Financial Stability Oversight Council Reform Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HECK of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Waters.

Mr. Speaker, this is a strange day. I almost feel like we are existing in parallel universes. On the one hand, today--today--is the deadline for the Rules Committee to meet to structure debate on a budget resolution. But it is clear by now that there will be no floor consideration of a resolution today or tomorrow or the day after or very possibly ever.

Instead, the headlines in Capitol Hill news publication after publication are all about how the appropriations process has descended into ``chaos.'' ``Chaos.'' So we have that on the one hand.

Then on the other hand we have a bill on the floor that subjects the Financial Stability Oversight Council to that very same chaotic appropriations process.

On the one hand, the appropriations process is in chaos. On the other hand, this bill moves valuable, critical, and important economic regulators into that same chaotic appropriations process. Have you ever heard the expression: Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?

When the majority talks about putting agencies in the appropriations process, I hear a lot of high-minded talk and rhetoric--and appropriately so--about the Constitution and our Founding Fathers.

How would Alexander Hamilton have funded the FSOC? Frankly, I think it is great to ask those questions. I ask myself those questions every day.

Everyone who takes the oath of office and has the privilege to stand here ought to keep grasping for the answers to those questions. And how appropriate this week.

Yesterday was Thomas Jefferson's birthday. So I was going back and rereading something about him, his philosophies and contributions. Absolutely. We should all do that.

But we also have a responsibility to stay anchored in reality, to lay down laws for the country and the Congress we have--the Congress we have--not the country and Congress we all wish we had.

We live in an era of huge, complex financial markets, and we have learned again and again and again that those markets fail, sometimes wiping out $13 trillion in net worth in this country in a month. That is devastating. Somebody has to be looking at the whole system and working to shore up its weaknesses.

We live in an era of a broken appropriations process. It is chaotic. Today's Congress is not Madison's perfect vision.

Regardless of the ideals of article I of the Constitution, the reality today is that moving an agency into a chaotic appropriations process is to subject that agency to that very same chaos, to uncertain funding, to the risk of shutdown and backroom deals.

So let's find a budget resolution, fix the appropriations process, and then maybe, just maybe, we can talk about moving agencies into the appropriations process.

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Mr. HECK of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I will wrap up quickly. I thank the ranking member for the time.

But, for now, my friends, ladies and gentlemen, FSOC is too important. The risk of financial crisis is too great. Have we not learned that lesson, what happens?

To subject the only crisis prevention regulator to the dangers of a chaotic appropriations process--and that is what we have, it cannot be denied--is the last thing we can do.

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