Political Quotes

“Thank you for allowing me to speak, Senator Grassley, Senator Baucus. I guess the first observation I would like to make is that we are here on a Saturday morning. This is democracy, in many ways, at its best. People understand the two votes are going to fail. But it is good for Americans to have genuine differences to be able to discuss what makes us tick, why we want to go one way versus the other. So the fact that America is divided on a lot of big issues is just the result of living in a free country. What was the lesson of the last election? They are what you would like them to be. But here is my observation, for what it is worth. Our Democratic friends took a beating. As Republicans, we have been there. In 2006 and 2008 we took a beating. In 2006, the Iraq war was going very badly, and Americans were very frustrated. President Bush's popularity plummeted. In 2008 we had an economic meltdown that I thought was related to housing, where we lent money to people who could not afford to pay their mortgages. The mortgages were being packaged and sold as all kinds of exotic instruments throughout the world. It brought the whole world economy down, and we have been struggling ever since.”