Political Quotes

“I wish to tick off a couple issues I hope my Republican colleagues would be interested in working with me on. Every week I receive--and I suspect others do as well--telephone calls and letters and e-mails from people in my State who are outraged by the kind of interest rates they are forced to pay, interest rates which are nothing less than usury, usury which has been condemned by every major religion in this world, which has been condemned throughout history by some of our great philosophers and writers who have basically said it is wrong and immoral to force desperate people who are in need of loans to pay outrageous interest rates. Yet today more than one-quarter of all credit cardholders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and, in some cases, as high as 79 percent. That is not providing credit. That is loan sharking.”