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Why did Bush ask/order fannie mae to make 440 BILLION in home loans to minorities in 2002?

I keep seeing the same lies being posted by republicans. The govt can not force a bank to make a risky loan. Republicans controlled congress 12 years from Jan 1995 to Jan 2007. They write or change the laws that banks have to follow. Republicans controlled the entire government 6 years from Jan 2001 to Jan 2007 when all the sub-prime loans were made. Dems had nothing to do with it...even bush's own banking experts have said this. Bush appoints the management of freddie mac and fannie mae and "asked" his appointees to make 440 BILLION in loans to poor minorities. He also asked for 2.4 billion in tax credits (corporate welfare) for homebuilders who build low income housing. And he asked for 200 million per year to pay the mortgage closing costs. (If the president appoints you to your job and asks you to do something, that is pretty much an order if you want to keep your job) http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020617.html This is what Bush's official press release states on June 17, 2002: "Today, President Bush announced a new goal to help increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million before the end of the decade. The President's aggressive housing agenda will help dismantle the barriers to homeownership by providing down payment assistance, increasing the supply of affordable homes, increasing support for self-help homeownership programs, and simplifying the home buying process & increasing education. The President is issuing "America's Homeownership Challenge" to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to join in his effort to increase the number of minority homeowners by 5.5 million families by the end of the decade. Many organizations have already responded to the President's challenge by committing to: "Substantially increase by at least $440 billion, the financial commitment made by the government sponsored enterprises involved in the secondary mortgage market, specifically targeted toward the minority market"... "The President wants to dramatically increase the supply of homes available to low and moderate income families. The President has proposed the Single-Family Affordable Housing Tax Credit, which will provide approximately $2.4 billion to encourage the production of 200,000 affordable homes for sale to low and moderate income families." Did you know that bush's top donors were subprime mortgage lenders, real estate developers, and his campagin finance chairman is one of the biggest homebuilders in america...his name is dwight scharr and he lives in a 70 million mansion in palm beach. Did you know that Bush's cousin, Herbert Walker, was vice president of the Goldman Sachs department that placed TRILLIONS in bets that these people would not repay their loans. In 2003 the fbi warned of widespread mortgage fraud...ny attorney general spitzer started to sue predatory lenders but was stopped by the bush administration's Office of Comptroller of Currency who said banking regulation was soley a job of the federal government. All 50 state attorney generals, including many republicans, filed a lawsuit against the bush administration and they lost! Bush used the fed govt to stop ALL 50 states from investigating and prosecuting illegal mortgage fraud.

Public Comments

1. He didn't. From NY Times - September 11, 2003 The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ‘‘The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed. ”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said. The thousands of mortgage defaults and foreclosures in the "subprime" housing market (i.e., mortgage holders with poor credit ratings) is the direct result of thirty years of government policy that has forced banks to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers. The policy in question is the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call "communities of color" that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria. The original lobbyists for the CRA were the hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they benefited from. These included various "neighborhood organizations," as they like to call themselves, such as "ACORN" (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). These organizations claim that over $1 trillion in CRA loans have been made, although no one seems to know the magnitude with much certainty. A U.S. Senate Banking Committee staffer told me about ten years ago that at least $100 billion in such loans had been made in the first twenty years of the Act.
2. Are you crazy.......He did not. That was all the Democrats doing. Check out what Maxine Waters said when Bush wanted oversight of FM&FM. Don't be so stupid. Research it. Obama sued Banks that did not want to give loans to unqualified people.
3. The Democratic party controlled the US Senate from June 2001 to January 2003 Tom Daschle ( D-SD) was the Senate majority leader. If you do not even know which party controlled what and when, how can anyone take anything you post seriously ?