Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first of all, I thank the chairman for allowing us to debate this amendment this afternoon. I think this is one of the most critical amendments that certainly we have talked about to date, and moving forward, unless we address the issue of the GSEs, as I am going to talk about in a minute, I am not sure we have accomplished anything in this bill. For all of the potential unintended consequences in this financial regulatory restructuring package, at least one will be entirely intentional--failing to address Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Despite the general theme of the increased ``overreaching'' regulatory power of this legislation, a glaring example of something that was actually left out is a substantive attempt to address one of the most significant causes of the financial crisis--reform of the government sponsored eniterprises, or GSEs, such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It has been highlighted from this floor that recent market volatility and a faulty trading construct in our financial markets are illustrations that the bill before us is needed now more than ever. Specifically, the sudden significant drop throughout certain exchanges last week has been pointed to as evidence of the necessity for greater regulation of our markets.…”