Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I know I put my colleague in a terrible spot by asking that question. But I do think the citizens of our Nation deserve an explanation as to why we are here tonight and not currently debating any of a whole list of amendments that Members of this body wanted to bring forward about how we improve our financial system. The amendment, No. 4101, is an amendment that is cosponsored by Carl Levin and myself and about 20 other Senators in this body. There are not that many amendments that have 20-plus cosponsors. I will tell you that it is not the number of cosponsors, although that indicates a genuine interest among colleagues in debating this; it is the substance that goes to the heart of the conversation between Wall Street and Main Street. This amendment is about how we aggregate capital in our country and how we allocate it. How do we get money where it does the most good to build our economy and build the success of our families? We have a couple of different ways of doing that in our Nation. One is that we make a deposit in a bank, and the bank also has access to the Federal Reserve window, where they get very low cost loans. The intent of us providing both access to the Fed window and the low-cost loan and providing a government insurance on deposits is that this money is going to go into loans to our families and our small businesses. That access to capital is absolutely essential for building our small businesses.…”