Political Quotes

“I have the highest respect for the Senator from Georgia personally, and I thank him for his support on my interchange amendment. We have worked on many other issues, and we will in the future. I will concede what he pointed to as a fundamental flaw, a mistake that was made. There was a presumption made that owning a home was such a valuable American ideal--and I know your background; you certainly agree with that--but we went too far. We extended the opportunity for home ownership to people who were not ready. We believed if we pushed them to the limit of how much they could pay, the home would appreciate in value, their incomes would go up, and everything would work out. It turned out that gamble was wrong for some people. Certainly, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as the ultimate guarantors of mortgages, were part of that. There is a government element here. I don't question that for a moment. Certainly some blame lies there. Blame lies with those people who overextended, bought more than they could afford. They may have been misled into it, but the fact is, they did it. They made mistakes. Having said that, though, there were a lot of people involved in financial institutions which led them into this, misled them into this. No-doc closings, where people didn't have to present a document proving the amount of income they had, basically telling people: We will give you a mortgage where it is; you will be paying just interest for a few years, and everything will be just fine.…”