A top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee said Tuesday she is disappointed that the GOP has not been able to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since taking control of the House in January.
"It's been seven months. I'm surprised that we haven't been able to do more. I really am," Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, who chairs the House financial institutions and consumer credit subcommittee, said in response to an audience question at a National Mortgage News/American Banker Regulatory Symposium.
Capito, R-W.Va., acknowledged that a split in the Republican ranks has contributed to the party's failure so far to take more decisive action to wind down Fannie and Freddie.
There are Republicans on the committee who would like Fannie and Freddie to cease to exist within two or three years, according to Capito, but she is not one of them.
"I have serious hesitation into that dramatic way of solving a problem that we obviously need to solve," Capito said.
Earlier at the same conference, Rep. Barney Frank, the panel's ranking Democrat, chastised House Republicans for saying when they were out of power that they had a plan to wind down Fannie and Freddie, and then failing to act now.
Some Republicans want to turn over mortgage lending almost entirely to the private sector, while others agree with Democrats that there needs to be some form of government guarantee, he said.
"The Republicans … on our committee are torn between their ideology and reality," Frank said.
But Capito said that the Obama administration needs to contribute more to the eventual resolution of the two mortgage giants. A Treasury Department white paper, which presented three broad options for the future of Fannie and Freddie, was too vague, she said. "We can't do this alone," Capito said.
