Asking the White House to support more government intervention was "like asking me to judge the Miss America contest — if your heart's
not in it, you don't do a very good job. . ."

"When Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, criticized a component of the housing bill that would give money to local governments to buy and repair foreclosed properties, saying it would not protect homeowners from foreclosure, Mr. Frank fired back that preventing foreclosures was the goal of a different bill."

"The notion that this bill doesn't keep people out of foreclosure is true," he said. "It doesn't combat global warming. It doesn't get troops out of Iraq. It won't help me lose weight. There are a lot of things this bill won't do that I very much want to do. None of them are a reason to vote against a bill that doesn't do what it doesn't say it's going to do but does what it does. What it does is go to the aid of cities that have been victimized." (May 13, 2008; New York Times)

May 13, 2008 -- New York Times
(Excerpts; for complete article, go to
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/washington/13barney.html [1])