Political Quotes

“The gentleman from Michigan has invited us, through the various colloquies this afternoon, to believe that there is a comprehensive ethical regime in place. We agree that there is, but what there is not is a requirement that the Chair of the SEC and each of its Commissioners undergo ethics training, the kind of training that millions of Americans undergo all the time in order to understand precisely what their ethical obligations are. It is as if to say that nobody needs to have stop signs or stoplights out there because there is a traffic code someplace. There may be, but we need to give the actual direction to people who are participating in the activity of regulation. Nothing that the good gentleman has said persuades me that the ethics training is actually taking place or that the SEC Commissioners and the Chair of the SEC do not need it. If anything I said is read by anyone to insult the President of the United States or the current Chair of the SEC, then I would stand corrected. I don't think I said anything that would have affronted any of them. This is basic ethics training that takes place for people across the government. For the life of me, I can't understand what the opposition to it is. There seems to be a kind of fetishizing of cost-benefit analysis above everything else.…”