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Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008

Date: July 23, 2008
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Finance and Banking Government Budget and Spending Housing and Property


HOUSING AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 23, 2008)

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Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Last week, the so-called experts came to town and they told us that we need to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide stability to the housing markets and to shore up and give stability to our financial institutions.

I listened very calmly to that and decided it made sense to me, and I think it makes sense to most everybody in this conference. I didn't hear anything about blank checks, but I did hear about shoring up the system. I certainly didn't hear anything about a housing trust fund or community block grants for buying foreclosures, but that's in this bill and that concerns me.

If we just take a look at the housing trust fund, we see a $9 billion permanent tax against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now wait a minute. I thought we were shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now we're taxing them.

But besides that, over the next 3 years this will be used for the FHA bailout, and that makes some sense. Sixty-five percent of these funds will go to States that spend it on rental housing activities and low-income homeownership. That sounds like it makes sense, although it really wasn't what we were talking about but it makes sense. And then 35 percent will be distributed by the Secretary of Treasury to groups, groups that work in housing, I suppose, like ACORN and La Raza.

But there's a problem here that I see that there doesn't seem to be any permanent oversight that would prevent this kind of money that could potentially go into something that would be very abusive or fraudulent. It concerns me. The community block grants were not part of what we were asked to do either. Both these items have come before this House before unsuccessfully. But now when we have one of these must-pass golden opportunities that the Democrat majority sees, then they put the things on there that otherwise they didn't feel confident they could get done, and then they ask us to do this to save the financial institutions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and others.

This doesn't sound like what the American people sent us here to do. They sent us here to work on the problems that are before this Nation and are important.

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