Political Quotes

“On Friday, an amendment was offered to the Ed-Flex bill to block implementation of certain regulations which the banking regulators had proposed for financial institutions to establish Know-Your-Customer programs. That amendment is still pending before the Senate. On Friday, my colleague from the Banking Committee, Senator Sarbanes, made a number of thoughtful comments about the pending amendment. Today, I would like I to express some concerns about it as well. First, like Senator Sarbanes, I am struck by the irony of dealing with an amendment that addresses banking issues wholly unrelated to education, at the same time Democrats are being denied an opportunity to offer amendments on educational issues much more relevant to the Ed-Flex bill before us. Be that as it may, this banking issue has been put before us. And like all of my colleagues, I voted on Friday against tabling the pending amendment. I voted against tabling, because I think the amendment properly criticizes the proposed regulations for failing to protect ordinary law-abiding citizens from possibly unreasonable and invasive scrutiny by their financial institutions. At the same time, my vote against tabling was not a general endorsement of the amendment. To the contrary, like the proposed regulations it criticizes, the amendment is not drafted as carefully as it should be.”