A.G. HOLDER SPEAKS AT FOCUS HOPE EVENT

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 

Attorney General Holder Delivers Remarks at the Focus: Hope “Heroes for Hope” Event

~ Friday, June 13, 2014

Thank you, William Foley [Jones], for those kind words – and for your outstanding leadership as CEO of Focus: HOPE.  It’s a pleasure to be back in the great city of Detroit this evening.  It’s a privilege to stand among so many dedicated activists, distinguished leaders, and good friends.  I am particularly honored to share the stage tonight with my friend Senator [Carl] Levin – who has been a lifelong champion for his beloved state and for at-risk Americans across the country.  And I am humbled to join him in accepting the very first ever Heroes for Hope Awards.  Thank you all for this tremendous honor.

As I’ve said in the past, I firmly believe that the measure of any award is found not in the qualifications of the person to whom it’s presented, but in the legacy that it honors. That’s why I could not be prouder to accept an award bearing the name of the extraordinary Eleanor Josaitis – a trailblazer who fought for social justice her entire life; a tireless worker whose enduring contributions are all around us; and a principled leader whose example will continue to guide and inspire us long into the future.

In the wake of the 12th Street Riot of 1967, at a time of distressed neighborhoods and uncertain futures, Eleanor Josaitis and Father William Cunningham came together to found this remarkable organization – taking on the burden and the challenge of building a more just society for their fellow citizens.  In the midst of turmoil and unrest – in the shadow of violence and tragedy – they began the difficult and at times dangerous work of realizing their shared vision: for a metropolitan community where all people may live in freedom, harmony, trust and affection.

More than 45 years later – through her leadership and your commitment – an organization that used to meet in the basement of the Catholic Church of Madonna now stretches over a 40-acre campus along Oakman Boulevard.  The groundbreaking work you perform across this city touches, improves, and in some cases even saves lives. And these innovative efforts have made Focus: HOPE not only known, but celebrated, nationwide.

Through the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, you help sustain mothers, children, and low-income senior citizens who might otherwise struggle to survive.  Through your career training programs, you empower students, at-risk young people, and chronically unemployed or formerly incarcerated individuals to get the skills they need to compete in a tough job market. And through the HOPE Village Initiative, you are helping to bring back parts of Detroit that have been too long forgotten and neglected – fostering supportive and nurturing environments in which people can live, work, and raise their families.

Across the board, these efforts are making a tremendous difference. They’re inspiring others – including me and my colleagues in the Obama Administration – to support similar work throughout the nation.  And – critically – they are only the beginning.

For all the progress you’ve made possible, and the remarkable initiatives you’re leading even as we speak, a great deal remains to be done.  You know as well as anyone that what’s at stake is real – not just here in Detroit, but across America. In far too many communities – many of which are communities of color – young people too easily become trapped in destructive cycles of poverty, incarceration, and crime.  In far too many of these neighborhoods, our children walk a well-worn path from the schoolhouse to the criminal justice system.  And in far too many places – in every state in the Union – men and women and children who work hard and desperately want to succeed are held back by longstanding obstacles and systemic disparities that our nation is oftentimes reluctant to confront.

In many cases, these disparities are subtle.  They do not announce themselves in screaming headlines.  But their effects are both pernicious and pervasive.  They include zero-tolerance school discipline practices that, while well-intentioned and aimed at promoting school safety, affect black males at a rate three times higher than their white peers. They include sentencing policies that, according to a study released by the U.S. Sentencing Commission last year, routinely cause African-American men to receive sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes.  And they include overly restrictive state voting policies and requirements that disproportionately affect young people, the elderly, the poor, and men and women of color – constraining their ability to exercise the right to vote that so many of our forebears have fought, sacrificed, and in some cases given their lives to secure.

We cannot wish these inequities away.  And we must not – and will not – turn a blind eye to their effects.  On the contrary: we must acknowledge and confront each and every one of them.  We must speak openly and candidly about the challenges we face.  And we must take what Eleanor Josaitis liked to call “intelligent and practical action” to bring them to an end.

This is the imperative that has shaped Focus: HOPE’s work, here in Detroit, for over four and a half decades.  And it’s the same ethos, and the same dedication to pragmatic, common-sense solutions, that is guiding the Justice Department’s work to confront the very same conditions at the national level – challenging us to reach farther; impelling us to question the status quo; and driving us to stand up – and to fight, alongside leaders like you and organizations like this one – to ensure that every one of our citizens has an equal opportunity to grow, to learn, and to thrive – as well as a voice and a vote to shape his or her own future.

 As you know, in the wake of last year’s misguided Supreme Court decision invalidating a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Justice Department was denied an essential tool for combating discriminatory voting rules, regulations, and procedures that discourage and disenfranchise.  Yet we remain steadfast in our commitment to ensuring access to the ballot box for all eligible citizens.  The Department is currently challenging voting restrictions in North Carolina and Texas.  And I am personally committed to working with Congressional leaders from both parties, like Senator Levin, to refine, and to strengthen, new voting rights legislation that’s being debated on Capitol Hill.

I want to be very clear: this Administration – and this Department of Justice – will not stand by as the voices of those disproportionately affected by misguided voting restrictions are shut out of the process of self-governance.  After all, this isn’t just about challenging measures that would deprive certain populations of their most basic rights.  It’s about building a society that works for everyone.

At its core, this is the aim that drove me, at the beginning of last year, to launch a targeted Justice Department review of America’s criminal justice system.  Last August, based on the results of that review, I launched a new “Smart on Crime” initiative that’s allowing us to take concrete steps to strengthen the criminal justice system as a whole; to address unwanted disparities wherever they are found; and to forge the more just society that everyone in this country deserves.

In partnership with your outstanding United States Attorney, Barb McQuade, we started by modifying the Department’s charging policies with regard to mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes – so that individuals charged with certain low-level, nonviolent federal drug offenses will face sentences that are appropriate to their individual conduct, rather than excessive mandatory minimums that too often have destabilizing effects on communities of color.  We’re working with Congress to secure legislative changes like the bipartisan Smarter Sentencing Act, which would provide additional discretion in determining sentences that fit individual cases. We’re calling on the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make recent reductions in sentencing guidelines retroactive for some individuals – so that those without significant criminal histories, who are serving time for nonviolent offenses that did not involve weapons, could be eligible to apply for reduced sentences under new rules approved by the Commission in April.

We’re also strengthening diversion programs like drug courts, veterans courts, and community service initiatives – so we can provide alternatives to incarceration for some people and offer treatment and rehabilitation to those who need it.  We’re working to restore justice, fairness, and proportionality to those currently involved with our justice system through an improved approach to the executive clemency process.  And we’re striving to reinforce reentry programs and initiatives from coast to coast – so we can enable formerly incarcerated individuals to return to their communities better prepared to contribute as full and productive members of society.

Beyond these efforts, my colleagues and I are also taking action – alongside other Cabinet agencies, private stakeholders, and advocacy groups – to answer President Obama’s call to ensure that every child has the opportunity to succeed.  We are committed to working with partners like you in cities across America to make sure our children’s futures are determined by their dedication, goals, and potential – not by the circumstances of their birth.

In February, the President took this commitment to a new level by launching a national call to action – known as “My Brother’s Keeper” – that’s bringing together government and private groups to address persistent opportunity gaps that create impassable obstacles for too many of our youth. This Administration-wide initiative represents the latest step in our work to keep young people on the right track; to knock down the barriers they face; and to give them chances to succeed.

Especially this weekend, as we pause to celebrate Father’s Day, we must all be mindful of the responsibility we share to set good examples for our kids – and to inspire, empower, and do right by them. And we must not forget – as you have not forgotten – the unfortunate reality that, for far too many children, the involvement of a loving and attentive parent is not something they can count on.

In too many places, mentors and strong, positive role models are in short supply.  And that’s one of many reasons why – tonight – I’m calling on all Americans to get involved in My Brother’s Keeper – by signing a pledge at “whitehouse.gov/mybrotherskeeper” to become long-term mentors to young people.

This effort will engage Americans from all walks of life to develop sustained mentoring relationships that can play vital roles in the lives of kids of all backgrounds.  Mentoring changes lives – and not just for our young people.  During my tenure as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia – in the mid-1990s – my staff and I “adopted” an elementary school in a low-income, predominantly African-American part of Washington. We found an extraordinary and rewarding sense of purpose in the relationships we developed.  And I was thrilled to become invested in these students’ futures.

This was at a time when Washington, D.C. was a city in crisis.  Some called it the “murder capital” of the United States.  But the challenges we faced were not new – and they are not unique. Over the years, through efforts – including mentoring – to support and invest in those who will shape our future; through extensive community engagement; through federal-local partnerships like the ones we’re seeing here in Detroit; and through the efforts of citizens on the ground and groups like Focus: HOPE – on the streets of Washington, we were able to turn back the tide of violence. And this enabled our citizens to build a vibrant city that’s equipped to overcome whatever challenges it may face – just as you’re doing in the Motor City as we speak.

Thanks to your leadership, Detroit is once again a city on the rise.  There are significant obstacles ahead – and crises that still must be confronted.  This city’s inevitable renaissance will take time.  But thanks to Focus: HOPE and other groups, I know you’re on the right track.  During my most recent visit to Detroit, last September, I announced millions of dollars in federal support to improve public safety and address acute crime problems.  I’m proud to serve as an ally in the work that’s underway.  I’m honored to represent an Administration that’s committed to your success.  And I’m confident that, together, we can ensure that – when the history of this period is written – it will reflect that a new era of positive change began with the people in this room.

Eleanor Josaitis used to say that the success of this organization was based on three things: passion, persistence, and partnerships.  Today, Focus: HOPE’s passion is helping to improve the lives of thousands of people across this city.  Today, your persistence has transformed what was once a small band of committed activists into a nationally-recognized force for change. And today – in this Department of Justice and in this Attorney General – Focus: HOPE has strong and steadfast partners in Washington and throughout the country – who are inspired by your successes, who are dedicated to the same goals, and who are determined to take “intelligent and practical action” to help make the difference we seek.  We are with you, Detroit.

Ultimately, as your history reminds us, these efforts will be successful only if we take responsibility not just for ourselves, but for our families, our neighbors, our friends, and our fellow citizens.  Among them are the future “heroes for hope” that this city, this state, and this country desperately need.

We reaffirm tonight that we share their passion.  We share your persistence.  And we will never stop fighting for the safety, the rights, and the opportunities to which our young men and women are entitled. We will never stop reaching for the better, brighter, and more inclusive future that we all must shape together.  And we will never stop working to achieve the community of freedom, harmony, trust, and affection that Eleanor Josaitis spoke of, that she fought for – and that each of us must help to create.

Thank you, once again, for this tremendous honor.  Thank you for your friendship.  And thank you for all that you do every day.  I am honored to count you as colleagues in the considerable work before us. And I look forward to all that we can, that we must, and that we will accomplish together in the months and years ahead.

THE CLOSING OF THE JP MORGAN LOOPHOLE AND THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF AMERICA

FROM:  U.S. SENATOR CARL LEVIN’S WEBSITE
Why Michigan Needs Us to Close the JPMorgan Loophole
You’ve probably seen the recent news coverage of losses at the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. And you may have seen some of the resulting coverage about bank regulations and something called the “Volcker Rule.” I want to give you my sense of why this is such an important issue to Michigan families and businesses.

JPMorgan is a bank, and it does the things you and I use banks for – it offers checking and savings accounts, makes loans for people to buy cars or houses or to invest in their businesses, and so on. But other parts of JPMorgan get involved in little-known financial markets. That’s where JPMorgan made a very big and complicated bet that now has gone very wrong. When JPMorgan first disclosed the problem, it said the bank would lose at least $2 billion, and those losses are likely to grow.

This is bad news for JPMorgan. But is it bad news for the rest of us? Yes, for two major reasons.

First, the bank accounts that consumers and businesses have deposited at JPMorgan are insured by the federal government. That means if the bank loses so much money that it goes out of business, the FDIC has to cover those bank accounts, and that’s a hit to the federal treasury.

Second, JPMorgan is a very big bank – so big, in fact, that if it went out of business, or even was significantly weakened, it could cause problems for the whole economy.
That’s what happened in 2007 and 2008 during the financial crisis. Large financial institutions made big, risky bets, just like the bets JPMorgan is now losing. Those losses got so big that the institutions either failed or had to be bailed out by taxpayers to keep them from failing. The crisis shut down credit markets and decimated the economy; only the fact that the federal government stepped in with taxpayer dollars to stop the bleeding prevented a full-blown depression.

In 2010, Congress took action to prevent this cycle of big-bank losses and financial crisis. We passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. This historic legislation plugged lots of different holes in our financial system. The provision relevant to the JPMorgan scandal is one that I wrote along with Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Our legislation put into law something known as the “Volcker Rule.” It’s named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has said that banks that hold federally insured deposits, or are so large that their failure would put the economy at risk, should not be allowed to make the kind of risky financial bets that are now costing JPMorgan so much money. Sen. Merkley and I fought hard during the Wall Street reform debate to put that principle into law, and despite lots of opposition from Wall Street, we succeeded.

The law we wrote, if enforced, would have prevented these trades. But the battlefield moved from Congress to the federal agencies that must write detailed rules to implement our law and then enforce those rules. JPMorgan and other banks lobbied those agencies to delay the law and to put a loophole in the rules that would allow these kinds of risky bets. A preliminary draft of the rules included just such a loophole.

Sen. Merkley and I and other members of Congress are pushing back. We want to strengthen the spines of our regulatory agencies and make sure that the final rules, due in a few weeks, eliminate the “JPMorgan loophole” that would allow banks to continue making risky bets.

Financial crises start on Wall Street, but they hit Michigan hard. The last crisis came at the worst moment for Michigan, at a vulnerable time for our auto companies. It hit us when we had already been suffering tough economic times. Tens of thousands of Michiganians lost jobs, homes or businesses because of the last crisis.

Now that Michigan is bouncing back, we can’t let another crisis sparked by risky bets on Wall Street put us all in danger. I’ll keep working with my colleagues to make sure that rules are in place to help prevent another crisis.

SENATOR CARL LEVIN'S SPEECH ON INVEST IN AMERICA ACT

FROM:  SENATOR CARL LEVIN’S NEWSLETTER
Senate Floor Speech on INVEST in America Act
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Mr. President, there is no state that has suffered more from the job losses of the Great Recession than the state of Michigan. You do not have to ask a Michiganian twice if he or she believes Congress should take action to increase the speed of the jobs recovery. I am ready to consider any legislation that promises more opportunity for the workers of Michigan and the nation.

Unfortunately, the legislation the House has sent to us, promoted as a job creation bill, is no such thing. In the name of job creation, the House bill would severely weaken investor and taxpayer protections in the nation’s securities laws. In the name of putting Americans to work, the House bill would hand a series of special favors to influential special interest groups.

The House bill reflects a disturbing failure to learn the lessons of the recent and all-too-painful past. It defies belief that after the worst financial crisis in generations, a crisis brought on by the failure to effectively police our financial markets, Congress would consider removing vital obstacles to fraud and abuse.

The House bill would take a series of steps that would undermine the integrity of the financial markets. We should not go down that road, and we need not. Working with Senator Reed, Senator Landrieu, Senator Brown and others, I have participated in an effort to make common-sense changes that would give small, innovative companies more tools to access the capital they need. But we do that without putting the stability of our economy and the interests of American investors and taxpayers at risk. Let me lay out some of the problems with the House bill and how the Reed-Landrieu-Levin amendment would address them.

The House bill would lower barriers to fraud that are now present in so-called “Regulation A” stock offerings. These are offerings that are exempt from SEC registration requirements. The House bill would expose retail investors, those with no expertise or resources to assess the risks of participating in the unregulated market, to massive potential fraud and abuse. It does not even require that companies making offerings under Regulation A provide audited financial statements. The Regulation A process may be appropriate for very small companies, but the House bill provides few meaningful limits to its use. Instead, the House bill would allow even large companies to avoid meaningful ovI’ve worked with my colleagues to fix this problem by ensuring that these offerings are limited to only once every three years, and that investors in these offerings get an accurate picture of the company’s finances through audited financial statements.

In the name of giving smaller companies greater access to the initial public offering market, the House bill would create a new class of company, called an “emerging growth company,” and would strip from investors in such companies more than a dozen important investor protections.

Some of these protections involve transparency.  The House bill would weaken corporate governance provisions that we enacted less than two years ago in the Dodd-Frank Act, including disclosures on executive pay. The House bill would exempt these companies from having to comply with changes to accounting standards. It would repeal the protections put in place after the dotcom bubble burst. These protections require financial firms to separate research analysts who advise clients on whether to invest in initial public offerings from sales teams. The House bill provides that companies with up to $1 billion in annual revenues would not have to get an outside auditor to check their internal controls.  So, what happens if one of these companies is cooking the books?  Who’s going to catch it?

We learned with Enron and Worldcom why we need meaningful checks on how companies prepare their financial statements. The vast majority of financial restatements –corrections to bad information given to the investing public – are made by medium and small companies. Investors in these companies should have the confidence that the financial statements on which they base their decisions are accurate.
 
These provisions of the House bill are bad enough, given the chronic problem in financial markets with poor and misleading financial disclosure. But to make matters worse, the bill would open this collection of loopholes to companies with up to $1 billion in annual revenues – a level that would include well over 80% of all IPOs. Financial regulators, associations of individual investors, many of the largest pension plans in the country, securities experts, and the Chamber of Commerce all have raised alarm bells about that $1 billion threshold as well as the many problems that would follow from the House bill.
ersight year after year.

Just this week the SEC took a series of enforcement actions against fraudsters seeking to victimize investors in pre-IPO offerings. As one SEC official noted: “The newly emerging secondary marketplace for pre-IPO stock presents risk for even savvy investors.” The House bill threatens to bring the same level of risk and instability that plagues pre-IPO trading to the IPO market itself, changes that, rather than building support for IPOs, might make the IPO market so risky that it dampens investor interest.

The amendment some of us have been working on would accept the premise that some small, newly public companies could benefit from somewhat relaxed requirements as they adjust to the public marketplace. But our amendment would limit these benefits to smaller companies, those with under $350 million in annual revenues. And our amendment would not exempt these companies from nearly so many critical investor protections. For example, we would not remove protections designed to protect the integrity of the research that’s available to investors. Nor would it exempt them from any new accounting rules. Nor would it exempt them from requirements regarding important executive pay disclosures and shareholder input on executive pay packages. Our amendment would provide flexibility for smaller, newly public companies to adjust to the public markets, but leave in place the investor protections that ensure our public markets remain the best in the world.

The House bill would also allow companies – or fraudsters posing as legitimate companies – to solicit investors directly through the Internet. As written, the House bill would offer investors almost no protection from fraudulent schemes and fake investment opportunities. Although these websites (often called “intermediaries” or “funding portals”) are the only entities capable of making sure that a company seeking to sell stock on its site is real, the House exempts them from any real regulation or liability. And the same is true with the issuing company. Labor groups, seniors organizations, regulators, and securities experts all warn us that this measure is an open invitation to fraud. One group calls it the “boiler room legalization act.”

So we have many problems with these provisions of the House bill. But we also believe that so-called “crowdfunding” – in which small start-ups can access pools of capital from small investors, usually over the Internet – has the potential to provide opportunity for truly small businesses to get additional capital they need to grow.  That’s why we build upon the work of Senators Merkley and Bennet to create a platform for raising money through the Internet, but we make sure that it has the necessary investor and consumer protections.

In fact, legitimate crowdfunding sites have made it clear to us that they, like us, are concerned about the House bill, and they too want the additional protections we provide. Our amendment makes sure that funding portals are subject to meaningful regulation, and that the companies that use them to raise capital are too. Our amendment would — unlike the House bill — require comprehensive disclosures to investors about the company and the risks of such investments. If this new way of investing in small companies is to succeed, then investor protections like the ones embodied in the Merkley-Bennet provisions, which we included in our amendment, are vital to giving investors the confidence to participate.

The House bill also attempts to remove regulations on so-called private offerings. By allowing issuers of private offerings to market their stock to the general public – on billboards and the Internet, in visits to retirement homes or late-night television ads – this provision would dangerously lower our defenses against fraud. We’ve seen this movie before – in the 1990s, regulators lowered the barriers to general solicitation for private offerings, and within years reversed their error because of widespread fraud and abuse.
Some have complained that the existing restrictions on solicitation for private offerings are too narrow and impede business’s access to capital. That seems unlikely given the nearly $1 trillion a year in private offering activity. If there are yet more worthy investments going unfunded because of unneeded investor protections, the SEC’s regulations should be updated for the internet age.

The Reed-Landrieu-Levin amendment would direct the SEC to revise its rules to allow companies to offer and sell shares to accredited investors.  It then directs the SEC to make sure that those who offer or sell these securities take reasonable steps to verify that the purchasers actually are accredited investors.  It requires the SEC to revise its rules to make sure that these sales tactics are appropriate. There will be no billboards or cold calls to senior living centers under our amendment. I wish I could say the same about the House bill.

There is little evidence that the reduced investor protections and invitations to fraud in the House bill will make any meaningful contribution to job growth. We do not have one study on any of the provisions of the House bill establishing that even one job would be created. If such a study existed, I’m sure we would have seen it. The simple reality is that repealing federal securities laws—and that is clearly the intent of the House bill—does not create jobs.

In fact, a former chief accountant of the SEC was quoted recently as saying this jobs bill was no jobs bill at all. He said: “This would be better known as the bucket-shop and penny-stock fraud reauthorization act of 2012.”

Taken together, these and other provisions in the House bill send a false message: that in order to grow the economy, we must subject our senior citizens to more fraud, we must put pension funds and church endowments at greater risk of fleecing, we must create more threats to the financial stability of American families.. The America I know and believe in is capable of growing its economy without these unnecessary risks.

Indeed, it is fraud and financial abuse that have repeatedly brought our economy to its knees. We opened the door to fraud and abuse in the savings and loan industry, and precipitated a crisis that destroyed 750 financial institutions, cut the number of new homes built in this country by nearly half, and devastated entire communities. We dropped the barriers to fraud through financial statements and in swaps markets, opening the door to the predations of the so-called “smartest guys in the room” – the criminal executives of Enron. We lowered the barriers to heedless risk and conflicts of interest in the financial system, and paved the road to the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.

Over the last ten years, on a bipartisan basis, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, has held hearing after hearing and issued report after report on the Enron crisis, accounting and securities fraud, and the more recent subprime mortgage crisis. Our investigations exposed how some American corporations, their accountants, and banks were willing to dupe investors and, even after their wrongdoing came to light, walk away with huge paychecks, while workers, investors, and the American economy at large paid the price.  Enron was the seventh largest U.S.

corporation before its crash bankrupted employees, pensions, and investors. It lied about its earnings and did so with the help of its accountants and banks.  Goldman Sachs sold securities through public and private offerings that didn’t fully inform investors about what they were buying.  The wrongdoing our subcommittee has uncovered over the years is as powerful reminder that investors deserve protection against abuses when they invest their hard-earned dollars in U.S. capital markets.

There is a rising wave of concern among market experts that the House legislation’s effect might be precisely the opposite of its supporters’ stated intent; that instead of boosting the ability of companies to find capital so they can grow, these changes would hurt the market for investing in new companies by making that market too risky. If we remove meaningful transparency and fraud safeguards, SEC Chairman Schapiro wrote just a few days ago, “investors will lose confidence in our markets, and capital formation will ultimately be made more difficult and expensive.”

The question for the champions of ever-lower regulatory barriers is this: Did those rollbacks of regulatory protections help our economy grow? Did they create jobs? Ask a family that was wiped out in the financial crisis. Ask an investor who lost everything to Enron. Ask one of the 8.6 million American workers who lost their jobs in a financial crisis created on Wall Street, one we have yet to fully overcome.

Mr. President, in November of 1999, this body debated another piece of financial legislation, one whose supporters claimed would lead to boundless new economic opportunities for our country. That bill repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, lowered barriers to concentration in the financial industry, and removed the wall that had separated investment banking from commercial banking since the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Senator Byron Dorgan came to this floor and issued a warning. “It may be that I am hopelessly old-fashioned,” he said. “But I just do not think we should ignore the lessons learned in the 1930s. … I also think we will, in 10 years time, look back and say: We should not have done that because we forgot the lessons of the past.”

Ten years after Senator Dorgan’s remarks, almost to the day that he predicted, America’s economy hit rock-bottom, with the lowest mark of employment during the Great Recession.

Old fashioned sounds pretty good these days. I hope to be as old fashioned as Senator Dorgan, who warned us that lowering the barriers that protect us from financial catastrophe can only destroy jobs. I hope the Senate will turn away from the House bill that threatens fraud, abuse and renewed crisis, and embrace reforms that give our innovative companies the chance to compete without endangering investor confidence or the stability of our economy.