Political Quotes

“We could have ideological differences over an issue like health care or energy policy, but what maybe was the most remarkable to me over the course of the last year was to see that divide between Republicans and Democrats happen on the issue of financial regulatory reform. I mean when I am back in my district, you know I certainly got people who are on both sides of the energy debate, and on both sides of the health care debate, but boy, almost everybody I run into, with maybe the exception of a few people who are commuting back and forth to high-priced jobs in New York, say you got to step up to the plate and stop these Wall Street investment banks from going back and doing the same things that they did to us regular, average everyday Joes over the course of the last decade. You got to go in and fix the problem of derivatives. You have to go in and stop these institutions from becoming so highly leveraged that they cause catastrophic failure of themselves and the entire system. Go back and fix this for us. When I got sworn in maybe I was a little bit naive this year. I thought, yeah, we are going to have some knock down, drag them out fights on a couple of issues, but I bet you this Congress is going to come together and rein in the abuses and the excesses on Wall Street. Well, we are even fighting over that. The Republicans don't want to join us and try to curb the real abuses on Wall Street.”