Fannie and Freddie: Obama’s Budget Scam

Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg News had an excellent article that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal this week.

When he was director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, in September 2008 said Fannie and Freddie should be included in the federal budget, but that was before Obama became president. Excluding Fannie and Freddie from the budget (as Obama has done), the national debt held by the public is about $7.9 trillion. With them, it exceeds last year’s $13.2 trillion gross domestic product. Worse, this number is likely to grow because Congress and the Treasury have given Fannie and Freddie a blank check to blow through whatever taxpayer money is necessary to keep the U.S. housing market afloat.

By not holding Fannie and Freddie accountable — and actually expanding them instead — the Obama Administration is both attempting to cover up the major role federal policies had in the economic crisis and it is setting the stage for another crisis when this new, unsustainable bubble pops.