Commodity Futures Trading Commission Funding Cuts

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, the American middle class wants Washington to create jobs and put unemployed people out of work back to work.

But here we go again. The Republicans show that they aren't listening and that they don't really care about protecting the middle class. Today, Republicans are going to spend their time in Washington helping speculators, speculators inflate gas prices and food prices, making sure that oil companies keep getting unnecessary tax breaks.

The Agriculture appropriations bill to be considered today by the House is just another part of the Republican agenda to reward millionaires while leaving everybody else behind.

Tucked away in the end of the appropriations bill we'll consider today is a provision that would cut money for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Now what is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? It's a cop on the beat. It's a cop on the beat whose job it is to make sure that the speculators don't drive up the price of commodities like gasoline, like food, like wheat, things like that.

And at a time when the middle class is being squeezed by high gas prices, this is the wrong time to side with the millionaires and billionaires and against the American people.

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