Today's Housing Lies From Dana Perino

You can always be assured of a trip through fantasyland with Bushco’s favorite PR snowflake (from here)…

Q Well, I want to give you a chance to respond to what Speaker Pelosi is saying, because it really seems like the -- at least the sort of finger-pointing is ratcheting up, accusing Republicans, and it sounded like the White House, of mismanagement of financial-market regulation. It really seems as though there's a accusation that the White House is to blame in some way, or the Bush administration policy is to blame in some way. Your response?

MS. PERINO: Well, unfortunately -- unfortunately, I don't think that the reaction of finger-pointing from Democrats to the White House is anything new.

I would ask you to go back and look and ask Speaker Pelosi or any of the other Democrats who are pointing fingers, what specific regulation did they want that we blocked? What specific regulation did we eliminate?

This may be factually true as nearly as I can determine, but for Perino or any other Republican to act as if they favor government regulation of the markets is absolutely to laugh.

In response, I would ask that you consider the following statements from Barack Obama (from here – aimed more at John W. McBush, I realize, but it fits for his party too).

In February of 2006, I introduced legislation to stop mortgage transactions that promoted fraud, risk or abuse. A year later, before the crisis hit, I warned Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke about the risks of mounting foreclosures and urged them to bring together all the stakeholders to find solutions to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Senator McCain did nothing.

Last September, I stood up at NASDAQ and said it’s time to realize that we are in this together – that there is no dividing line between Wall Street and Main Street – and warned of a growing loss of trust in our capital markets. Months later, Senator McCain told a newspaper that he’d love to give them a solution to the mortgage crisis, “but” – he said – “I don’t know one.”

In January, I outlined a plan to help revive our faltering economy, which formed the basis for a bipartisan stimulus package that passed the Congress. Senator McCain used the crisis as an excuse to push a so-called stimulus plan that offered another huge and permanent corporate tax cut, including $4 billion for the big oil companies, but no immediate help for workers.

This March, in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout, I called for a new, 21st century regulatory framework to restore accountability, transparency, and trust in our financial markets. Just a few weeks earlier, Senator McCain made it clear where he stands: “I’m always for less regulation,” he said, and referred to himself as “fundamentally a deregulator.”

This is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they can get, however they can get it. This is what happens when you see seven years of incomes falling for the average worker while Wall Street is booming, and declare – as Senator McCain did earlier this year – that we’ve made great progress economically under George Bush. That is how you can reach the conclusion – as late as yesterday – that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

I will, however, acknowledge that Gramm-Leach-Bliley had a lot to do with our current misery, and that was signed into law by Bill Clinton and not Dubya (and Gramm is that "nation of whiners" guy, just to remind you).

Returning to Perino…

In fact, it was the White House that worked to try to get them to act on GSE reform as early as 2003. Unfortunately, they did not act on that until most recently when there was a crisis and we got the authorities that we needed in August of 2007. What we were looking for in that GSE reform was a strong regulator. That's what we wanted. It was more regulation, more transparency, and a stronger independent regulator who could actually look at the books of the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and tell us exactly what was going on.

This tells us that former Dem Sen. Paul Sarbanes (of “Sarbanes-Oxley” for the uninitiated) warned that “ideologues” have created an impasse over trying to pass GSE reform legislation (GSE stands for “government sponsored enterprises,” but for our purposes, we’re basically talking about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System; the story also tells us that S.1508, the bill championed by former-Dem-turned-Repug Richard Shelby was opposed by Bushco because “its receivership provisions were not strong enough,” which, somehow, I think could have been addressed if they weren’t more concerned with scuttling it outright).

This tells us of a 2005 fight over GSE reform in which “conservative Republicans (were) already bracing for a fight if Shelby’s bill contains any measure that would require the two lending giants to divert a portion of their profits.” And this tells us that the National Association of Home Builders opposed the 2006 bill from Shelby because it “failed to adequately address the nation’s housing needs” (not sure exactly what that was all about, but again, couldn’t that have been worked out with the NAHB first? After all, they’re a “trade association based in Washington, D.C.,” which automatically makes me inclined to think lobbyists and big bucks, the primary audience for Repugs and too many Dems also).

So actually, Dana, instead of the “strong regulator” you appeared to be looking for, it looked as if you and your neocon-simpatico chums wanted to instead create the illusion of activity and nothing more (and by the way, as noted here, the House passed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act a month ago).

Continuing…

In addition to that, we wanted FHA modernization so that more low-income people could have their mortgages backed by the FHA. They didn't move on that until there was a crisis at hand. We wanted rules -- they're called RESPA rules, I can't remember what it stands for, it's Real Estate Settlement Act -- but it would help people understand what they're getting into when they have a loan. Unfortunately they didn't act on that. Hank Paulson's regulatory blueprint that he laid out early last spring fell on deaf ears to the Democratic members of Congress.

Concerning RESPA, this story (last paragraph) tells us that it is “intended to simplify loan disclosures and make it easier for consumers to comparison shop for mortgages and settlement services like title insurance (see story).” However, “the industry is expected to fight aspects of the plan that would serve as incentives to package settlement services with mortgage loans (see special report).”

And concerning Paulson’s “regulatory blueprint,” nobody acted on it because it set out to further deregulate the financial services industry instead of doing the opposite (as noted here).

Say goodnight, Dana (and by the way, I posted earlier about an unfortunate development with Patrick Murphy here).