I also thank Secretary Paulson. I heard recently people expressing perhaps this is some sort of a power grab by the Secretary of the Treasury. This man will be out of office in 3 months or so after the next President is sworn into office. That is the last thing, I know, on his mind. He has worked tirelessly. He deserves our thanks for his patience, for explaining to some of us at all hours what it is he thinks is necessary we do.
This is important to all Americans, but I also understand their anger and frustration. While I was in Florida over the last 24 hours, I was speaking with an old friend, a schoolteacher. He is not someone who is involved in banking and finance. He said: This bothers me. I pay my bills. All my life, if I borrow money from a bank, nobody bails me out. What is going on? What are we going to do?
We talked about it. I explained to him the difficulties of our financial markets at this point in time. His last words to me were: Go up there and do something. Get something done. He understood, as I hope all Americans will come to understand, this is a very difficult moment, but it
is a moment from which we cannot shrink.
How we got here, we could talk about that for hours, and we will. When we come back in January, we have to pick the bones. We have to go over how we got to this position and what we can do to revamp the regulatory scheme to make sure we don't get into a situation such as this again, and do what we can to revamp the regulatory situation which dates back to almost now a century. It needs to be reanalyzed and put in place in a different way.
There is something important this bill mentions too, which is mark to market. I spoke with many local bankers in Florida, small bankers, guys lending money to keep small businesses in business. They were very concerned about the mark-to-market accounting rules. We know that is in the purview of the SEC. Here it is talked about and encouraged to reassert the authority of the SEC to look into it. I know it will be a big difference to small banks struggling in Florida with liquidity to have the capital that every-day Floridians need to make their lives work.
I am also encouraged that we have strong oversight over the Secretary of the Treasury. There is an oversight board. I also understand and agree with Chairman Dodd that, in fact, there are strong provisions in this bill that are going to prevent executive compensation abuses that none of us want to see happen as a result of what we are doing today.
The fact is, whether it is floor plans for car dealers, whether it is the car loans for those who would buy the cars, whether it is someone who is there to purchase a house but cannot get the money, we cannot get the housing market going again if there is no liquidity, if there is no credit; whether it is a line of credit for a small business.
I have another anecdote. A small businessman said: I always paid my bills. I was never late with a payment. I go to the bank to exercise my line of credit, and they tell me I can't. He now has to stop his plans. He can't do what he was planning to do in his business to expand it, grow it, buy new equipment, simply because the bank said you have done everything right; we just can't lend you the money because we don't have it ourselves. That is the situation with which we are dealing, providing the safeguards the American people expect us to do.
We have to come back in January to do regulatory reform, to do oversight of what we are doing now, which needs to be done repeatedly, congressional oversight over how this is being implemented, to make sure we provide the American people the confidence and the comfort of knowing that while we got into a real mess and while Wall Street got us into this mess, the fact is this is impacting every-day Americans, this is impacting Floridians of every walk of life.
To fulfill our responsibilities every now and then, a tough vote has to be taken. This is a tough vote. It isn't easy. A lot of people have great angst about it. I understand their angst, and I share their anger. At the same time, we are here to solve problems and get business done, working in a bipartisan manner, coming together.
This is a great country. We are going to come through this crisis, through this moment, and we will be stronger for it. In the meantime, we have to do the right thing. The bill may not be perfect, but the times will not wait for tomorrow. The times will not wait for us to have a perfect bill. We have no choice but to act, and we need to act now.
I encourage my colleagues to support this bill. We need a strong bipartisan vote to send a message to the House of Representatives, to send a message to America, that the Senate is going to stand strong and do the right thing for the American people."