Obama and McCain on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae Rescue

Bloomberg reports:

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain gave their support for federal action to rescue Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae while saying steps must be taken to ensure the mortgage giants don’t keep passing losses off to taxpayers.

“It looks like the Bush administration is going to intervene with a bailout that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars,” Obama, the Democratic nominee, said today while campaigning in Terre Haute, Indiana. “These entities are so big and they are so tied into the housing market that it’s probably true that we have to take steps to make sure that they don’t just collapse.”

McCain said the Treasury Department’s plan for a conservatorship for the loan agencies “has to be done.”

“We’ve got to keep people in their homes. There’s got to be restructuring, there’s got to be reorganization, and there’s got to be some confidence that we’ve stopped this downward spiral,” McCain said in a recorded interview for CBS’s “Face to Nation” program. CBS released excerpts of the interview, to be broadcast tomorrow morning.

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Also See: “Barack Obama Asks That Taxpayers Not Pay Severance Packages for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac CEOs“