Political Quotes

“I want to say to my Republican colleagues, I have heard a lot of advocacy for the small banks. I am with you. Those folks did not cause the Depression, and we have got to give them relief. But what this bill does is essentially use the good reputation of those small lending institutions in all our communities to create an opening for the bad actors that did cause this enormous recession, and it invites them to go back to their bad old days. The business model of our small banks is to help our folks in small communities. The business model of some of the Wall Street banks is to play casino poker with taxpayer money, and that is what happened. We had institutions on Wall Street that were putting together packages of bad loans that they shorted for one investor, and then they sold them as AAA-rated, pension-worthy investments for pensions for our firefighters and teachers. That is absolutely outrageous, and we are allowing that to occur again. We can help the small banks, and we should help the small banks, but we shouldn't give a free pass. Now, there is one good thing in this bill. I am glad, very glad to see that the Durbin rule continues to exist. That was a crackdown. We finally got some relief for our retailers on the transaction fees on debit cards.”