Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to talk about a bipartisan amendment I have spent many weeks working on with Senator Brown of Massachusetts. It is an amendment dealing with a very crucial issue--a major gap in our system of financial regulation. It has been approved by Senator Shelby, the distinguished ranking Republican, and also by Senator Dodd. In fact, I think it is fair to say that if we can get a vote on it tonight, it would have enormous bipartisan support in the Senate. I am concerned that we won't get a vote on amendment No. 3982, and as a result it is very likely this bill will pass. After all the problems the country has seen with these large banks and large financial institutions, it still will be possible for a bank to sell a product to an institution or a consumer, bet against that product, and it will not be disclosed to the buyer. That is not right. What Senator Brown and I have been able to do, working with Senator Shelby's very capable staff and Senator Dodd's very capable staff, is we have been able to put together a bipartisan amendment--the new Senator from Massachusetts and myself--that would close this loophole, that would ensure there is at least simple, garden-variety, basic disclosure so that someone purchasing one of these financial products would know that the seller is actually betting against the product that is being sold to the consumer.…”