Bill Text: VA SJR22 | 2014 | Regular Session | Prefiled
Bill Title: Banking; Congress to enact legislation to reinstate separation of commercial & investment functions.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Republican 1-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2014-02-07 - Passed by indefinitely in Rules by voice vote [SJR22 Detail]
Download: Virginia-2014-SJR22-Prefiled.html
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14102050D WHEREAS, an effective monetary and banking system is essential to the proper functioning of the economy; and WHEREAS, an effective monetary and banking system must function in the public interest without bias; and WHEREAS, the federal Banking Act of 1933, commonly referred to as the Glass-Steagall Act, protected the public interest in matters dealing with the regulation of commercial and investment banking, in addition to insurance companies and securities firms; and WHEREAS, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, permitting members of the financial industry to exploit the financial system for their own gain in disregard of the public interest; and WHEREAS, many financial industry entities were saved by the United States Treasury at a cost of billions of dollars to American taxpayers; and WHEREAS, within the hundreds of pages of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, there are no prohibitions that prevent "too big to fail" financial services organizations from investing in or undertaking substantial risks involving trillions of dollars of derivative contracts; and WHEREAS, the American taxpayers continue to be at risk for the next round of bank failures, as enormous risks are undertaken by financial services conglomerates; and WHEREAS, in the 113th Congress, Representatives Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Walter Jones (R-NC) introduced H.R. 129, the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013, to revive the separation between commercial banking and the securities business that had been required under the Glass-Steagall Act; and in the Senate, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced S. 985 and Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Angus King (I-ME), John McCain (R-AZ), and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced S. 1282 to parallel the House bill; and WHEREAS, the Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013, H.R. 129, has 78 cosponsors, including Representative Mike Coffman (R-CO), chairman of the Congressional Balanced Budget Amendment Caucus; and WHEREAS, Glass-Steagall has widespread national support from organizations such as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the American Federation of Teachers, and the International Association of Machinists, as well as from prominent economic and business leaders including Thomas Hoenig of the FDIC, Sanford Weill, former CEO of Citigroup, economist Luigi Zingales, the New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the LA Times, and many others; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED by the Senate, the House of Delegates concurring, That the Congress of the United States be urged to enact legislation that would reinstate the separation of commercial and investment banking functions that were in effect under the Glass-Steagall Act (Banking Act of 1933); and, be it RESOLVED FURTHER, That federal legislation based on the Glass-Steagall precedent is needed in order to prohibit commercial banks and bank holding companies from investing in stocks, underwriting securities, or investing in or acting as guarantors to derivative transactions, in order to prevent American taxpayers from being called upon to fund hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out financial institutions; and, be it RESOLVED FINALLY, That the Clerk of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and the members of the Virginia Congressional Delegation so that they may be apprised of the sense of the General Assembly of Virginia in this matter. |
