Jeb Hensarling: “Mr. Speaker, the cause of our financial crisis is really Federal policy that strong-armed, that cajoled, that…”

“Mr. Speaker, the cause of our financial crisis is really Federal policy that strong-armed, that cajoled, that facilitated financial institutions to loan money to people to buy homes who couldn't afford to keep them, and people who decided to buy more home than they could afford and now expect their neighbors who didn't to bail them out. I mean, Mr. Speaker, it's not a matter of deregulation; it was a matter of dumb regulation. And there was no dumber regulation than that which created the government-sponsored enterprises, and gave them an affordable housing mission, and ended up buying the lion's share of troubled mortgages, or insuring the troubled mortgages in the system. Again, it wasn't deregulation; it was dumb regulation. And all this bill before us does is perpetuate the same dumb regulations that got us into this financial pickle in the first place. The bill before us doesn't go to the root cause. It leaves the government-sponsored enterprises, which represent among other things the mother of all taxpayer bailouts, $147 billion and counting, with $1 trillion of taxpayer exposure.”