Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thought I would make a couple of comments regarding the activities of this Chamber a few minutes ago. We had 71 votes in favor of closing debate on the nomination of Richard Cordray to be Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB. The CFPB is vested with the responsibility of protecting consumers from predatory financial practices. We all discovered in the runup to the great recession just how important this protection is. We had many crazy predatory practices. On credit cards we had fees that came out of nowhere and shifting time periods from month to month in terms of when the payments were due, even shifting destinations of where the credit card payments got mailed to, and also fees that could be wracked up on unsuspecting consumers. We certainly found out on mortgages how important financial protection is because we had, starting from 2003 forward, a booming industry in predatory teaser rate mortgages, where the mortgages might be 4 percent for 2 years but then were changed after 2 years to 9 percent. One would think most would-be homeowners would look at that deal and say: That is not a good deal. But here is what happened. They went to a mortgage broker, and the mortgage broker said: I am your financial adviser. Mortgages have gotten very complex, they are very thick, and there is a lot of fine print, so you are paying me to sort through and find the best deal for you. So first-time home buyers trusted their mortgage brokers.…”