Rep. Richard Baker (House Web site) of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists:
“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
“Baker explains later he didn’t intend flippancy but has long wanted to improve low-income housing.” (Wall Street Journal‘s Washington Wire, Sept. 9, 2005 [paid sub. only], and now at Raw Story)
However, it just might be that Rep. Baker — the Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises — wants to improve low-income housing.
Baker — who founded his own real estate company in the 1970s , according to his official biography — is referenced in today’s WaPo story, “Fannie, Freddie Give Breaks on Payments” [“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac give affected homeowners a reprieve on mortgage payments and lawmakers consider requiring the housing-finance companies to set aside a portion of their profit to help rebuild low-income housing in flood-ravaged areas.”]
Meanwhile, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) and Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.) are in talks with House colleagues about amending a bill regulating the [housing finance companies] so that areas affected by the hurricane, including those that are absorbing displaced victims, would be first to receive money from a fund for low-cost housing, committee spokeswoman Peggy Peterson said. [..]
The proposal that Baker and Oxley want to change would require that Fannie and Freddie put aside 5 percent of their after-tax profit to fund the construction or rehabilitation of housing for low-income renters and home buyers. The set-aside is part a larger bill that would tighten regulation of Fannie and Freddie following their multibillion-dollar accounting scandals.
The bill’s progress to the House floor stalled this summer after a group of conservative lawmakers raised concerns about the proposed set-aside. Some worried that the two companies would use the fund to give money to political allies. Others cringed at the idea of the federal government seizing profit from private businesses.
Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee rejected the proposed fund. …The hurricane “reinforces the reason to have such a fund,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “Some people said, ‘Well, it’s going to be abused.’ Well, let’s see how it works in Louisiana.”
Baker is a “good ol’ boy.” He tried to help Morgan Stanley rein in Eliot Spitzer:
A few months later, Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) introduced a bill –“ originally circulated on the Hill by Morgan
Stanley — to rein in state regulators and prevent them from forcing structural changes in the securities industry. The measure, which would have paralyzed Spitzer’s probe, was tacitly endorsed by SEC Chairman William Donaldson before being dropped from consideration after some unsought media coverage. (White House For Sale)
Baker is also somewhat tied to the Abramoff scandal. Paul Sawyer, staff director for Rep. Baker, is listed among “the names of a fair number of those 100-plus Hill staffers, congressional members, journalists, and think-tank denizens who visited Saipan during the Abramoff junket period.” (Tapped, Prospect mag., May 2005)
Here’s the link to OpenSecret.org’s summary of Baker’s finances.
This is a cursory study of a U.S. representative whose history I do not know. I was infuriated by his remarks quoted in the Wall Street Journal, so did a bit of digging. More may come out in the following days, and I’ll welcome participatory research into his role in the Mac financing family, and more.
Related to the rebuilding: “WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order on Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.”
One would hope that President Bush and legislators would demand similar concessions of the housing, banking and financing industries.
