Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to talk about the Tester-Corker vote which will take place at 2 o'clock today. I know there has been a lot of discussion about the Durbin amendment which occurred during Dodd-Frank and where we are today. I wish to spend a moment clarifying the fact that the Tester-Corker amendment does not do away with the Durbin amendment. The Durbin amendment will still be the law of the land and a huge victory during the Dodd-Frank regulation--something I did not support but a huge victory for the retail industry, in that for the first time in the history of our country, per the law that was passed, debit cards are going to be a regulated industry. There is nothing about the Tester-Corker amendment that in any way changes the fact that it is going to be a regulated industry. That is going to occur. What Tester-Corker does is to try to bring back into balance how we look at this particular transaction. We are going through this period of time in our country's history where people have been very upset with financial institutions at many levels. It is almost as if the Durbin language is an attempt to basically punish, be punitive, to community banks, rural banks, credit unions, mega banks all across our country for things that happened in the past. There is no question many financial institutions made mistakes. There is no question that government made mistakes. There is no question that Congress has made mistakes.…”