Free Republic

Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington. Congress will put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's a tribute to what these two institutions — which most Americans have never heard of — have bought with more than $170-million worth of lobbyists in the past decade. With combined obligations of roughly $5-trillion, the rapid failure of Fannie and Freddie would be a threat to mortgage markets and financial markets as a whole. Because of that threat, I support taking the unfortunate but...

In the rush to bulldoze the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac and housing bailout bill through Congress this week, scant attention has been paid in Washington to how the U.S. system fell into this hole. Thus it was refreshing to see Senator John McCain step up and speak rude truth to his colleagues about the fiasco in an op-ed piece this week. "Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington," the Republican presidential hopeful wrote in the St. Petersburg Times, stating the clear but all-too-often unspoken reality about this greatest of boondoggles. Yesterday 80 Senators voted to end debate...