Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank the Senator. I hope to join him as a cosponsor. It wasn't that long ago--the Senator will remember-- when we had a debate on the floor about credit card reform. People across America said: There are some things going on with credit cards that aren't fair and right, and we need you to police these credit cards and make sure they don't do outrageous things and charge people unreasonably. I think we made some progress in the law we passed, but we made one critical error: we gave the credit card companies a long grace period to adjust to the changes. If you will notice, over the last year or so you received notices--I got them at my home in Springfield, IL--from credit card companies saying they were going to raise interest rates on the credit cards before the new law went into effect. My wife saved them and said: Mr. Smart Senator, how did you let this happen? It turned out that we had no control on those interest rates during that period of time and very little after the reform bill. What the Senator from Rhode Island is challenging us to look at is this: What is a reasonable amount to charge for an interest rate? His decision--and I concur with it--is, let's let each State make that decision. Thirty-two years ago, the Supreme Court incorrectly removed the authority of States to make that decision.…”