Rep. Barney Frank

The following is adapted from remarks at a recent CATO Institute Policy Forum on Deficits and Defense.

The debate on defense spending is taking an encouraging turn: the fact that there is a debate. The most encouraging thing I heard recently on this issue was that John McCain was sufficiently...

As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues to interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.

By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to...

During the overheated debate on health insurance reform, the Republicans stated the bill would create death panels that would kill grandma. They made it up, of course, but now they are ignoring a key aspect of the House and Senate Wall Street reform bill proposed by Democrats: death panels to...

Over the past two weeks, President Obama and leading members of his administration have earned the gratitude of all of us who oppose unfair discrimination in their repudiation of the policy that has refused to allow many patriotic gay and lesbian Americans to serve in our country's military, and which...

People talk about a bipartisan agreement on health care as if it's the highest goal. We had an election in 2008, and the Democrats won the presidency and significant majorities in the House and the Senate. The notion that those of us who won the election with a solid majority...

This post was originally delivered as a speech at the National Press Club on July 27, 2009

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Thank you. I very much appreciate the forum that the Press Club offers for these kinds of discussions and let me reinforce what may have been an entirely unnecessary admonition....

While responding to questions from journalists about my characterization of Justice Antonin Scalia as a homophobe, I realized that the fact that I made that comment in conjunction with a potential lawsuit about the Defense of Marriage Act created some confusion as to my basis for that characterization.

My view...

Memory eventually fails us all, but apparently the decline strikes one party far more than the other.

In recent weeks, my friends across the aisle have expended a lot of breath proclaiming that the Democrats caused the present financial crisis by failing to pass legislation to regulate financial services companies...

I am very disappointed by President-elect Barack Obama's decision to honor Reverend Rick Warren with a prominent role in his inauguration.

Religious leaders obviously have every right to speak out in opposition to anti-discrimination measures, even in the degrading terms that Rev. Warren has used with regard to same-sex...

Recently, the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal repeated unsupported and flat out wrong conservative talking points about me and the root causes of the subprime mortgage crisis. I sought to counter their accusations in a letter to the editor, but the Journal, true to their conservative ideology, is...

Washington, DC - House Financial Services Committee Chairman Frank released the following statement today regarding the refusal of the Wall Street Journal editorial board to publish his response to an inaccurate editorial in a timely manner:

On Sept 9th, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial criticizing my record...

Two wings of the Republican Party engaged in political combat on Wednesday, June 25th over an important question of regulation of the financial sector of our economy. The result was about as one-sided as it could be -- the social/religious conservatives who believe that the main function of government should...

By historical standards -- or any other -- the Democrats have an excellent set of presidential candidates from which to choose this season, and I look forward to campaigning enthusiastically and without reservation for our nominee. But this does not mean that we should be suppressing the discussion of differences,...

Being in the legislative minority is easy - pulling together to block bad things does not require a lot of agonizing over tough decisions. Being in the majority is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we have the ability to move forward in a positive way on important public...

David Sirota recently posted some misrepresentations of my economic viewpoint. I should note that Mr. Sirota did not attempt to get in touch with me--either to speak with me about my ideas, or to get a fuller representation of them--and instead relied on referencing one quote from a newspaper....

Karl Rove's dishonest attack on liberals was not simply a random political shot, but rather part of an effort to resuscitate the discredited claim that the war in Iraq was a response to 9/11. Where liberals have disagreed with this Administration has not been in response to 9/11, but with...