Barney Frank: “No, I will not yield, Mr. Speaker. I will not be part of self-ambush. I will say to the gentleman from Virginia, offer…”

“No, I will not yield, Mr. Speaker. I will not be part of self-ambush. I will say to the gentleman from Virginia, offer an amendment when you have the right to offer an amendment, and we will debate the amendment at length as we debated many of these amendments. But to play this kind of ambush game, do not expect cooperation. The gentleman may say, well, it is unfair. We got the last word. That was his choice. The gentleman could have offered the amendment in a fashion that would have allowed a broad debate on it. But they chose to have the benefit of the ambush, but not pay the price of it. This kills the affordable housing fund. What it says is none of this money goes for rental housing. By the way, they list a lot of the States. They say 'including.' It can go to any State; so does the bill as it now stands. The bill as it now stands allows the money to be spent in any State. And the key is this: This amendment, if you take it at face value, I would advise that, but if you do, it kills rental housing. Now, homeownership is a good thing, but as we have seen from the subprime problem, if you ignore people who should be renting, if you try to shoehorn everybody into homeownership and don't build a single unit of affordable rental housing, and that is what this amendment says, this amendment says none of the funds go to build rental housing, it is all homeownership.”