Political Quotes

“I thank Senator Durbin very much. This article is a few years old, but it underscores his point. Here is the opening line of an article from CNBC on this question of salaries for the CEOs of for-profit universities. The article opens by saying: ``Forget Wall Street and Silicon Valley. If you're looking to rake it in post-graduation, set your sights on the executive floor at one of the nation's for-profit colleges.'' That is an article from CNBC detailing the fact that in their article--again this is a few years old--the salary of the head of Phoenix University was $11 million, and the CEO of Bridgepoint, another national for-profit university, was making over $20 million a year. You can say to yourself: These are private, for-profit companies. Why should Congress be in the business of caring what the CEO of Phoenix University makes or what the CEO of Bridgepoint or ITT or DeVry makes? Harry Truman made his name as a critic of wartime profiteering. LBJ made his name as a young Member of Congress doing the same. Their idea was that it is all well and good to make yourself rich in the most dynamic capitalist economy in the world, but it is another thing to be getting rich off the taxpayers. It is another thing to be making your fortune almost exclusively coming from sources of money that really is all of our constituents' money in the form of the taxes they pay. That is what we are talking about today.…”