C-SPAN is forever.
Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey has tried to distance himself from derivatives, which he once traded, but video of a 2000 House floor debate found by Democrats shows him advocating for more de-regulation of the exotic financial products.
Toomey urged the House to pass the Commodities Exchange Act because, he said, it would "eliminate most of the cloud of legal and regulatory uncertainty that has shadowed" derivatives since their invention. In fact, he went on to express his hope that the Senate would tweak the bill to "allow greater flexibility in the electronic trading" of over-the-counter derivatives.
Though Toomey never traded in the kind of derivatives that are blamed the most in the financial collapse of 2008 that sparked the current recession - credit-default swaps of mortgage debt - Democrats are hoping to portray him as a champion of Wall Street who is out of touch with regular folks.
UPDATE: The commodites exchange act was overwhelmingly approved - 377 House members voted for it, including 181 Democrats. Financial de-regulation was a point of broad bi-partisan consensus until the crash of 2008. President Clinton signed the commodities bill into law on Dec. 21, 2000.
