In 2004, John McCain cosponsored legislation to clean up the criminal fraud of Obama advisor Franklin Raines’s Fannie Mae. The WSJ has a round up of key Democrats defending Raines’s fraud, calling the regulators and auditors liars, and telling McCain to stuff his reforms where sun shineth not.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs&hl;=en&fs;=1] Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.): I worry, frankly, that there’s a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios. . . .
House Financial Services Committee hearing, Sept. 25, 2003:
Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing._ . . ._
_Rep. Waters: _However, I have sat through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn’t broke. Housing is the economic engine of our economy, and in no community does this engine need to work more than in mine. With last week’s hurricane and the drain on the economy from the war in Iraq, we should do no harm to these GSEs. We should be enhancing regulation, not making fundamental change.
Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines. Everything in the 1992 act has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. . . .
Bastards all. Dirty, thieving bastards. Barney Frank should be in prison. He should not be allowed to speak or vote on this issue. The people of his district in Boston should be ashamed of the $700 billion he helped heap on the back of taxpayers.
And the biggest per annum recipient of these crimes was Barack Obama. Here is a breakdown of the top recipients of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac kickbacks by annual receipts:
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“640” caption=“Average Fannie/Freddie Donations by Years in Congress”]
What did the Republican have to say?
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.):
Mr. Chairman, what we’re dealing with is an astounding failure of management and board responsibility, driven clearly by self interest and greed. And when we reference this issue in the context of – the best we can say is, “It’s no Enron.” Now, that’s a hell of a high standard.
Well, we can no longer say “It’s no Enron,” can we? Franklin Raines makes Kenneth Lay look like Mother Teresa.