Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I, too, will be voting no on the candidacy of Mr. Mnuchin to become Secretary of the Treasury. Rhode Island got hit so hard by the mortgage meltdown that Wall Street created. Frankly, I can never forget the Rhode Islanders who lost their homes in the course of that debacle. We were able to help some of them in my office. As the Presiding Officer knows, when you come to the Senate, you put together a constituent office, and your constituent people work on usual constituent business. In the ordinary course, constituent business is dealing with Federal agencies. It is making sure Social Security is fine, getting people replacement passports that they put into the laundry by accident, dealing with veterans issues and getting veterans their benefits, helping people with Medicare and Medicaid confusion. It is all generally involving people who have gotten somehow fouled up in the Federal programs of which they are beneficiaries. In our case, we had to open a constituent wing for dealing with the big banks because they were foreclosing so recklessly and in such a mercenary fashion on Rhode Islanders. It was such torture for Rhode Islanders, once the foreclosure process began, because they could never get the same person twice on the phone; there was always a mismatch between what they were being told on the phone and being told on paper. It was a nightmare of bad information and bad practice by these big banks.…”