Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I welcome Senator Vitter and his cooperation in this matter. I appreciate the work he has done on the issue. He and I are going to address the concentration of the financial system in this country and what that means to the middle class, what it means to business lending for small businesses, and again what it means to the potential of too big to fail, which is something Senator Vitter has been a leader on for a number of years. Both of us are members of the Senate Banking Committee. More than 100 years ago, in 1889, one of my predecessors, Senator John Sherman, a Republican, and author of the Sherman Antitrust Act-- who actually lived in my hometown of Mansfield, OH, and was the only other Senator from that city who served here--said: I do not wish to single out Standard Oil Company . . . [s]till, they are controlling and can control the market so absolutely as they choose to do it; it is a question of their will. The point for us to consider is whether, on the whole, it is safe in this country to leave the production of property, the transportation of our whole country, to depend upon the will of a few men sitting at their council board in the city of New York, for there the whole machine is operated? At the time, Senator Sherman was speaking about the trusts-- specifically Standard Oil but other trusts as well--that were large, diverse industrial organizations with outsized economic and political power, not just economic power but also political power.…”