Political Quotes

“let me first recognize the contribution of my colleague from Illinois with respect to the bankruptcy provision. He explained it extremely well. What it does is give homeowners a chance to get out from underneath a collapsing housing market in the United States. It has been well tailored and it is responsible and I think we should adopt it quickly in this package that is going forward. The whole housing crisis is a reflection of a much deeper economic malaise that is gripping the country. We are seeing skyrocketing prices in terms of energy and foodstuffs. On the recess I visited two Italian bakeries in Rhode Island. They have been family-owned companies for over 100 years, and they have never seen the runup in prices of wheat they have seen over the last several weeks and months. The final thing is that we are losing jobs now. In the last 2 months, we have lost many jobs. We lost 63,000 jobs last month. That is the largest monthly decline in jobs in 5 years. The national unemployment rate is 4.8. In Rhode Island it is 5.8 percent. We are seeing an economy sliding into recession. Key to this, in my view, to reconcile and try to stop the erosion of economic opportunity in this country is to stabilize the housing market. That is what the package of proposals that we will vote on this afternoon attempts to do.”