Political Quotes

“Madam President, I appreciate the comments of the chairman. He accommodated many of the amendments I had, particularly as it concerns community banks. That was a huge concern in the original draft of the bill. I thank the chairman for accommodating those concerns. It did make it a better bill. I wish to return to the aftermath of the financial crisis, when Congress was tasked with the responsibility of modernizing our financial regulatory structure so that we would have proper oversight of today's banking system and financial markets. We were called to fill in gaps in regulations which allowed American home buyers to simply sign on the dotted line to purchase a house that was in many instances beyond their means, to let companies hide trillions of dollars in assets from regulators, and ultimately led our government to lose hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out financial institutions--Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Chrysler, and AIG. Thus, were financial regulatory reform to succeed, we needed to enhance mortgage underwriting standards, bring greater transparency to the derivatives markets, and once and for all end too big to fail. The conference report before us takes steps toward these goals. The legislation puts in place measures to address too big to fail; however, it falls short in fully addressing the risk of future government bailouts by failing to make changes to the Bankruptcy Code.…”