Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for the opportunity to speak, and I commend her for her stellar effort to bring justice to the housing circumstance in our country. I am honored to say that I did visit her congressional district, and we had a field hearing that was quite successful. She truly is engaged and involved in making a difference in her community. Madam Speaker, I was there in 2008 when we had the housing crisis. I remember when Secretary Paulson came before the committee. He was there in need of some funds for what were called toxic assets. He was there because the market was in a free fall. He was there because there was an imminent crisis that had to be contained. I remember him asking for a large sum of money with few pages, probably less than 5 pages. He wanted us to infuse capital into a process that would allow us to purchase these toxic assets. He was indicating to us that this was an emergency. He did not ask for hundreds of millions of dollars. He did not ask for tens of billions of dollars. He requested hundreds of billions of dollars. I do recall that I spoke to constituents, and being the judicious person that I was, I did pay attention to my constituents who encouraged me and insisted that I not bail out the big banks. That was the language that was used: Do not bail out the big banks, Al. I was judicious. I listened to my constituents.…”