Peterson said that plan would introduce “new conflicts” and would be slow to implement.

“A government assignment system could create uncertainty, could slow down markets, and disrupt capital flows at a time when we could least afford it,” Peterson told the group.

Franken pressed the SEC to change the system, noting his plan had bipartisan support in the Senate before it was watered down in a conference committee. He blamed the ratings companies for not doing their jobs, contributing to a housing crash that caused millions of Americans to lose their employment.

“My plea today is that you take action,” Franken said. “If we maintain the status quo we are leaving ourselves far too vulnerable to another catastrophe.”

S&P, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, the three biggest credit graders, were “key enablers of the financial meltdown,” the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, created by Congress with a 10-member bipartisan board, said in its January 2011 report. “This crisis could not have happened without the rating agencies.”

Cutting Reliance

The commission's report also blamed the crisis on lenders' irresponsible and sometimes fraudulent practices; regulators' inattention and overconfidence; and the recklessness of borrowers and investors.

Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, said the SEC should focus on finishing regulations that strip out references to credit-rating companies from its rulebooks. The regulator is required under Dodd-Frank to remove language that refers investors to the rating firms' grades when selecting safe investments.

“I do not believe that having the government assign which firms will do the ratings is the right answer,” Garrett told the roundtable participants. “By removing the government good housekeeping seal of approval, we can increase competition among ratings agencies and lessen reliance on ratings.”

Kermit Roosevelt, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania, said a system that strictly forbid bond issuers from picking and paying a company to rate the securities could be unconstitutional.

“That is a prohibition on speech, and that I think is more constitutionally vulnerable,” Roosevelt said.

Companies have sold $162.9 billion of speculative-grade bonds in the U.S. this year, up from the $132.8 billion sold by this time in 2012, when a record $358.9 billion was issued, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Yields on speculative-grade bonds, rated below Baa3 by Moody's and lower than BBB- at S&P, touched a record low 5.98 percent on May 9 before climbing to 6.07 percent as of yesterday, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. High Yield Index.

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