WASHINGTON – A sustainable approach to addressing the financial crisis on Wall Street is likely to come before Congress next week, Congressman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) said this morning.

Putnam was party to discussions throughout the day and evening Thursday between congressional leaders and White House officials. Speaking on the Bloomberg television network, Putnam said, “This is an all-hands-on-deck approach.”  And he expects Congress to set aside partisanship to enact a comprehensive approach to restore economic confidence.  Below are excerpts of Putnam’s remarks:

“They (the Administration) have received, I think, an early sign of approval on the approach, which is a comprehensive approach.  The staffs are working together to iron out the details, which are critically important on something this serious and this sensitive.”

“Our goal here is to restore confidence in the markets here at home and from our international investors, and to make sure that the greed that took over Wall Street doesn’t turn into a panic that reaches Main Street and erodes people’s pensions, their savings, their retirements and their home values.”

“Greed cannot be allowed to move forward unchecked.  There is an appropriate role for the Fed as a regulator, the Chairman of the Fed as a regulator, obviously an appropriate role for the SEC.  We’ve seen the technology evolve into very sophisticated financial instruments in a very short period of time where the regulators did not keep up. The hedge funds became the froth on top of this exuberance. And we’re seeing an outdated regulatory system that needs to be brought up to speed.”

“In the meantime, the action that needs to be taken is a comprehensive one to restore that confidence and make sure that workers across America, families across America understand that this is an all-hands-on-deck approach.  We are not going to let politics interfere and have this turn into some blame game over who can get a leg up.  All of us need to move forward together to restore that confidence.”

Putnam is chairman of the Republican Conference, the third ranking member of his party’s leadership in the House of Representatives, and a member of the Committee on Financial Services. Since 2001, Putnam has represented Florida’s 12th Congressional District, which includes most of Polk County and portions of Hillsborough and Osceola counties. 

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