Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it never ceases to amaze me to hear my colleagues whose first loyalty is to Wall Street banks, who continue to make excuses for being against putting a consumer cop on the beat. This is an office that will be a few-hundred-million-dollar office, this consumer protection--this consumer cop on the beat. But this consumer cop on the beat has to look at trillions of dollars in mortgages, has to protect consumers when there are $30 billion in overdraft fees alone that banks are charging, when many times those overdraft fees are because consumers simply cannot figure out the fine print and do not understand the terms of the agreement. In the end, again, people on this floor and their special interest friends in the Congress, the friends of the Wall Street banks, the friends of these interest groups that continue to fleece the American people--if we had had Rich Cordray or Elizabeth Warren, for that matter, the consumer cop on the beat, would we have had those kinds of foreclosures in places such as Cleveland and Dayton? Would we have had these fly-by-night mortgage brokers from Ameriquest and New Century and others moving in and taking advantage of people? I am not sure we would have.…”