Barney Frank: Republicans Are Racist For Opposing Bailout
Yes. Racist. Because, you see, a lot of poor black people wouldn’t have homes if it weren’t for the government forcing lenders to give them mortgages.
BOSTON (AP) - 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.
He said that blame is 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 at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston. “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.”
The problem here is that it wasn’t just poor blacks who were benefiting from these subprime loans (if they can ultimately be said to have benefited). It was a lot of poor whites and poor Asians and poor Hispanics (etc., etc.) too. So if there is any prejudice involved in the Republican opposition to the bailout, it’s classism. Not racism.
But even that would be an absurd accusation to make. It is not prejudiced at all to think that loans should only be given to people with the means to pay for them. Nor is it prejudiced to feel that the government should not be involved in deciding who gets loans and who doesn’t.
