Political Quotes

“I am sure, listening to that, it is hard to understand exactly what this is all about, so let me take a moment. I want to first thank Senators Lieberman and Collins for all their hard work and I want to thank Senator Gillibrand for writing the STOCK Act. I come to the floor as the chairman of the Ethics Committee with an amendment that we wrote together, Senator Isakson and I, who is the vice chair of the committee. So this is quite a bipartisan amendment and I don't think it should be controversial or troublesome in any way. This amendment actually comes from a bill that Senator Isakson and I wrote together after the Countrywide fiasco. If you want to recollect that unhappy issue, it was a situation where Countrywide had set up a VIP program and they literally targeted Members of Congress of the House and Senate to put them into this program and never told the Members of Congress that there was this program, and yet it went forward. And because there is no rule that personal mortgages be shown on the disclosure form, this was quite a shock when it all came out. What we are saying is we want to improve the disclosure requirement on home mortgages. Right now, if it is at your own personal home, you don't have to show the mortgage, and this would correct that. It would mean that you have to show the date the mortgage was entered, the balance, and a range, the interest rate, the terms, the name and address of the creditor.…”