OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Restoring American Finacial Stability Act of 2010

Floor Speech

Date: May 18, 2010
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Environment

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Ms. STABENOW. Would my distinguished colleague yield for a question?

Mr. DODD. I am happy to yield.

Ms. STABENOW. First, I would say to our distinguished chair of the Banking Committee that when you describe communities where businesses have collapsed and left communities struggling, certainly we have many of those in Michigan. Through no fault of the communities, and many times through no fault of businesses in terms of our recession right now, we have many communities in this situation.

Would the Senator from Connecticut agree that what we are talking about is not the cities or counties but the local communities and what happens? It is people. It is whether they are going to have a police force, police on the street or whether they are going to have the firefighters being able to answer if there is a fire or whether they are going to be able to pick up the garbage or whether they are going to be able to do snow removal on the streets. Aren't we talking about whether communities--people, families, and communities--if they need help, whether we would be able to respond to them? So it is not about the government; it is about whom it serves and the people who would be hurt through something such as this; would the Senator agree?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, my colleague from Michigan is absolutely correct and that was the point I made earlier and she makes it even more strongly. Again, I don't want to sound like I am in a civics class, but we are not just sort of a collection of disparate States and communities, we are a country, we are one Nation. It has been a great source of our strength. Our country has been through difficult times periodically, obviously through some natural disasters, through some manmade disasters. We are dealing with one as we speak. That is not a natural disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico; that is a manmade one. People didn't put in the proper safeguards and all of a sudden we are looking at the worst environmental disaster maybe in our Nation's history.

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