Chris Dodd

I would like to be able to mark up a bill in this area.

This hearing this morning will give us a chance to reengage in that debate and discussion.

Today is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday and I took my daughter up to Lincoln's cottage.

You have had this job for 14 days. The President has had his for twenty-one.

I don't know, others who voted against the whole thing, but for those of us who voted for it...

The melt-down of the financial system is the direct quote

I think we have had some 82 different hearings or meetings----

Let me commend my colleague from Nebraska. We have new members of this committee who are just tremendously valuable and I include my colleague from Nebraska; just very, very good, excellent questions.

I think it would be tremendously worthwhile.

My hope is we would be looking... at someone who clearly has the background in making things.

I feel as strongly as you do that time is not with us.

We are going to look carefully at those.

I would strongly recommend--in fact, I will ask you that as this moves forward...

The Congress adopted a measure... of a commitment of some $50 billion out of these TARP resources that you have toward mitigating the foreclosure crisis

I would have made that my first point, because in a way, I happen to believe... the failure to address the mortgage, the residential mortgage crisis 2 years ago

The actions we take have to be commensurate with the scale of the problems we face

I happen to believe as between the choices of spending our time on going back and reviewing how we got here and the question of how do we get out of this, I don't have any question in my mind which is the more important issue for the…

I believe the absence of meaningful congressional involvement in crafting the original TARP plan will be viewed historically as a critical error that helped produce a flawed program and undermined public confidence in Washington's ability…

Americans want the plan to work. My colleagues want it to work. I believe all of us do.

This is a very important opportunity and an important moment, maybe the most important those of us ever will serve during our tenure in this Congress.

We cannot restore the credibility of our financial institutions and put our economy back on track until we restore the credibility of the Government's response.

First of all, acting now or acting later-- assuming we vote on this amendment offered by my friends from South Carolina and North Dakota, within minutes after that, I will be offering the amendment that would require that the $50 billion…

There is only in this sense. This bill has a specific requirement that a particular plan be adopted and funded with this proposal. I admire Sheila Bair's proposal, but we also recognize there are others. At the same time, if we are dealing…

I had 82 hearings in the Banking Committee, over a third of them on this subject matter alone. We faced six filibusters--almost a record number--on a single piece of legislation. There were those who were vehemently opposed. There were all…

Had the administration 2 years ago taken on the issue of the residential mortgage market more seriously, and they obviously didn't, we wouldn't have been in that situation in September, in my view.