Press Briefing by Dana Perino

Business Wire, Sept 8, 2008

That is not an exhaustive list, but it does provide you an idea of how much work Congress needs to get done within the next three weeks.

With that, I'll go to questions. Ben.

Q Dana, on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, you've outlined the risk to taxpayers and the economy if these companies were to fail. But what about the risk to taxpayers now that the government has taken them over and assumed that debt? Is that a risk that the White House is concerned about?

MS. PERINO: President Bush thinks that the move that Secretary Paulson worked on is the right move at the right time. And this is not action that we wanted to take, it's action that we needed to take. The goal is to prevent additional risk to the taxpayers, and in this plan Secretary Paulson has moved forward to make sure that the taxpayers would be paid back first. If you're a shareholder or you're top management of these companies today, it's not a very bright day for you. And taxpayer money will be safeguarded to the greatest extent possible.

Secretary Paulson and others made the determination in working through the options, and then finally talking with the President, that this was the best way to prevent a broader financial problem for our capital markets here in the United States, but also globally.

Q And just to follow up on that, about the administration not being anxious to take that step, why is that? Could you flesh out a little bit more what the concern is or why this is a step that the administration was hesitant to take?

MS. PERINO: Well, going back years, this administration has advocated for reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress has been reluctant to move forward on those for many years, and in fact, didn't even take it real seriously until this crisis emerged -- and we finally got some of that legislation I think in early August or late July.

The reason that we're -- we didn't want to have to take this action is we prefer for Congress to take care of its own business. Remember, these are congressionally chartered companies, and it's appropriate that Congress have a role in saying how they're going to move forward in the future. And that's why Congress will have a chance when they get back over this next period and also into the next administration to decide how to move forward with them.

Q Dana, could you expand a bit, in terms of the President's sort of philosophical underpinning -- this is not exactly limited government, this takeover. So how concerned was he -- just in terms of conservative political ideology, how concerned was he about doing something that seems to be sort of the opposite of all of that?

MS. PERINO: Well, it's again -- President Bush initiated a call years ago to try to reform this system because he did not want the status quo to continue. Unfortunately, Congress didn't act on that. And the systemic risk that was posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to our entire economy was one that the President felt it was more important to deal with now, and start to work on now, so that the next administration would be able to work with the Congress and figure out a way to make sure that this would not be allowed to happen again. And so far, cooperation with Congress since this announcement has been very good.