Barney Frank revising history once again

(Update 10/15/2010: The day after I wrote this, Investors Business Daily had its own take on Barney Franks in an editorial entitled "Barney's big lie.")

In a Tuesday debate, Barney Frank, chairman of the House Finance committee, made this statement:

“Low-income home ownership has been a mistake, and I have been a consistent critic of it,’’ said Frank, 70. Republicans, he said, were principally responsible for failing to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants the government seized in September 2008.

But in September 2003, according to the New York Times:

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.

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

''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.''

And reported in 2008 by the Business and Media Institute:

Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk. Frank’s office has been unresponsive to efforts by the Business & Media Institute to comment on these potential conflicts of interest.

Of course, he played the race card in 2008, as reported by the Huffington Post:

Congressman Barney Frank says Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that is racially motivated.

And it was just this year when he admitted that pushing low income people into housing they couldn't afford was a mistake:

For years, Frank was a staunch supporter of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government housing agencies that played such an enormous role in the financial meltdown that thrust the economy into the Great Recession. But in a recent CNBC interview, Frank told me that he was ready to say goodbye to Fannie and Freddie.

"I hope by next year we'll have abolished Fannie and Freddie," he said. Remarkable. And he went on to say that "it was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn't afford and couldn't really handle once they had it." He then added, "I had been too sanguine about Fannie and Freddie."

I could find hundreds of examples that show how dishonest Franks is, but I'll leave it up to you to do a Google search.

Do politicians think we're really that stupid or can't remember, or are Democrats in general just so desperate that they'll say anything to remain in power? Or, is it that liberals don't have a sense of taking responsibility for their own actions? Whatever it is, I'll bet about half of the voters are stupid enough to vote for Franks.