Political Quotes

“Madam President, today I wish to discuss section 702 in division O of the Omnibus appropriations bill. It is a provision that would prohibit the Treasury Department from selling, transferring or otherwise disposing of the senior preferred shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 2 years. In 2008, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship and created an agreement that gave the Treasury Department senior preferred shares in both entities. Since that time, the GSEs helped stabilize the housing market by ensuring that families had access to 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at reasonable rates and lenders had access to a functioning secondary market. While the government was initially forced to inject $188 billion into shoring up these two agencies, it has since collected $241 billion. Taxpayers have thus earned $53 billion during the conservatorship.”