Barney Frank: “I would like to note the use of the figure $300 billion is not a hopeful sign about a rational debate. Three hundred…”

“I would like to note the use of the figure $300 billion is not a hopeful sign about a rational debate. Three hundred billion is the total value of the mortgages that could be insured. It would cost $300 billion only if nobody made any payments ever, and when the property was taken by the Federal Government, none of it had any value. CBO gave us a score of $2.4 billion. So we can debate this, but I would hope we can debate it with real numbers. The CBO score for the mortgage part is $2.4 billion. Everybody knows that $300 billion is not remotely what is at risk.”