Patrick McHenryChairman

WASHINGTON, December 15, 2010 -

: Financial Services Committee Chairman-elect Spencer Bachus today released the following statement in response to the primer on the causes of the financial crisis issued earlier today by the Republican Commissioners on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC).

"The FCIC Republican commissioners plainly stated what most Americans have known all along but that Democrats have failed to acknowledge: that lax lending standards and moral hazard promoted by misguided government policies put our entire financial system at risk.  Vice Chairman Thomas and his fellow Republican commissioners should be commended for their important contribution to the debate over how to avoid such financial crises in the future.

"It is my hope that sobering reports like this will more clearly define the real problems facing our economy that we Republicans have committed to tackling - addressing our housing finance system and putting an end to the practice of the government determining which firms are ‘too big to fail,' and ‘too small to save.' 

"Our top priority in the next Congress is winding down the government sponsored enterprises that were at the heart of the crisis and received the largest bailout of them all.  It's time for the Administration to join us in making GSE reform a priority." 

Note:  In the 111^th Congress, House Republicans introduced a number of measures to immediately address the failures of the GSEs, in addition to a detailed set of principles to protect taxpayers from further losses and future bailouts, and build a more sustainable housing finance system based on private capital.  During the conference negotiations for the Dodd Frank Act, Republicans offered amendment after amendment to address the root cause of the financial crisis by ending the GSE bailouts and abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The Democrats rejected this approach, and refused to hold a single legislative hearing or act on GSE reform at all.

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