I thought the hearing was good insofar as it’s setting the predicate for going into regulatory reform, which I think both the witnesses agreed is necessary. And of course, the Secretary discussed some of their recommendations from the Study Group. But our biggest problem today was that the session is now running out and the Congress is about to adjourn. And [given] the distance between now and March or April of next year, with the economy in this unstable position it’s in, [we need to consider] whether or not we should take any action to give emergency powers to bridge this hiatus. I’m not sure. I’m not sure they’re sure of the answer. But I thought there was a tacit agreement between those of us on the Committee [on Financial Services], the Secretary, and the Chairman that we didn’t want to quite discuss that question and those eventualities in public in light of what’s happened in the market. So we’ll take those up in a more confidential setting.

There is definitely a different philosophical position between the two parties [on market regulation] and has been for years, but I think that to a large extent—on my Subcommittee and, I think, on the Committee as a whole—this year and last year we’ve displayed an uncanny ability to have agreement on many of the issues we take up. We may not ultimately agree philosophically, but we work ourselves to a consensus. And so it’s been very informative. Yesterday I brought four bills for markup, and we didn’t even have an amendment or a vote on any of the material. We actually worked the bills out to the agreement of all the interested parties. We’ve made strong attempts to do that, and I think we’re going to continue to do it. And I made that point with the Secretary and the Chairman when I asked my question. We’ve got to put partisanship aside with this economy and with the unstable position that it’s in. We can’t afford to play politics as usual without putting the economy at great risk.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Politics, Economy/Budget .