Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I am delighted as chairman of the Select Committee on Economic Disparity to welcome the ranking member and the Republican appointees to this very important committee for this Special Order where I think the members of our committee are going to try to highlight some of the early and initial thoughts that we have on how we might address this issue of economic disparity. I will note that in our first hearing one of our witnesses called this committee ``a committee of historic potential.'' It is based on the National Economic Committee of 1938, and that committee operated in a moment of economic crisis worse than any of us have seen in our lifetimes really since the Great Depression. The Great Depression showed America that far too many citizens of the richest and most powerful country in the world could be impoverished by unpredictable forces beyond their control. It showed that free market capitalism was both an unparalleled engine of economic growth, and if left unregulated, subject to manipulation, indifferent to fairness, and prone to collapse as it did in the early 1930s. In most respects, the American economy is more stable and the safety net is more robust than it was 80 years ago, but today our economy demonstrates more income and wealth disparity and less mobility than it ever has. And, Madam Speaker, that is not a red problem or a blue problem. It is not a northern or a western or an eastern problem.…”