Why is Sen. Dodd Stalling on Loans?

24 Dec 2008 // Isn't it time that U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd came clean and released documents on two mortgages hew received from Countrywide Financial Corp. that has already sparked a Senate ethics inquiry?

Following a meeting in Westport on Monday with Fairfield County labor leaders, Connecticut's senior senator once again hedged on saying when he would release the documents. Dodd continues to say the information will be forthcoming but he refuses to say when.

Well, it's been five month since the disclosure that Dodd and another senator may have received preferential treatment in 2003 on mortgages from Countrywide Financial, which was later implicated in the sub-prime mortgage scandals and eventually was taken over by Bank of America.

When the disclosure came, Dodd said he never sought preferential treatment from Countrywide and pledged he would disclose information about the loans. However, since then it's been one hedge after another when he's asked about the matter.

Full disclosure is key because Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and is at ground zero in the nation's Capitol in trying to put a stop to America's economic meltdown. Certainly, his efforts in the Senate to craft remedies to the meltdown are appreciated, but this preferential treatment issue continues to hang over his work like a dark cloud and detracts from it.

It may be true, as the senator has said repeatedly said in recent months, that there's little to be told about his deal with Countrywide in refinancing a Washington townhouse and his home here in Connecticut. But, if that's the case -- and we hope that it is -- why prolong release of the information and the mounting criticism the senator is facing.

It's no wonder, according to a Quinnipiac poll of registered state voters released last week, that Dodd's popularity rating is at an all-time low of 47 percent.