Political Quotes

“Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about financial reform. I know we have a number of issues before the body right now, and it will be a couple of weeks, maybe 3, before this body takes up what I think is a very important piece of legislation, financial reform. It is something the Banking Committee has been having hearings on now for about a year and a half. It is an issue that I think is very important to our country and Americans from all walks of life. At present, the bill that has come out of the committee is a partisan bill. It came out of committee on a 13-10 vote; came out of committee, believe it or not, a 1,336-page bill, came out in 21 minutes with no amendments, on a party-line vote and no debate. I could talk a lot about this function and activities on both sides of the aisle that may have put us where we are today. But the fact is, we have a very important piece of legislation that is getting ready to come before this body. It is one I believe we need to deal with in a bipartisan way. The stated reason by the chairman of the committee as to why we handled the bill the way we did in committee a few weeks ago--not to have amendments, not to debate the bill--was to, after the bill came out of committee, negotiate a bipartisan bill before it came to the floor and then have a debate on some of the smaller issues.…”