June 10, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 96 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Page S3276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Nominations

  Madam President, examples continue to pour in about the big 
difference that well-qualified individuals the Senate has been 
confirming are making in government service.
  Last autumn, the Senate got the Securities and Exchange Commission up 
and running at full steam when we confirmed the fifth member. Just last 
week, we saw the Commission take a major step forward thanks to those 
Commissioners and to the leadership of Jay Clayton, its Chairman.
  In the area of investor protections, as with many other subjects, the 
legacy of the Obama administration was messy and ineffective.
  President Obama's Department of Labor decided to unilaterally go even 
further than Dodd-Frank in regulating the advisers and broker-dealers 
who sell to investors. The regulation they put in place was a 
confusing, garbled attempt at imposing a single, one-size-fits-all 
standard on all kinds of businesses where it was not necessarily the 
best approach. It was wrong on the merits and, even apart from that, it 
was implemented in a half-baked and ineffective way.
  Now Chairman Clayton and his colleagues are getting back on track. 
The SEC has carefully crafted a tailored new rule to make sure brokers 
really act in the best interests of their clients. There are new 
standards for disclosing conflicts of interest, new standards for 
transparency in fees, and new prohibitions against shady sales tactics.
  In short, the new rule seems to be a case study in regulation done 
the right way, a careful, prudent step that will actually protect the 
American people.
  This will not necessarily make front-page news across the Nation but 
just another example of the way we are literally turning the page on 
the Obama administration's failed policies and taking a smarter, better 
direction for the good of the country with outstanding nominees and 
sound decision making.