Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Presiding Officer from Maryland was in committee with me today and heard the President's Council of Economic Advisers talk about the economy, acknowledging that they spend every day worrying about inflation, what we do to combat inflation, everything from--we see the huge, excess profits in the shipping industry, among drug companies, food service companies--especially the meatpackers but also supermarket chains and oil companies. A big part of inflation we need to combat is because these companies understand they can raise prices because they don't have much competition. We see executive compensation continue to rise, sometimes to stratospheric levels. Who bears the burden? The burden is on middle-class and lower income families in places like Baltimore and Cleveland and places like western Maryland and southeast Ohio. And we know what we need to do. We also know from our work in this committee that the Federal Reserve's job is to make sure that--they are the principal group in Washington, in the government, to combat inflation, the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has three vacancies and has two other nominees who are Acting Federal Reserve Governors, and we need to confirm them. Five nominations came in front of our committee last Tuesday--5 nominations--and because of peculiar Senate rules, we couldn't act because all 12 Republicans boycotted the committee.…”