Political Quotes

“we are in a crisis unparalleled since the Great Depression. We are on a deeply troubling path, marked by credit freezes, foreclosures, rising unemployment, and declining purchasing power. And that path, in the autumn of last year, appeared to be heading toward a cliff. We were fearful of what might happen if we stood idle and allowed our economy to fall off that cliff. The initial Emergency Economic Stabilization Act proposal put forth by the White House and the Treasury Department was unacceptable. It was essentially a blank check for $700 billion to be spent however they pleased. There were no provisions for oversight, no accountability, no mechanism to ensure that the funds were well-spent. Congress did significant work to create a more acceptable proposal, including dividing the recovery funds into two pieces, the second of which could be disapproved by Congress. In the months since we passed that legislation, I have been deeply disappointed in the way the administration has handled the program. Although we required the Treasury Department to maximize assistance for homeowners and work to minimize foreclosures, no systematic foreclosure mitigation program has been adopted, let alone implemented. Although the goal of the legislation was to unfreeze credit markets, the Treasury Department did not take reasonable steps to ensure that a significant portion of the billions of dollars distributed to banks across the country were used for this purpose.”