On the recordApril 20, 2010
when I came to Washington over a year ago, this country faced an economic crisis greater than anything we have seen in generations. So my colleagues and I set out to work. Under President Obama's strong leadership, we passed a landmark stimulus package that stopped the bleeding. We did what was necessary to prevent a complete economic collapse and set America back on the road to recovery. Since that time, we have come a long way. Many key economic indicators have started to turn around, but we are not out of the woods yet. The economy has started to grow again, but unemployment is still too high, and rampant foreclosures continue to threaten families in my home State and across the country. During the first 3 months of this year, almost 15,000 homeowners went into foreclosure in Illinois alone. Despite our best efforts to modify mortgages to make them more affordable, that is twice as many foreclosures as we saw during the same period last year. This is unacceptable. We are making progress, but it simply isn't enough. Today, America no longer stands at the brink of disaster, but we are still vulnerable to the same recklessness that led to this crisis in the first place. For years, at big corporations such as Goldman Sachs, Wall Street bankers packaged bad mortgages together and sold them to investors. They knew these investment vehicles would inevitably fail, so they turned around and bet against them. They bet against the American people.…





