Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to first commend Senator Landrieu for her great leadership. It is true we share this river, and when you see all the barges go down the river every day, you see the trade and the export firsthand that we are talking about. I am focused on the export end, but I wish to give my support to the lending part of this. It is so important, and Senator Landrieu, as head of the Small Business Committee, has worked on it incredibly hard. When we discussed this idea last year of small business lending, I went around to a number of my small businesses and I heard time and time again how much this would be helpful for them. I think it is summed up by a letter I got from Bertha, MN. My colleagues may not have heard of it. It is not exactly a metropolis. This letter is from a guy named Harry Wahlquist of Star Bank in Bertha, MN. This is what he wrote just a few weeks ago. He said: I am a banker and need capital to continue serving my nine Minnesota towns. Please pass the small business lending bill now. You gave money to Wall Street. How about Main Street in Minnesota? I think it has been said that Wall Street might have caught a cold, but Main Street got pneumonia. There are still many issues out there, and a lot of it could be helped to create private sector jobs by simply allowing credit out there and more loans. The other piece of this which Senator Landrieu and my other great colleague from the Commerce Committee, Senator LeMieux, mentioned was exports.…”