Promising continued scrutiny of the issue, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) withdrew his amendment Tuesday to limit the Commodity Futures Trade Commission's wrong-headed and costly enforcement of regulations of the use of derivatives by end-users, an important issue for companies that rely on these tools to manage risk.

Crapo and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) instead engaged in a discussion on the Senate floor that highlighted this important issue. Sen. Crapo explained:

This amendment prohibits any funds from being used by the CFTC to promulgate any final rules under title VII until the agency substantiates that those rules are economically beneficial, adhere to congressional intent, provide end users with a clear exemption from margin requirements, and set clear bounds on the overseas application of derivatives requirements.

While there is not yet a bipartisan agreement to go forward with this amendment at this time, there is a bipartisan list of issues that regulators need to address. They need to protect end users from burdensome margin requirements. Margin requirements proposed by regulators currently ignore the clear intent of Congress not to impose them on end users. They need to limit the extraterritorial application of title VII per congressional intent in sections 722 and 764. This is also being addressed in the House of Representatives. They need to encourage greater coordination and harmonization between the SEC, the CFTC, and international regulators to seek broad harmonization of cross-border issues, and they need to ensure that the new rules are subject to robust and quantitative assessment of the costs and benefits.

The regulators involved in our rulemaking process should know that Congress is going to closely monitor how they proceed, and we expect a change in course. If we don’t get that change in course, then we will need to return to this kind of legislation.

We appreciate the Idaho Senator's pulling the reins on a regulator that is overstepping its authority (under Dodd-Frank) and ignoring congressional intent, creating, dare we say it, regulatory uncertainty. Business Roundtable and other members of the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users supported the amendment (Oct. 20 letter) and will continue to push the CFTC to practice regulatory restraint, limiting its new regulations to those areas clearly identified by Congress.