Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016, H.R. 5063, would remove an important civil enforcement tool available to agencies to hold corporations accountable for the general harm caused by unlawful conduct. H.R. 5063 would have potentially disastrous, unintended consequences on the remediation of generalized harms in civil enforcement actions like the one that the chairman just noted at the very beginning of his speech. He talked about mortgage lending settlements that the Department of Justice had obtained after filing suit in court against Wall Street bankers who took billions of dollars in equity, home equity, from Americans throughout the country by way of predatory lending instruments, which blew up in their faces; caused the Wall Street meltdown. Wall Street got bailed out. The American people who had these mortgages that then were underwater lost their homes, so the Department of Justice sued, and this is what this legislation seeks to get at. My friends on the other side of the aisle don't want the common people of this country to have the protection of government. They want a government that is hands off; let the private sector, let the free market work its will. No rules. Whatever will be will be. The bottom line is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; and this legislation would work to enforce that economic philosophy that is held so dear by my friends on the other side of the aisle.…”