Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, sometimes you have to remind people from time to time about what happened in the past, because it's important. History is important. I would remind my friend from Illinois, you know, that there was an effort to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when it was purchasing a lot of lousy loans that have resulted in these losses. But, instead, what did the reformation, the reforming of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get back when you could have stopped these losses? We got the one- finger salute from the White House, a Republican White House that, for some reason or other, did not want to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And I have to tell you, Mr. Oxley, by giving that statement, we got a one-finger salute. When he made his statement on September 9, 2008, he described perfectly what the White House wanted to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The White House, at that point, under the Bush administration, just, ``Let's buy all these lousy loans. Let's just keep it going.'' Well, that bubble burst. And the American people and the Democratic Congress and the Democratic administration are having to pick up the pieces now from that imprudent, improper approach to housing finance. We want people to have homes that they can afford in this country. If they can't afford them, then, okay, they don't get them.…”