Barney Frank: “No, but the gentleman very inaccurately blamed the Democrats. He forgot, Bryan Montgomery said in 2006, the Republicans…”

“No, but the gentleman very inaccurately blamed the Democrats. He forgot, Bryan Montgomery said in 2006, the Republicans did it. I think one ought to be more accurate and less partisan in a description of reality. The fact is that those were defeated under the Republicans when he was on the committee. Then, the Democrats did pass them. And as to the GSE bill, he said it was the slush fund. I really like that phrase, ``slush fund.'' That's affordable housing for people, for lower income people. He said that's what's holding up the GSE bill. That is not remotely true. The GSE bill was sent by us to the Senate. They haven't taken it up. By the way, the affordable housing trust fund was in the Senate committee version when the Republicans were in power under the current ranking member when he was chairman. So that is just inaccurate. It is true they have been held up in the Senate as they were held up under the Republican leadership as well. We are closer to passing them. I am confident that they are going to get passed fairly soon. We did finally get to some conversation on the FHA. My objection was that the gentleman acted as if the world was created in January of 2007 and the Democrats refused to pass the bill, neglecting to note that the head of the FHA himself put the blame much earlier when the Republicans were in power.”