Member Corner

House Republicans are hard at work reforming America’s housing finance system so it’s sustainable for home owners, respectful of hard-working taxpayers, and built to last. Today – more than five years after the financial crisis and three years since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act – President Obama delivered a speech outlining his principles for housing finance reform.  While it’s… Read more »

  Capital Markets & GSEs Subcommittee Chairman Scott Garrett (Facebook | Twitter) delivers this week's Sunday Video Message -- our last before the August District Work Period -- on the PATH Act.   Read more »

Wall Street Journal | Just Another Bureaucracy The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau likes to portray itself as a virtuous, upstart and independent agency focused on helping the little guy. In reality it's just another big bureaucracy that rolls out thousands of pages of new rules every year, generating lucrative business opportunities for lawyers and the agency's… Read more »

Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit Subcommittee Chairman Shelley Moore Capito (Facebook | Twitter) delivers this week's Sunday Video Message on the PATH Act. The Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners Act was approved by the full committee on Wednesday. Read more »

Editorial | July 25, 2013 THE POLITICS of housing finance reform are starting to get interesting. On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Financial Services Committee passed the Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH) Act, which would wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace the busted entities with —… Read more »

“…if you don't get rid of the permanent, everyday government guarantee in the secondary mortgage market, I fear all you've done is put Fannie and Freddie in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Give them a facelift, give them new names, maybe they come out as Eddie and Annie. And yet they're released on an unsuspecting public.”   Hensarling on the PATH Act – Protecting… Read more »

  Housing & Insurance Subcommittee Chairman Randy Neugebauer (Facebook | Twitter) delivers this week's Sunday Video Message on the PATH Act. The full committee will markup the PATH Act this Tuesday at 10:15 a.m. Read more about the act -- including how it sustains the 30-year fixed rate mortgage and enables FHA to play an expanded role in times of crisis -- on our Bottom Line Blog.  Read more »

AEI: FHA Watch – July 2013 The Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH) Act provides for comprehensive reform of the government’s role in housing finance. Heritage Foundation: Dodd-Frank at Year Three: Onerous and Costly July 21 marks the third anniversary of Dodd–Frank, Washington’s massive regulatory response to the housing market collapse, the failure of major… Read more »

Rep. Ed Royce hit the nail on the head this week when he correctly pointed out that the PATH Act does not eliminate all government guarantees as some have incorrectly claimed. Courtesy of Rep. Royce’s office, below is his exchange with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke this week on how the PATH Act preserves the FHA’s countercyclical role by allowing it to insure loans to any… Read more »

“Fannie Mae will never impose a cost on the American taxpayer…” – James A. Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae, testifying before the House of Representatives, April 17, 1996  “Under the direction of James A. Johnson, Fannie Mae’s calculating and politically connected chief executive, the company capitalized on its government ties, building itself into the largest and most… Read more »