History

• The Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act was introduced during the session of Congress held on January 26, 2005. The bill was sponsored by Republican senators Charles Hagel, Elizabeth Dole, John McCain and John Sununu, and was drafted in response to allegations of improper management and regulation at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
  
  

Function

• At the time the bill was drafted, the HUD Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was responsible for setting forth the regulatory provisions for all secondary mortgage market lenders. The bill proposed that this authority be transferred to a newly created, and federally independent, Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Agency.
  
  

Considerations

• The bill was met with opposition from lobbyists and other members of the Senate and never became law. Though this particular attempt at reform failed, in 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entered into a conservatorship run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), another independent federal regulatory agency.