Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are going to have a cloture vote this evening at 5:30. It is about a subject that is very important. Yet I have been listening to the floor today and hearing the discussion about saving our country, about the issue of large Federal budget deficits, and the things that threaten our country's future. I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those issues because I have been reading a book recently, quite an interesting book, called ``Too Big to Fail.'' I was listening this afternoon to some of the debate and thinking about too big to fail and too small to matter. Interesting dichotomy: Too big to fail is talking about the biggest institutions in this country, the largest financial institutions in America, are too big to fail. So they run themselves into serious trouble. They get the benefit of no-fault capitalism. We are told if they fail, it will be a disaster for America's economy; therefore, we will have the taxpayers pony up $700 billion to make sure they do not fail. I am talking about the people at the top. The question is, What about the people at the bottom, the people who work for a living, who like their jobs, want to have a better future for themselves and their children, but who discovered that as we sailed into this economic storm, while the people at the top got a big old parachute and they were lifted gently to the ground or allowed to get gently grounded, the folks at the bottom were just pushed off a cliff.…”