Senator Warner and Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker have made several appearances together in recent days to discuss their bipartisan partnership on Wall Street reform. As colleagues on the Banking Committee, Senators Warner and Corker have worked-out a bipartisan proposal to address the notion of "too big to fail" and end taxpayer-financed bailouts of Wall Street firms.
Their proposal is included in Senator Dodd's financial regulatory reform draft legislation, which was introduced earlier this week.
The proposal would create a Systemic Risk Council, chaired by the Treasury Secretary. The Council will have responsibility for watching-out for the well-being of our financial markets, investors, consumers and the financial industry by monitoring and detecting financial risks to the economy, and recommending specific actions to curb the risk.
Their agreement also ends "too big to fail" by setting in place requirements on large failing companies to wind-down through bankruptcy or "orderly liquidation." That way, there should be no expectation that taxpayers would help to prop them up. Instead, potentially risky firms would be required to pay into a dissolution fund to cover the cost of potential failures.
In an interview with the Fox Business Channel, Senators Warner and Corker both said they will continue working together to try to improve the legislation and incorporate even more bipartisan ideas. See excerpts of the interview below, left:
During the Fox Business interview, Senator Warner said:
I desperately want to make sure we end up with a bipartisan bill here, because this is too important of a solution set to be viewed as partisan. We hope to put in place rules of the road for the next 30 years, and I think that's going to be better done in a bipartisan way. ... We've now got a workable item to work through the process.
Today, both senators spoke with Bloomberg TV's Peter Cook about their joint efforts (above, right). Following the broadcast of the interview, Bloomberg's Peter Cook described why he believes the Warner/Corker partnership has worked so well:
They're both businessmen. ... They've both operated businesses. They know what the reality is out there. Also, they're centrists. They still feel like there is bipartisan, middle ground to be found on regulatory reform.