Date: 2015-06-03
Speaker: DAVID SCOTT (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Georgia

Mr. Speaker. first of all let me say that. as the gentleman just mentioned. I do serve as the ranking member of the jurisdictional committee on commodities and futures and trading that the CFTC comes under. I say that only to say that I have been in the vineyards on this issue and have been struggling with it and working on it over many. many years. The whole derivatives and commodities and futures markets have changed dramatically. We have had a downfall in our economy because of a lot of activity that was wrong going on on Wall Street and in our financial community. out of which we are now emerging. Mr. Speaker. what is urgent here is the fact that we cannot delay any longer. It is very important for people to understand that no legislation is perfect. I am the first one to say that. This is a glass that looks to be half empty or maybe half full. I look at it as half full. I look at it as an urgent. urgent issue. We have got to get enduser relief. That is the major component of this reauthorization for the CFTC because it is the end usersour manufacturers. our farmers. those who produce the products. those who had nothing to do with the downfall of Wall Street. why should they be consistently held to the same intrinsic regulations and rules that our financial institutions have? We have got to have those financial institutions under strong regulation. but it is important that we move. and it is important meat of this bill that we give enduser relief. Now. I share Mr. MCGOVERNS concerns about the financial situation. but let me just assure everyone. this is a reauthorization piece of legislation. It is not a funding mechanism. That is in the bosom. in the hands of the Committee on Appropriations. and nobody. absolutely nobody. has been a stronger champion. more consistent about getting the CFTC the funding they need. I bring it up all the time. I will still be a champion. but this isnt the bill in which to address that. The other point is this. Mr. Chairman. once we get the funding out of the way. We talked about the costbenefit analysis in this. We worked on it. This bill received bipartisan support in the last session. Mr. MCGOVERN brings up a very good point about possible litigation. We address that by adding a Democratic amendment by Ms. DELBENE that addresses that issue to make sure that there is no litigation. As far as the costbenefit analysis is concerned. Mr. Speaker. it is important that we put the same sort of costbenefit analysis into this agency that the Obama administration has in every one of their executive agencies. Furthermore. it is not a mandate. it is an assessment. It is saying to assess the efficiencies. make sure we do it. and it does not put a requirement that any decision on the costbenefit analysis outweighs one another as a requirement for them to make a decision. Finally. Mr. Speaker. we must pass this bill. and we need to do it quickly because. in section 300 of this billI think it is section 323we address a crucial issue. The European Union is eating our lunch. All across the world. we are losing our stature as the leading financial industry and system in the world. That affects every ounce of our security. We are number one in the world. and it is about time we stand up and ensure that by making sure that we address the European Unions harsh discrimination against our financial institutions abroad. This is particularly true when it comes to our clearinghouses. the standards that they are using. Now. Mr. Speaker. yes. we are dealing with eight foreign countries. but they must have similar regimes. what we call equivalency. Now. why is that important. Mr. Speaker?