Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the bill before us. I commend my colleague, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Dodd, for his leadership on this crucial reform. I want to start off by reiterating what I know many of my colleagues have said, that this is a strong bill and it is a necessary bill. There is no doubt that we need Wall Street reform and we need it now. When tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, and savings, Americans cannot wait any longer to end the reckless Wall Street practices that caused those problems. I certainly never want to see us again be in a position where we had the Chairman of the Federal Reserve come to us, about a year and a half ago, and say to members of the Senate Banking Committee, you need to act because financial institutions are on the verge of collapse and their collapse would create a consequence to the national economy of enormous proportions. I will never forget the dialog that took place there, in essence when Chairman Bernanke was asked, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, what happened? Don't you have enough time, some tools at the Federal Reserve to get us through this period of time? He basically said, if you don't act you will have a global meltdown which basically means a new depression in the 21st century. Certainly a depression in the 21st century is much different than the depression this country lived through under President Roosevelt.…”