What Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) means is that it’s too expensive … and too politically fraught to do before the elections.  Rick Santelli blasts Kanjorski on CNBC this morning for dodging the issue as well as offering the misleading notion that Congress is doing something about the continuing risk of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to taxpayers.  After all, Congress took off the limits on the bailout a few months ago, something Kanjorski fails to mention:

In fairness, it probably is too complicated to be included in the Dodd bill, but that’s just all the more reason for Fannie/Freddie reform to be addressed first.  After all, while Wall Street bears some responsibility for the secondary problems that created the crash in 2008, the actual, underlying cause was Fannie/Freddie’s assumed guarantees from Congress and Congressional manipulation of the lending markets.  If we unlink the federal government from Fannie and Freddie, it will keep Congress from using that relationship again to conduct the kind of social engineering that almost gave us a new Great Depression.

Let’s fix government’s problems before addressing Wall Street’s.  It can’t be any more expensive than the unlimited bailout Congress authorized in this session.