Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to speak about amendment No. 3342 which I have offered with respect to the legislation in question. There has been some confusion among my colleagues about what exactly is contained in this amendment which I introduced with Senator Boxer as an individual stand-alone bill previously and introduced in similar format here on this legislation. I emphasize to my colleagues that this is a carefully drafted, one- shot amendment designed to give the American taxpayers a place on the upside of the recovery of the financial system that they, quite frankly, enabled. This amendment would provide a one-time 50-percent tax on bonuses that are above $400,000 of any initial bonus paid to executives of financial institutions that received a minimum of $5 billion in the TARP program. It is only for income that was generated through work in 2009 and compensated in 2010. This is a one-shot matter of fairness to balance out the rewards these financial institutions received which were enabled by the contributions of the American taxpayer in the TARP program. We have had estimates that this amendment will recover for our economic system somewhere between $3.5 and $10 billion. I again emphasize that the American taxpayers did not create this economic crisis. They were required to bail out those people who did create it. They deserve to share in the upside, in the rewards they themselves enabled.…”