The changed, partisan confirmation process for the new FHFA director has decreased the chances for Congressional action on housing-finance reform.

Last week, Joseph Otting, the then-acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, set the GSE rumor mills churning when he told an audience at George Mason University Law School that the agency would finish work this summer on the final capital rule for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In a straight, party-line vote, the Senate Thursday confirmed conservative economist Mark Calabria to be the next director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

As usual, the Trump administration’s proposed annual budget appears to be dead on arrival. It simply steps on too many legislative toes. Among the issues the budget will face is how Congress reacts to its treatment of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Last month, a pair of watchdog organizations asked the inspectors general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Department of the Treasury to investigate whether media leaks by officials at FHFA or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were part of an insider trading scheme.

The general consensus was that Mark Calabria would be easily confirmed as FHFA director. So it came as somewhat of a surprise when his nomination passed out of the committee last week on a 13- to-12, straight party-line vote.

To paraphrase Mark Twain: Rumors of HARP’s death have been greatly exaggerated. At least that’s the finding of a recent report by structured finance analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch who looked the impact similar programs will have on the GSEs’ credit-risk transfer programs.

Mel Watt violated ethics rules as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency by attempting to “coerce” a senior manager into a relationship by suggesting he could help her in getting an executive post, according to a just-released report from the agency’s inspector general.

In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs last week, Mark Calabria, President Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, reinforced expectations that, as director, he would begin the long-awaited recapitalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.