Political Quotes

“I rise today to encourage our colleagues to support the passage, hopefully later today, of the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, the legislation that has been on the Senate floor for the better part of a week now. I like to think of this legislation not in isolation but as the third piece, if you will, of a series of steps that have been taken to try to stabilize our economy, to restore confidence in our economy, and to infuse liquidity into our financial system. The first was really a series of steps taken by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has acted in an extraordinary way, not just in monetary policy and trying to lower the Fed funds rate but also in encouraging Federal banks to act and now investment banks to take advantage of the discount money, to borrow money when they need it, for the Federal Reserve to be willing to take and swap, if you will, highly liquid Treasury securities for very illiquid mortgage-backed securities that a lot of our banks are holding in their portfolios, allowing those swaps to take place to infuse liquidity into the banking system to encourage banks to begin lending money again.”