Today, House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway sent a letter to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Timothy Massad requesting he not move forward on any controversial regulations during the final months of President Obama’s administration. In the letter, he asked Massad to refrain from “pushing through controversial regulations,”; adding, “While we may not agree on which regulations are overreaching or unnecessary, we should agree that the American people ha...
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Today, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing to examine the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) proposed rule, Regulation Automated Trading (Reg AT). Members heard from witnesses with expertise in automated trading and risk management. “Over the past three decades, computers have revolutionized the way we do business – including how trading is conducted in financial markets. Computer networks have slowly replaced traditional trading pits, often eliminating the human element al...
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Remarks as prepared: Good Morning, and welcome to the Committee’s hearing on Regulation Automated Trading. Over the past three decades, our financial markets have been quietly revolutionized by computers. Sometimes called the “electronification” of markets, computer networks have slowly replaced the traditional trading pits. Electronic markets allow computers to seamlessly input orders, giving rise to trading directed and conducted entirely by computer algorithms. Electronic markets and algorith...
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Today, House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-TX) offered remarks on the floor of the House entering into the Congressional Record a literature review authored by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Office of the Chief Economist (OCE). The Committee obtained this literature review as part of a routine oversight request following up on a report issued by the CFTC's Office of Inspector General (OIG) in February 2016. The literature review, which provides an analys...
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Remarks as prepared: Good morning. Thank you for joining the Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit Subcommittee for our last installment of our three-part hearing series examining the implementation of the derivatives market reforms envisioned by world leaders following the 2008 global financial crisis. Today, we will wrap up the series with a focus on clearing and trade execution requirements. Throughout this series, we’ve reiterated many times that our goal is not an indictment of the reform...
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Today, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing to examine the oil and gas industry’s impact on rural America. While the committee focuses primarily on the economic impacts of agriculture, many rural communities that depend upon agriculture also rely upon the economic activity generated by energy production. Today’s hearing allowed committee Members to focus on upstream oil and gas production and the associated economic effects. Members heard from a panel of witnesses whose rural communiti...
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Remarks as prepared for delivery: Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing. This committee is charged with the responsibility of representing rural America and the economies that drive those communities. As such, we will continue to diligently review the farm economy, especially given the recent 56 percent drop in net farm income and the hard times that inevitably come along with that. I, along with many other Members of this Committee have often stated that agriculture is the backbone of ru...
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Today, the House Agriculture Committee completed its two-day examination of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) organization and program administration. Over the past two days, members of the committee heard from 25 undersecretaries, administrators, and other department officials across USDA’s seven mission areas, on a variety of topics, which included an accounting for each area’s purpose and goals, programs administered, and annual budget. Today’s panel of witnesses included USDA offic...
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Today, the Committee on Agriculture began Part I of a two-day hearing series examining U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organization and program administration. USDA officials from the Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services (FNCS), Food Safety (FS), and Rural Development (RD) mission areas served as witnesses. This hearing series follows a similar series the committee held with USDA last fall. By setting aside two days each year to focus on examining each of USDA’s seven mission areas and th...
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Remarks as prepared: Today and tomorrow, we have before us most of the undersecretaries of the Department of Agriculture. Each of these witnesses is responsible for an important mission area within USDA. Accompanying our witnesses are administrators who manage agencies and programs within these larger mission areas. These folks lead the network of nearly 100,000 USDA employees who carry out the laws that this committee works to enact. We welcome each of you here today. I know that preparing for ...
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