Political Quotes

“How quickly some forget. When Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we did so on behalf of every constituent unfairly defrauded during the financial crisis. As a Cook County commissioner in 2007, I remember the financial crisis and the damage it did to Chicago's community. I remember when your credit card rate was about how well you could read fine print, not how regularly you paid your bill. I remember when auto loan financing could be based on a whim, not on your credit history, and when home buyers were pushed into loans no one could ever expect them to repay. I remember when it was open season on our veterans, when a whole industry was made out of defrauding our returning sons and daughters. I also remember how many of my colleagues characterized the creation of the CFPB, calling it a bureaucratic behemoth that would devastate credit markets and make lending impossible. Yet here we are today, with a growing economy and a vibrant credit market. Only now, we do it with fair practices, protecting American consumers and treating them with dignity. So I reject this attempt today to undermine the CFPB and the progress we have made. We simply cannot afford to return to the free-for-all that existed pre-crisis. H.R. 3193 is either a bad case of congressional amnesia or an attack on the most important financial reform of a generation. Either way, it is ill-sighted, and I urge my colleagues to defeat this effort.”