Frank sees racism in Republican attacks
BOSTON (AP) — Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., had denounced Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation’s housing crisis as a racially motivated, veiled attack on the poor.
The GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country’s mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act, Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Monday. He called such blame misplaced, because those loans are issued by regulated institutions, while far more foreclosures were triggered by high-cost loans made by unregulated entities.
“They get to take things out on poor people,” Frank said. “Let’s be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn’t hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people.”
Frank also dismissed charges that Democrats failed on their own or blocked Republican efforts to rein in the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called Frank’s remarks “a lame, desperate attempt to divert Americans’ attention away from the Democratic party’s obstruction of reforms that would have reined in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and helped our nation avoid this economic crisis.”
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