Political Quotes

“I come to the Senate floor today to speak in support of a package of amendments to the financial reform bill that is a result of an investigation by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair. I am submitting these amendments with the support of my colleague, Senator Kaufman, who is not only a member of the subcommittee but also sat with me through hours of subcommittee hearings over a period of 2 weeks to examine some of the causes and consequences of the crisis that nearly brought down our financial system, that necessitated billions of dollars in taxpayer money to arrest, and that was a principal cause of the worst recession in nearly a century. We also are submitting the package as eight separate amendments to facilitate their consideration. Over nearly a year and a half, our bipartisan investigation examined millions of pages of documents, conducted over 100 interviews, and culminated in four hearings during April, with over 2,500 pages of hearing exhibits and more than 30 hours of testimony. The American people, having suffered so much in this crisis and having had to pay so much of their hard-earned money to keep it from getting even worse, deserve to know what happened. But more than establishing a record of what went wrong, we sought information to help keep us from repeating the same mistakes in the future.”