GOP gets cold feet on ending bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

With Republicans taking control of the House next year, privatizing Fannie and Freddie is still a top priority, but the timetable is slipping. Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index, released Tuesday, showed that home prices fell in all 20 metro areas surveyed, wiping out nearly all the gains from the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time home buyers, which expired on April 30.

The Republican set to chair a key finance panel says that the risk of a new shock to fragile housing markets is forcing a delay of at least a year.

“We are not interested in pulling the plug immediately on Fannie and Freddie,” says Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R) of Texas, the incoming chair of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Finance Committee. “We need a more measured approach that will faze them out over a period of time, given the impact on the markets.”

Imagine that.