mr. chairman , i thank chairman baker for yielding me this time ; and to call me a co-contributor , when one considers all the effort he has put into this , is a vast overstatement . 
i have never seen , during the time i have been here , which is a number of years now , a legislator work so hard on a particular issue ; and i congratulate chairman baker for getting it this far . 
and i would like to thank the ranking member . 
the gentleman from massachusetts ( mr. frank ) xz4001400 has been extremely helpful . 
i do not know where this is going to come out in the end because of the discussion and dispute over the affordable housing fund . 
but , basically , i think the underlying bill is a heck of a sound bill . 
i would like to credit both sides . 
we do not have a lot of legislation on this floor which is really done with the best interests of america at heart without any consideration for politics , republican or democrat ; and i think this is one piece of legislation that does this . 
i doubt there are those , other than the gentleman from massachusetts ( mr. frank ) xz4001400 and the gentleman from louisiana ( mr. baker ) xz4000120 , and maybe three or four other people in congress , a few on the outside , who can really describe all that this means in terms of the gses . 
when you are dealing with fannie mae and freddie mac and the home loan banks , virtually any mortgage out there is in some way touching on them . 
they have vast investments . 
they have vast sums of dollars that they are handling on a regular basis . 
if there are any organizations that need close scrutiny and regulation in this country , to me it is these gses . 
that is what this bill does . 
i am not critical of those who have been doing the regulation before , but the bottom line is there were some problems . 
we do need the most sophisticated kind of regulation that we can have , because they are participating in some of the most sophisticated kinds of investments that one can make . 
we are dealing with a housing market ; and while i hope there will not be a bubble or anything of that nature , there are problems potentially in that area that we will have to deal with , and we want to make sure that they are closely monitored so they will not contribute to that particular problem . 
i appreciate the affordable housing fund . 
i am sorry there is a dispute over it . 
i think the concept of the affordable housing fund makes a heck of a lot of sense as well . 
i would strongly recommend this legislation . 
i hope it will pass in the house and we can achieve this as final legislation that the president can sign and all of us can take a great deal of pride in doing something that is constructive for america . 
