(Photos by Andrew Loeb)
As congressional committees gather information for pending legislation, U-M faculty have been at the forefront in helping inform these important decisions.
This week, professors Jeremy Kress of Michigan Ross and Adam M. Finkel of the School of Public Health were on Capitol Hill testifying on financial industry oversight and worker safety, respectively.
Kress spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs about proposals to de-emphasize or eliminate the designation for “systemically important non-bank financial institutions,” such as insurance and mortgage companies.
He warned that such a move would be misguided and could open up the financial system to the kinds of problems that roiled the economy in 2008.
“It is critical that FSOC retain nonbank SIFI designations as a viable regulatory tool,” Kress said in his written testimony. “Recent proposals to de-emphasize or eliminate nonbank SIFI designations—either formally or through onerous procedural requirements—ignore the unique ways in which SIFI designations can prevent catastrophic nonbank failures.”
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Over in the House, Finkel told the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee that he’s concerned about how the EPA’s recent interpretation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) could put workers at risk.
Finkel is the former director of health standards for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and has served on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board and its Board of Scientific Counselors.
He urged Congress to insist that the EPA conduct thorough, scientifically based risk assessments for workers and try to eliminate unreasonable risks.
“The law requires the EPA to provide protections to workers, and requires it to use all reasonably available information and the best available science to do so,” Finkel said in his written testimony. “EPA’s actions and inactions over the past two years with regard to TSCA are an affront to the legislative process.”
