Chris Van Hollen: “Look, if this legislation only dealt with Fannie and Freddie, that's something that I certainly would support. In fact…”

“Look, if this legislation only dealt with Fannie and Freddie, that's something that I certainly would support. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office already puts Fannie and Freddie online. I know it's an easy catch phrase, but the reality is, behind the discussion of Fannie and Freddie is a whole other discussion about whether we want to apply these rules to things like student loans. And the reality is that if you apply this methodology to student loans, you will systematically overestimate the cost in the budget in terms of outlays. I would just like, Madam Chair, to refer the body to a report that was written by two of the prime advocates for this. It's called ``Reforming Credit Reform.'' Deborah Lucas was one of the coauthors. This was in ``Public Budgeting & Finance,'' winter of 2008. Just let me read a portion because it says: Including a risk premium in subsidy cost produces a cost estimate that on average exceeds outlays for realized losses. That discrepancy between cash flows and subsidy costs must be reconciled in the budget so that over the life of a credit cohort, actual cash flows match budget costs in expectation. Now, as I said, this is a complicated issue, and that sounds like a lot of complicated budgety gobbledygook. Bottom line is, what this bill does is systematically overestimate the costs in the budget on a cash- flow basis. And it's important that everybody understand this.…”