Political Quotes

“I think it is important I respond to my distinguished counterpart. We did not pull the bill. We were unable to go to the bill. We moved to proceed to the bill and had to file cloture. We could not get 60 votes because we had 1 Republican vote with us to move so we could legislate on housing. As I have said so many times, if the Republicans were serious about legislating on housing, they would have moved to the bill. I pulled the bill? That is as Orwellian as this conversation could be. I did not pull the bill. I tried to go to the bill. Republicans would not let us go to the bill. We have five simple things in our housing package that are extremely important to the housing industry. Transparency is Jack Reed's provision that all of these agreements should be transparent, they should be understandable. No. 2, the President asked, and we proceeded to do what he asked, to have revenue bonds to take care of some of the distressed properties. No. 3, we have large segments of--we were in a meeting that is still going on with faith leaders. The head of the Baptist Convention says in his neighborhoods, one, two, and three houses are going into foreclosure every week. They have neighborhoods that are in trouble. We have CDBG grants in our bill to allow States to step in and take care of some of those troubled properties. We also have something that the homebuilders care about a great deal, and that is a loss carryforward.”