Political Quotes

“I rise today with just 9 days left until the United States hits the debt ceiling. Never before in our history have we failed to pay our bills, but in 9 days that possibility will reach our doorstep. Even though defaulting on our debt could send our economy into a tailspin, even possibly another Great Depression, there are already those who are denying the impacts of default. The debt ceiling deniers try to claim that this won't be a big deal and that middle-class families won't be hurt. Well, these debt-ceiling deniers need a dose of debt-ceiling reality. The truth is that failing to pay our bills on time would most probably be worse than in 2008 when Lehman Brothers and AIG went under and the economy went into a tailspin. We still haven't recovered from that debacle. To this day there are people out of work. There are middle-class families whose income is lower than it was then because of what happened in 2008. Why could it be worse--in all likelihood would be worse? Because just as housing securities had to be marked down because of the Lehman crisis, if government bonds, which are much more widely held, have to be marked down in lower value, we could have a freeze where banks are not able to lend money. What happened in 2008 was simple. Banks and other financial institutions had all these mortgage securities on their balance sheets. All of a sudden their value seemed to be a lot less, so the banks' balance sheets were in the red.…”