Capito, Colleagues Send Letter to Biden Administration Blasting Proposal to Subsidize High-Risk Borrowers with Low Credit Scores

Source: United States Senator for West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) joined a letter – led by U.S. Senators Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kan.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) – to the Biden administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Sandra Thompson. The letter expressed the senators’ outrage at Thompson’s proposal to penalize Americans who have managed their money responsibly in order to subsidize high-risk borrowers with low credit.

“This shortsighted and counterproductive policy demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the necessity of accurately tailoring housing finance products to credit risk and establishes a perverse incentive that punishes hardworking Americans for their fiscal prudence,” the senators wrote. “Under your leadership, FHFA has pushed forward a number of policy proposals and changes that seek to social-engineer the U.S. housing market in ways that increase riskiness and promote discrimination…The fact that a proposal flaunting credit risk is being openly pushed by FHFA just a decade-and-a-half after the housing-led 2008 financial crisis is staggering…The housing market should not be exploited as a means to pander to targeted demographics that you have chosen, nor an instrument to secure political favoritism.”

In addition to Senators Capito, Marshall, and Tillis, the letter was signed by: Senators Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), John Thune (R-S.D.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

Full text of the letter is available here.

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