Political Quotes

“I rise as the lead sponsor of the Teachers/First Responders Back to Work Act. I rise in favor of jobs, in favor of teachers, in favor of police officers and firefighters, keeping our communities safe, and the promise we made to first responders after September 11. We have a choice. I listened to the distinguished Republican leader, but it is interesting how history can be viewed through different lenses. What I failed to hear were the challenges this President and this country inherited from 8 years of policies that led us, in 2008, to the verge not of the great recession we had been referring to but on the verge of a new depression, where the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the former Secretary of the Treasury, under President Bush, came before Members of Congress and said: We have a series of financial institutions on the verge of collapse, and if they collapse, it will create systemic risk to the entire country's economy, and every American will feel the consequences of that. The result of that 8 years of largely unregulated process created excesses where large entities made decisions that ultimately became the collective responsibility of everybody in this country because a failure to have met those responsibilities would have meant a collapse of this country. Now, there are those in the Senate who are advocating we go back to those very policies. They talk about stopping each and every regulation.…”