Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I have a credit card in my pocket. It is a piece of plastic, and I am sure that 150 years ago or 100 years ago somebody said: Well, that plastic is not money. Nonetheless, very frankly, most of us no longer carry significant sums of money because we use our credit cards. Now, I am not an expert on this. This is an authorizing issue. The authorizers on the Financial Services Committee and the experts who deal with this should be deciding whether we ought to even look at it, and that is what this amendment would preclude, looking at an option. Now, I am sure it is much more complicated than my simple analogy of a credit card, but I guarantee you, Mr. Chairman, if people 100 years ago were told that you can spend this plastic, they would have said: Are you crazy? Now, I don't know whether or not Treasury or the Federal Reserve will see something that makes it more efficient and effective to transfer money from one place to another, which is what we do with a credit card. We transfer from our bank not by going to the bank and doing a withdrawal slip, we do it by giving somebody plastic, and they then put it in the system and the system puts my money from my account into the seller's account. Now, I don't know that that is so simplistic as to be inaccurate, but I do say, Mr. Chairman, that it is putting your head in the sand in a very technological age in which we live in which things may be made more effective, more accurate, and more user-friendly.…”