Mortgage Bailout Bill Is “Structurally Unsound,” $25 Billion Tab Is “Wild Guess”

Even the Washington Post admits that the housing bill that would bail out Fannie Mae is “structurally unsound” and would cost enormous sums that cannot even be calculated, making the predicted $25 billion tab for just one part of the bill (bailing out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) a “wild guess.” 

That’s a striking admission, given that the Post has provided a soapbox for Fannie Mae backers like Franklin D. Raines, the crooked former Fannie Mae executive who used accounting fraud to award himself multimillion dollar bonuses.  (The Post‘s Steven Pearlstein has long been an apologist for Fannie Mae and its risky practices).

Since 152 Congressmen voted against the liberal-backed mortgage bailout bill, President Bush could veto this monster of a bill if he had the guts to do so.  But instead, he let his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, whose investment bank will benefit from a bailout, talk him into withdrawing a veto threat so that this boondoggle will become law.  The bill will benefit liberal lawmakers, like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, who helped spawn the mortgage crisis by pressuring lenders to make risky loans to people with bad credit, in the name of “affordable housing” and “diversity.” 

The bill contains new spending for “affordable housing” that will be used to enrich left-wing lobbying groups like ACORN and La Raza, and may be used to finance  projects by politically-connected developers who benefit from abuses of eminent domain.