Political Quotes

“But before that, I would like to address what is known affectionately as the Tester-Corker amendment, which was brought up on the Senate floor earlier this morning by Senator Corker of Tennessee. One year ago--to be more specific, about 11 months ago--we had a big debate on the floor of the Senate about Wall Street: What are we going to do about Wall Street and the practices on Wall Street which hurt our economy? Especially we were worried about the last recession and some of the things that happened on Wall Street at the biggest banks and biggest insurance companies that hurt Americans across the board; that reduced the value of our savings and caused us as a Congress, with President Bush's cooperation, to pass a basic bailout bill sending billions of dollars to these banks that had made stupid, reckless decisions that wrecked the economy; to try to save them from going under. Think about that. Here are the biggest financial institutions in the United States that have made terrible decisions--some failed, such as Lehman Brothers--which harmed our overall economy--we are still suffering from it--harmed individual families and businesses across the board, and then, as they were about to sink out of sight, they said: You have to save us. Send us taxpayers' money. Well, I will tell you something: I voted for that. I am not proud or happy about that, but that is the situation.…”