Political Quotes

“I would like to try to clear up some of the misunderstandings of what this bill is about. The more we debate it, the better Members understand the impact of this bill on our economy. The gentleman from Texas, the chairman, just talked about how generous they are in allowing this debate to take place. Members, let me tell you what really happened. The fact of the matter is there has been an attempt to hide H.R. 1256 in this DOD bill. What business does it have in this bill? Why is it the Rules Committee determined that it would be a closed rule? The first reason is that they tried to get away without having amendments to the bill. I had an amendment that I offered in committee that was not accepted, an amendment that if there were an open rule, I would have been able to offer this amendment on the floor. But, no, they close-ruled this bill to keep any amendments from being heard, to be debated, to be voted on, because they know that if Members really discover what these derivatives are all about and how they could create such risk that we'll be put in the position of bailing out failed institutions all over again, that Members would not support this kind of bill. {time} 1540 This country has been through a terrible financial crisis. Part of the reason is that we allowed our banks and financial institutions to place unregulated bets on the mortgage markets. Remember AIG? What did AIG do?…”