I believe that had I been in Congress, I would have sounded the alarm bells a long time ago about the dangerous games Wall Street speculators were playing with our economy and would have pushed for legislation to prevent the need for our government to step in and prop up our financial system. I would have fought to tighten oversight of the financial transactions that led to this mess. Since Congress did nothing to prevent the crisis from happening, I believe that government intervention was necessary to stop what Warren Buffet says would be the Pearl Harbor of economic disasters. We needed to move quickly to maintain confidence in the economy, save jobs and protect Americans hard-earned retirement savings. That required cooperation from all members of Congress, not partisan posturing. If I had been in Congress when the recovery bill was being drafted, I would have put my business and financial expertise to use in helping to create a better, bipartisan bill with more protections for taxpayers and a requirement for greater oversight of the people who caused the problem. I certainly would not waste my time complaining about the bill and behaving like a partisan obstructionist while the economy teetered on the brink as my opponent did. The delay cost us dearly as evidence in the loss of trillions of dollars in the stock market. We needed leadership in this crisis instead of someone looking only to what's most popular. We needed to do this to protect jobs, homeowners, retirement funds and education savings, and that meant taking fast action.