let me share a few opening comments and i will turn to senator shelby on the opening comments and get right to the witnesses unless the members feel compelled to share a thought or two on this. today, we meet to discuss the government-sponsored enterprises fannie mae and freddie mac and the role they will play as we seek to restore normalcy to the mortgage market, but don't forget what we are talking about. we are talking about whether responsible homeowners will have the access to home loans they need to realize the american dream of homeownership. last year when the mortgage market collapsed, the director of the federal housing finance authority put fannie mae and freddie mac into conservatorship, and at the time chairman paulson xer siexercise authority that he was given to provide backup funding for the two companies to insure they would continue to finance mortgages in the housing crisis. today, we need to consider where we are going to go from here. now is the time to look forward as well as looking back, but with so much damage done by this financial crisis, the role of the gse

he also met with alabama senator richard shelby and his local congressman.lergies and then he turned the camera on some of the members of his delegation to hear what they had to say. >> why did you come here? >> to pass a bill. >> how many families were there here? >> we have 74. >> and snow he's in middle school. because we're from new jersey, the state has one of eight states to pass a law. >> he was one -- that kid was from one state that actually does have some regulations in line for these kids. if you want to learn more go to cnn.com/allergies. you know, chuck, even my kids their little school they have posted on every door which classroom has a child with food allergies in it and you would be very surprised at how many -- >> it seems there's more of them. >> peanut absolutely the worst. >>> a plan to breath breathalyzers into high schools? what's that all about? >> it's about fox borough massachusetts, and they're planning to bring in a breathalyzer to find out if these kids are drinking. since everyone taking the test is under age, just a 0.02 could

senate who was telling him that the republicans were furious with the house managers was richard shelbyone of the most anti-clinton senators, but he was a prosecutor and said there's no case here. they know they're not going to win. >> i was looking at the time on this show, what was provable wasn't impeachable, and what was impeachable, obstruction of justice charge, wasn't provable. his secretary wasn't going to talk and monica wasn't going to talk if there was a crime, if there was a crime. >> so we went through all of that for nothing. >> let me ask you about bill clinton himself. it seems to me he was a genius. he's really smart. and i've always wondered about something personally, he will be interviewing you or talking to you and yet he uses the extra 40 iq points to do cross word puzzles or to play hearts with you. what is it about a guy with that incredible talent, why he doesn't apply it directly to the presidency, for example? why he has to always be using his brain to sort of slice off some of it for other uses. what is that about? >> he fidgets. he has a lot of extra energy.

conference committee ado not shelby water wars in midland. i just want to give warning to some other members of this. not only would the judge's ruling about the basins, it also mentions that because this drinking water was nonauthorized and who would have ever thought that we'd have to authorize the ability for humans to have drinking water out of their water source? it also is going to affect 17 other states with approximately 42 corps impoundments in their state. if they don't believe that this will not be used as a test case in a model for others to file suit with the endangered species act or whatever, for people taking unauthorized drinking water out of those water sources, they are very much confused. this bill needs to be defeated. this conference report needs to be defeated. we need to go back to conference, we need to get this language out. and i hope that other members of this body who have these empowerments located in their state understand the consequences of what this language could have to them if this conference committee rep