10/13/2011

Glenn English submits testimony to the House Agriculture Committee hearing on legislative proposals to amend the Dodd-Frank Act. In his testimony, Mr. English gave NRECA support for Rep. Randy Hultgren’s  draft legislation that exempts commercial end-users, who use derivatives to hedge or mitigate the commercial risks that arise from their electric operations, from being designated as “swap dealers” and subjected to costly regulations.  This will help ensure that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) follows Congress’s intent in implementing regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act. 

Mr. English also informed the committee of electric cooperatives’ concerns with CFTC’s definition of “swap.” How the CFTC defines what a swap is will determine the scope of their regulatory authority. Congress must ensure that “swap” is defined narrowly, in a way that excludes pure hedging transactions in nonfinancial  commodities used by the electric industry to preserve reliability and manage long-term power supply costs.