Barney Frank: “it would be fruitless for any one of us to dedicate himself or herself to refuting every inaccuracy that is uttered on…”

“it would be fruitless for any one of us to dedicate himself or herself to refuting every inaccuracy that is uttered on this floor, so I reserve that effort for those of particular public policy significance, and I want to address some comments by the gentleman from Texas, the majority leader, last week as he was justifying the hostage taking that has occurred with the bill that would create an affordable housing fund through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's profits. We have, as you know, rules that urge us--not urge us--insist that we refrain from impugning each other's honesty. I will simply note that the gap between what the majority leader said and reality was unusually large even by the standards of political debate. First of all, he quite inaccurately said that nothing in the bill regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that came out of our committee, the Financial Services Committee, on a 65-5 vote, that nothing in that bill would have provided aid to the people who were stricken by the hurricane. He was, of course, quite wrong. The basic mechanism which we are now talking about putting to the aid of the people who lost their homes was in the original bill. That is, the bill as it came out of committee said that 5 percent of the profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would go to affordable housing. Note that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's profits by everybody's agreement are increased by a series of associations they have with the Federal Government.…”