Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this weekend there was some discussion and writing in the papers and elsewhere in journals about the nomination of Mr. Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, for another term as chair on that Board. The Washington Post had an editorial entitled ``Scapegoat at the Fed.'' I don't normally come to the floor of the Senate to respond to the Washington Post editorials, but I do wish to respond to a portion of this editorial, and then in a broader way describe why I think this is an important moment for the Senate. ``Scapegoat at the Fed.'' The editorial begins: There are many ways to interpret the election results in Massachusetts last week . . . But one thing Massachusetts did not represent was a mandate to make a national scapegoat out of Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Board chairman. Yet two Democratic Senators seeking reelection in November . . . plus another planning to retire . . . appear to read it that way. They took the occasion of last week's political upheaval to announce their opposition to another four-year term for Mr. Bernanke, whose current one expires January 31. These senators' attempt to burnish their populist credentials by making Mr. Bernanke the fall guy for all the sins, real and perceived, of Wall Street fuels the right-left anti-Fed chorus in Congress that has already produced troubling attempts to subject the Fed to intrusive and counterproductive audits of its monetary policy.…”