Political Quotes

“Mr. President, not seeing other Senators at this time wishing to speak, I want to recap, if I could. We spend a year and a half working on financial regulation in this body, and there are a lot of fancy things we are looking at that certainly need to be looked at, no question. We are looking at clearing trades with derivatives. We are looking at all kinds of section 106 issues and other kinds of things, many of which I have issues with. But it is amazing that after all this time, we are still not dealing with the core issue. It is hard for me to imagine that anybody in this body would think that a 5-percent downpayment on a loan would be something that is extraordinary. This puts in place, as the other Senators have mentioned--and I certainly appreciate those who have joined me in cosponsoring. I have had a couple of folks on the other side of the aisle today come up and say: Look, this makes common sense. I am going to support this. It is amazing to me that we are not focusing on those very things that we think are the core issues. We had a chance a minute ago to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and, of course, we didn't. I know it is a complex issue, but I felt the McCain amendment gave us a timeframe within which we could deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We didn't. We decided to have another study.…”