Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that this bill is one of the best bills I've ever been involved with in the 12 years I've been in Congress. Like any bill, it doesn't give me everything that I want. I don't think anybody would say that, including Mr. Frank. But it is a bill that moves us back towards thoughtful oversight of the financial institutions of this country. For 70 years, from the Glass-Steagall Act until about the 1980s, 1990s, depending what you count, we had the best financial institutions, the best financial system in the world. Every other country tried to emulate us. What happened? Slowly but surely, this country, through its Congress and its President, decided that we wanted to deregulate everything. Let's look at nothing, let everything go. What was the result of it? A financial meltdown. That was in the economic sector. What was the result of it in the gulf? An oil spill of ultimate proportions. The concept that government can't regulate has been proven wrong time and time again. Nobody argues for overregulation. That's a fair argument. Where is the appropriate line? In this case, in the financial institutions case, we went years with loans that nobody knew what the standards were. We went years with credit rating agencies giving everybody a AAA rating without having a clue what was behind those papers.…”