RUSH: Now, we’ve got a couple Barney Frank sound bites here. He’s always good for a couple sound bites. We thought about getting a Barney Frank translator in here but that would sorta destroy it. I mean, I can do it myself but sometimes it’s better to leave Barney Frank un-translated. He was on Tavis Smiley’s show, PBS, last night, and Smiley said, ‘What did you do today relative to low-income housing?’
FRANK: One of the causes of the terrible crisis we had over the last few years, which has given us today’s problem, it came from people being pushed into buying houses —
RUSH: No!
FRANK: — taking homes that they couldn’t afford.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Who did that? Who pushed them to buy houses? Who pushed them? Who told these people (unintelligible) that they could buy (unintelligible) in there? It was you, it was Barney Frank and Bill Clinton, you pushed these people, you called the banks, you told them they should live in them when they couldn’t really afford it. You did. (unintelligible) You did yourself, and now all of a sudden these people were preyed upon. Here’s the rest of his answer.
FRANK: It was a conservative view that rental housing was a bad thing. I have been trying to continue programs to build descent rental housing.
RUSH: What?
FRANK: What we had were in people in power who didn’t like that, and they said no, no, we’ll help them become homeowners.
RUSH: What?
FRANK: People were pushing home ownership who shouldn’t have been there. We have now, in Barack Obama, a president who understands this. But if you are low income in America, if you’re poor, you probably are not going to be able to afford a home.
RUSH: Obama understands it? He’s keeping ’em in the houses! We’re paying the mortgages! It’s called bailout or foreclosure to keep the bank from foreclosing on people with mortgages (unintelligible). Obama said they should not have been homeowners. Obama’s ACORN forced them to be homeowners, Mr. Frank. This is unreal (unintelligible). I can’t keep a straight face listening to this. The rest of the bite.
FRANK: I met with a group of people today who are very responsible advocates for building decent, affordable rental housing.
RUSH: Unbelievable. So now all of a sudden to hell with affordable home ownership being you own it, now affordable housing is you rent it, and then Travis Smiley sitting there like the dunce that he is, ‘I’m glad you’re on the case,’ said Tavis Smiley, ‘but how does that lead to home ownership, because you can’t tell me that you want to sell folks short on the American dream.’ Now, this ought to be good.
FRANK: I don’t want to sell them short. I want to recognize, though, Tavis, that they may come up short. Pretending people can do something they can’t do is no favor for them. I wish we could do something about income inequality in America, and I’m for that. I would like to get better education all up and down the social sphere so people can earn more money. I’d like to bring down the cost of housing. But the point —
RUSH: It’s come down! The cost of housing has collapsed, Mr. Frank, you have succeeded: the cost of housing is so bad that it’s destroyed people’s equity in their homes, it’s destroyed everything, it’s at the root of the problems in the housing crisis. (unintelligible) You want to see housing prices come down, you made it happen, you made it happen, and Tavis Smiley sits there, yes, yes, yes. This is why we produced this song about you, Mr. Frank, because you’re the architect of all of this. The song is you singing Banking Queen because that’s what you are.
(playing of Banking Queen)