mr. chairman , my amendment is straightforward . 
it cuts off a line of credit to the treasury . 
the gses have a line of credit of $ 2 billion . 
it is said that it is not important because they never use it . 
the answer really to that is if they never use it , why leave it on the books . 
but we do know they indirectly use it . 
it has been described as a subsidy , because the gses can go into the market and get a discount on their loan costs ; therefore , they can out-compete the private sector . 
my amendment merely eliminates that line of credit , puts a greater burden on the marketplace to regulate the gses rather than depending on regulation . 
i think members can see there is a problem with our gses . 
the debt is horrendous . 
today , the administration sent a letter around and said that the debt of the gses totals $ 2.5 trillion , and they also guarantee in addition $ 2.4 trillion . 
that adds up to more money than the federal government has borrowed . 
so it is a tremendous amount of money and credit that is in the system ; and people have become frightened about this , including chairman of the federal reserve board , alan greenspan . 
but what we are doing here today is not addressing the real problem : why is it out of control ? 
why is there a financial housing bubble that everybody is afraid is going to undergo a severe correction ? 
one of the major reasons is the fact that it has this special line of credit . 
so if we want to address the real cause of the problem , we have to eliminate the line of credit . 
so it rather amazes me that we do this much legislating without addressing the real cause of our problem . 
of course , there are other things that contribute to the housing bubble , something that we can not deal with today , but the fact that there is easy credit and low interest rates , interest rates below the market level , that is then directed into the housing market . 
this also contributes to the size and the scope of the borrowing capacity of the gses . 
also in this bill , of course , we are adding into this a brand new housing program which is said to probably involve another billion dollars in the next 2 years . 
i guess it is not surprising when the wall street journal editorializes against this . 
unfortunately , they are not very kind . 
they say this bill is another `` republican policy embarrassment '' . 
this housing bubble , a housing program that we are starting up , how do we finance it ? 
well , we tax the gses . 
instead of arguing the case for the marketplace and letting people earn money legitimately without subsidies , what we do , we keep allowing the system to continue . 
they do make profits , and then we tax them . 
we are talking about an additional tax , and this might very well be the reason the administration has come out against this bill , because of this new tax . 
