Barney Frank: “I begin, appropriate to this bill, on a note of bipartisanship. My counterpart on the Financial Services Committee said…”

“I begin, appropriate to this bill, on a note of bipartisanship. My counterpart on the Financial Services Committee said we must reduce spending, and I agree. And we will have a chance this year to reduce the most wasteful drain on our economy imaginable, the war in Iraq, $100 billion a year, far more than the excess in any other program. So I hope the American people this year will heed his view and we will put in place a policy that will save us $1 trillion over the next 10 years if the wishes of some to stay in Iraq are maintained. Secondly, let me reinforce what the chairman said. It was in late November of last year that Speaker Pelosi urged us to begin thinking about the economy and called together a group of economists, labor leaders, and business leaders. And she took the lead and more than anyone else is responsible for the fact that we are confounding the cynics by acting so quickly and responsibly today. Lastly, on the housing piece. What we have is a private housing market that has gotten itself into a terrible jam. And part of this bill is to use public and quasi-public entities, entities created by the Federal Government, to go to the aid of the private market. The private market has stopped making loans for houses above a certain level because of, as my friend from Alabama said, a lack of confidence. What we do today is to empower the Federal agency, the FHA, to help untangle that with a higher loan limit.”