Chris Dodd

I was prepared to stay there all week, as my colleagues know, and announced in advance that would be the case. So for the purposes of understanding here, again, that was their decision. I hope we could get to some agreement farther down…

That was the intention. But there were 401 amendments filed by 2 p.m. on Friday, before the announced markup of the bill. Over the weekend, staff came to work on amendments. I say respectfully, no one from the minority side came in on the…

Who would object to that? Who is objecting to this? I mentioned earlier, it was not my idea. This was brought to me by the Republicans. Sounds to me like the people who have to put up that money are probably the ones objecting to it. These…

I note, you only have to ask yourself--look, you do not have to have a Ph.D. in banking. Ask yourself this question: The idea of requiring these institutions to put up money in advance, so that if they fail they end up paying for the cost…

The $50 billion provision in this bill was proposed by the Republicans. I did not come up with this idea. This was the idea that was brought up by the community bankers and Republicans who said that if there is an unwinding of a failed…

Actually we got everyone together and unfortunately Secretary Duncan could not make it, so we had him call in.

I think for a smart guy like you who is in charge of housing--you know, you are the Housing Czar, as they say--for a smart guy like you to tell us what you think ought to happen there is pretty important.

I think politically unrealistically that we are going to provide the kind of resources for maintenance in these areas.

Well, I thank you for that response, and I want to commend you again for the efforts being made.

There is a lot of ground to cover. But obviously, the issue of foreclosure prevention is still an issue.

Let me just editorially say on this, we do actually address the issue, now not to the satisfaction of my friend from Tennessee, but by requiring skin in the game early on, they then have a vested interest in seeing underwriting standards.

I look forward to working with you on your legislation relating to the Department's new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities and a broad range of related issues.

The GSE question, Mr. Secretary, as you well know, is simply too important to be treated as an afterthought.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. President, it's straight from the Wall Street special interest talking points. That's what they're determined to do, defeat this bill by suggesting somehow that there's a bailout provision in this bill. Nothing could be further from…

But to castigate it and label it is nothing more than a partisan debate and suggests that, somehow, what we have done here is perpetuate too big to fail, is just poppycock.

I have often said to people in a private conversation, would you send your own child to that school? No.

I think people are under this illusion that there is a nice little St. Aloysius around the corner where everyone is going to go to school because PS150 closed down.

Too often that is what it comes across as.

I want to take a couple of minutes, because next week we will be having a markup in the Senate Banking Committee of the financial regulatory reform effort that we have been involved in now for about 2 years. It was 2 years ago this past…

Our goal shouldn't be to punish shortcomings but to encourage success.

We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that a test score constitutes an education.

No education policy--not No Child Left Behind and not any of the proposed reforms--will work without adequate funding.

We need to reform ESEA this year, and the administration's proposal serves as a useful first step.

We need to make education everybody's job.