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Chairman Hensarling on Fox Business: "A Broke FHA Does No One Any Good"


Washington, October 28, 2013 - Chairman Hensarling appeared on Fox Business Network earlier today to discuss tomorrow's Full Committee hearing on the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded bailout the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) received at the end of September. 

 

Hensarling on FHA's current condition: 

"Well as you probably know, FHA is about to receive their first bailout ever: $1.7 billion basically for a government agency that for years told us they would never need a bailout." 

"Regrettably, Congress has been misled for years as to the true fiscal health of the FHA. And so we're going to have the director of the FHA, Carol Galante, before our committee tomorrow [to] try to get to the bottom of this and find out why aren't they using the tools available to them to make FHA more fiscally sound. Because a broke FHA does no one any good." 

"For years FHA has been making predictions about their fiscal sustainability and they have been consistently wrong and hugely wrong." 

"The bottom line is at a time when our nation has taken on more debt in the previous four years than in the first 200, I can visualize the national debt clock, which I keep going in our committee hearing room, it's just turning faster and faster, and now part of the problem is the FHA." 

Hensarling on FHA reform: 

"We have to have a sustainable housing policy in America. One that is sustainable for homeowners, so we don't put people in homes they can't afford to keep. One that is sustainable for taxpayers, so they never again have to engage in bailouts of Fannie and Freddie and FHA. And then finally [one that is] sustainable for our economy. We've got to get off this boom, bust, bailout cycle." 

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