I get that. Maybe they could find a way to allow some sort of lien or some sort of surety or some other such activity again that may never be paid.

Make the fight. If you lose, fine. But what if you are wrong and you win, and you get a judge who says, 'You know something? This is a little unusual.'

So much damage was caused by allowing an industry to take advantage of our families, and I state, 'take advantage of our families' who only wanted to have the American dream, and that is to own a home.

I would respectfully suggest that, going forward, we make a determination as to where we are going to draw the line.

But these case histories are not based on taxpayer dollars doing this. These case histories are on shareholders' dollars doing it, not taxpayer dollars.

It certainly strikes me that, in theory, if these individuals acted badly, the company is a victim as much as anybody else.

So you don't think it is possible to split it out?

This is taxpayer dollars. This is not Enron. This is not WorldCom. We are not shareholders. We are taxpayers.

This hearing is important to the American taxpayers. It is important for us to understand the complexity of the problem caused by the fall of the housing market.

For me, $160 million worth of legal fees, it certainly sounds unreasonable.

All the hand-wringing and bed-wetting is going on without remembering how the House stepped up on this. What did we get from the White House? We got a one-finger salute.