Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise to speak about the vote that is coming up soon, the Landrieu-LeMieux amendment to the small business bill that is before us. First, I want to say that I respect tremendously both Senators. I have enjoyed working with them on so many issues. Many of us in the Congress have worked over this last year to end the TARP that went in place during a time of a financial system meltdown. I supported that, as did many in this body. Seventy-four Senators voted during a time of critical stress in our country's financial system to put that in place. I also have pushed hard to end that program as soon as it was unnecessary, and many of us have tried to end it. Finally that was done when the financial reform bill that passed a couple of weeks ago, or this last week passed and became law yesterday. A lot of times around here we go through this process of erosion; that is, an idea will come up, and it is embraced for one issue, and then, over time, as happened with TARP, as a matter of fact. TARP was there to rescue our financial system so that small businesses, people all across our country, could continue to get payroll checks and do those things our financial system provides. Then it became perverted. Industrial policy was embraced after that, something that was not the intention of TARP. Now we have another perversion of that by virtue of this amendment that has been put forth.…”