Bob Menendez

I don't think we should give up on the American Dream of home ownership because of the current housing market setbacks.

And, of course, those costs would be significant over the life of a loan.

And one of the challenges I see is what if we completely eliminate the GSEs, as some are proposing?

Let me ask you, Professor Levitin, in the days before GSEs, loans were generally renewed every 3 to 5--or due every 3 to 5 years and had to be refinanced all the time because lenders were not willing to make 30-year commitments.

What concerns me is that if others who are engaged do the same as the IMF and Norway have in holding back funds, we will be left on our own to face the challenges that I just discussed with Mr. Thier.

It would certainly seem to me that community banks would think that is highly unfair.

Isn't it true that without a Director the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does have supervisory authority over large banks?

You seem to have a strong record on consumer protection issues

I want to thank Attorney General Cordray for accepting a nomination under very difficult circumstances and for his appearance here today.

I am going to be particularly interested in how, Mr. Cordray, you intend to balance the needs of consumer protection with the need for community financial institutions to provide loans to homeowners and to small businesses.

I and others have called for Assad to step down as long ago as August 2011.

It should not be acceptable for the regulatory agencies. We are being told--we have been told by the regulatory agencies that that practice has ended, yet there are reports that it has not.

I am concerned that if the qualified residential mortgage definition being worked out by regulators is not broad enough, it could hurt a housing market that is already suffering enormously in terms of being part of our national economic…

We are creating a crisis in terms of getting access to capital and moving this marketplace and creating an economy that can thrive again.

It is not acceptable--it is not acceptable--to violate the law. It is not acceptable to do robo-signings.

If Dodd-Frank is about anything, at the end of the day, it is about taking and creating transparency and a new era of transparency and openness...

I hope you understand it is incredibly difficult to create public trust that the companies hired by the banks to perform the foreclosure reviews...

Are you going to release those three entities that I have asked you?

Will you release the mortgage servicers' action plans that respond to problems in the consent orders?

If you are confirmed, you will serve as the President's representative and be called upon to implement the policies of the United States Government, and protect and advance the interests of the American people.

I cannot understand why it is that we have such an aversion--this would be the equivalent of saying, well, we do not like what the EPA does so we will not let it have a head.

I think consumers should be learning about consumer finance even before they become consumers.

You mean this horrible agency has actually done something that, prior to its existence, no one could create, so to simplify and yet create a clear opportunity for the consumer to understand what they are entering into, and to get the…

I just think that we have come to a point in which it seems that the tax code for those who benefit by it... is a moral issue, but it also is a fiscal issue.

I find it alarming that there are people running for high office in this country and others already in significant positions who suggest that there is no great concern to allowing the Nation to be a deadbeat, to default, and no real…