to each other's thoughts and ideas, and to conclude that discussion and debate by passing

this legislation--or at least an amended version of this legislation.

I thank these 12 or 13 colleagues for their patience, their eloquence, their determination, and their conviction. As I get ready to leave this Chamber in the coming months, I will leave with a high degree of confidence that this Chamber will be in good hands. After listening tonight to your words, advice, counsel, and determination, it is with a sense of optimism that we will get this bill done. I am confident of that as I stand before you this evening.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, today I pay tribute to the Pitney Bowes Company on the occasion of its 90th birthday. Headquartered in Stamford, Pitney Bowes has proven time and again that it is a true Connecticut institution, leading the way in innovation and facilitating progress in the mailing industry.

But at least as important as its financial success, is the kind of company that it is. The company is a notably progressive employer, capturing repeated honors for its commitment to diversity. It is regularly cited as among the best places to work for women, African Americans, and Hispanics. It does this because it is right but also because they know it makes smart business sense.

Pitney Bowes is also a corporate leader in health care. It is truly in the forefront of efforts to improve their employee and retiree health while at the same time reducing costs. The examples are numerous. The company learned that forcing people to make large copayments for the medications they need to manage chronic conditions often led employees to skip taking their medicine. This resulted in more trips to the doctor and hospital, higher costs, and more absenteeism. So the company reduced or eliminated employee copayments for these medications. It cost more in the short run, but a lot less in the long run, and the affected employees enjoy greater health and productivity.

The company put healthy food in its cafeterias and charges less for it. There are still lots of choices, some not so healthy, but you have to look harder for the less healthy foods, and you have to pay more. And either way, there are on-site gyms in many facilities.

The company also established on-site clinics to make it easier for employees and retirees to obtain medical care. Indeed, Pitney Bowes went so far as to arrange for specialist doctors, used by many of their employees, to hold office hours on-site. These efforts have been recognized by the Obama administration, and Murray Martin, the chairman and CEO, met with the President last year to discuss the company's programs.

Finally, the company also has a profound commitment to community service, providing funding for education and literacy organizations, and encouraging employees to volunteer their time to a wide variety of causes. This is just another way in which Pitney Bowes has benefited our State.

At a time when many American companies have failed, and others have become deeply troubled, it is with pleasure that I am able to recognize a cutting-edge company with good old fashioned values. Congratulations, Pitney Bowes, on your 90th birthday.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the following members of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the consideration of S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010: Matt Green, Mark Jickling, Deborah Katz, Minhaj Chowdhury, William Fields, and Erika Lee.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 500, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.