Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there is a view that sometime next week--upon the disposition of the bill that is currently before us and perhaps some other matters--we might take up the issue of so-called financial regulatory reform. I wish to speak for a moment to one of the key issues I know is of concern to some of my colleagues, and certainly to me. The American people have a pretty firm view on this whole thing after what they have seen with regard to TARP and the other bailouts. They are obviously not crazy about what has happened. I think most Americans think there should be two basic goals: First, to prevent the kind of crisis that occurred from ever happening again; and, secondly, to make sure that taxpayers are not on the hook, especially if we are talking about the possibility of continued bailouts where Federal money would be involved in unwinding big Wall Street firms that get into trouble. Unfortunately, this bill that came out of the Banking Committee, and could be brought to the floor next week--unless it is changed significantly--not only does not achieve the first goal, but it also carries forward that policy of ``too big to fail'' and taxpayer bailouts. That is why in its current form you have a lot of people on my side of the aisle saying it has to be changed. Let's get together, talk in a bipartisan way, and make sure we can both achieve the goal and, secondly, not carry forward current bad policies.…”