Scott Garrett: “I yield myself 1 minute. We must remember what the original focus of the GSEs was when they were initially chartered by…”

“I yield myself 1 minute. We must remember what the original focus of the GSEs was when they were initially chartered by this Congress, they were to do two things, and that is to provide liquidity to the marketplace and also to help provide for facilitating low-income buyers coming into the marketplace. It is already set up in the law that the amount that GSEs can lend can go up every year. As it is right now, it stands at $359,000. It is set to go up to $400,000 for next year, in 2006. As the bill was amended in committee, it comes out now that that will go up by 50 percent. I ask the question, how would we define somebody who is about to buy a $600,000 home? That individual would have to be making an income of around $200,000. Even if they are firemen, policemen, teachers, who have you, they would still need an income of $200,000 in order to buy a home at $600,000. That was not the intent of GSEs. The intent was to help the low- income market to get their homes. By allowing the GSEs to get into this market, what we are doing is distracting them from their purpose and hurting those very people that they were intended to help: low-income people, whether they are in New Jersey or California or other high- interest-rate States, to be able to buy their first time. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.”