Barney Frank: “The proposal that the gentlewoman singled out to object to is a recommendation from Mr. Preston, the Bush administration…”

“The proposal that the gentlewoman singled out to object to is a recommendation from Mr. Preston, the Bush administration Secretary of HUD. Members have pointed out that the Hope for Homeowners Program has not worked, and we are disappointed. It hasn't worked because, I think, we have tightened it up excessively. What we are trying to do here is relax it. Part of the impetus for this came from the secretary of HUD and the commissioner of the FHA, Mr. Montgomery, two Bush appointees. In an article of December 17 from the Washington Post, which I will submit for the Record, Secretary Preston said that we have made this much too implicated and much too restrictive. He singled out, as one of the provisions that was objectionable, the provision the gentlewoman from Minnesota just talked about. It's the secretary of HUD who told us to drop that if we wanted to make it workable. How do you do that, Preston said? That was legislated. The article says it becomes more difficult to get people to refinance. So we have on the one hand Republicans correctly pointing out that our effort for Hope for Homeowners failed, but we don't want that to be a permanent failure. We want to improve it. Now when we put in the improvements, some of which were recommended by the secretary of HUD, we were told that that's going to be too generous. So this is kind of like the question that you were asked who do you like better, your mother or your father? There is no right answer.”