Political Quotes

“this debate brings up two points of frustration that I have got with Congress: The first is partisanship. There are technical policy questions that come before this House and they do not need to be debated in a bashing, partisan manner with which we bring to the debates. There clearly are those issues that will divide us along partisan and ideological lines. This is a technical little public policy question we face and we do not need to turn it into a partisan free-for-all. We have had enough of those already. Second frustration. Sometimes on the floor of this House we try and imagine everything that can go wrong and figure out how to fix it regardless of whether in real life it has been a problem at all. Inevitably that produces the law of unintended consequences and we can foul things up pretty well. I believe the substitute, while wholly well-intentioned, represents that sort of approach. Having regulated this market, having tracked it since I left regulation, I do not believe we see the practices that would be fairly addressed by this regulation. Even if there were those circumstances out there, the worst place to fashion the right regulatory response would be on the floor of the House with amendments and substitutes. There are experts that do this every day. They are called insurance regulators. They ought to have first crack at this. Second, in the event that they are remiss, we ought to have a good solid hearing in the committees on this issue.”