Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to discuss S. 2155. It is called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. One would think from the title that I would be all for it, but as one who went through the drop in the economy when we were on the brink of collapse, I believe this is a very bad bill. Let me go back to that time. Banks were teetering and over 300 would fail in the next 3 years. For perspective, only three banks had failed in the year of 2007. Unemployment was skyrocketing. We lost $19 trillion in household wealth. Americans lost nearly 9 million jobs. In my State of California, more than 2 million people were unemployed, 3\1/2\ million mortgages were at risk, and nearly 200,000 people filed for bankruptcy. Now that the economy has recovered and unemployment has decreased from its high point of 10 percent during the crisis, I worry that my colleagues have forgotten the magnitude of this crisis. I simply cannot. I remember sitting in caucuses hearing from our top financial officials about the potential for a total collapse of our economy. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified to the House Financial Services Committee that ``our financial system failed to do its job and came precariously close to failing altogether.'' That is not an exaggeration. For those of us who were here, who listened to the economists, who heard what was happening, we feared a total collapse. Personal conversations I had with these economists carried the most dire warnings.…”