"They get to take things out on poor people," Frank said at a symposium in Boston. "Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people."
After being
shelled on Bill O'Reilly and elsewhere for
his involvement in the Fannie Mae collapse, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has decided to play the race card, implying the GOP's political motivation in the crisis
is racist.
Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated.
The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said 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 also dismissed charges the Democrats failed on their own or blocked Republican efforts to rein in the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The federal government recently took control of both entities.
Frank said Republicans controlled Congress for 12 years and passed no regulation, while Democrats passed a Bush administration Fannie and Freddie regulation package since gaining control of the House and Senate in January 1997.
"If I could have stopped a Republican bill during the Bush years, I would have started with the war in Iraq. Then I would have gone to the Patriot Act. Then I would have gone on to the hundreds of millions in tax cuts," said Frank, to applause from the audience.
House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio responded:
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."
"Congressman Frank should retract his ridiculous statements and start taking responsibility for the role he and other top Democrats played in putting Main Street Americans in this mess," Boehner said.
The fact that Rep. Frank would use race as a 'get out of jail free' card to extricate himself from his own
personal responsibility in the crisis, and perhaps even capitalize on it politically, is reprehensible at best. Millions of Americans from all walks of life have been devastated by this scandal, and to use it to brand the GOP as the Ku Klux Klan should earn Mr. Frank a censure from his House colleagues, at minimum.
Not holding my breath.
One can only Hope Mr. Frank's
constituents are ready for Change.
