Political Quotes

“I rise to make four points in support of this bill. First, I believe the U.S. Government response has actually been too timid and too slow. Let me just take, for example, the failure of this House on the first vote in September to pass the initial bill, TARP bill. As a result of that, Mr. Paulson actually backed away from the initial purpose of this bill, which was to actually purchase distressed mortgage securities and to begin to give clarity, a price to them so that we might have attracted by now more private investment into the markets. Instead he had a mistaken policy that he pursued in his panic of actually putting more equity direct into the market. I believe, therefore, you've seen things happen that others have taken the place of our timid response. The Federal Reserve actually has stepped in, just for one example, actually guaranteeing in Citicorp's group, hundreds of billions of dollars of distressed equities, which we, in the TARP program, were actually meant to salvage.”