Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank the Senator from New York for those very kind words. But I wish to say again I am humbled, actually, to be able to present this amendment because it is quite unusual. Normally a chairman or a chairwoman presents amendments in bills that they themselves wrote. That happens here all the time. This is a very unusual situation. As I said earlier today, I did not write this provision. I didn't know very much about this provision. It was written by Senators such as Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, and Senator Merkley. They started working on this idea. They are not even members of the Small Business Committee. They started working on this idea and it picked up momentum and the President spoke about the need to get capital to small business. Then all the small business organizations, most all of them, stepped up and said, yes, this is what we need. Then the community bankers and the independent bankers stood up and it snowballed. It has gotten to have a great broad base of support. I am pleased this is a bipartisan amendment with the Senator from Florida--both Senators from Florida have been strong advocates. Senator LeMieux joined me in offering this amendment because, for some inexplicable reason, this was going to be left on the cutting room floor. We managed to get huge bills out here for Wall Street. We managed to get huge bills out here for the automobile companies.…”