BOSTON -- Rep. Barney Frank said today that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated.

The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country's mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act.

He said that blame is misplaced, because loans under the act are issued by regulated institutions, while far more foreclosures were triggered by high-cost loans made by unregulated entities.

"They get to take things out on poor people," Frank said at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston. "Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people."

Frank also dismissed charges the Democrats failed on their own or blocked Republican efforts to rein in the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The federal government recently took control of both entities.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called Frank's remarks "a lame, desperate attempt to divert Americans' attention away from the Democratic party's obstruction of reforms that would have reined in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and helped our nation avoid this economic crisis."

"Congressman Frank should retract his ridiculous statements and start taking responsibility for the role he and other top Democrats played in putting Main Street Americans in this mess," Boehner said.

Frank said Republicans controlled Congress for 12 years and passed no regulation, while Democrats passed a Bush administration Fannie and Freddie regulation package since gaining control of the House and Senate in January 1997.

"If I could have stopped a Republican bill during the Bush years, I would have started with the war in Iraq. Then I would have gone to the Patriot Act. Then I would have gone on to the hundreds of millions in tax cuts," said Frank, to applause from the audience.

The longtime congressman is being challenged this fall by both Republican and independent candidates. He has been criticized in his liberal district, which wends its way from Newton to New Bedford, for being one of the leaders of congressional efforts last week to win approval of a $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan.

He was greeted at the Colonnade Hotel by a group of protesters who argued the money would be better spent on community problems. They chanted, "Money for the people, not for the banks."

One of the protestors, Nan Genger, said, "You keep the money in our schools and communities; that's how you stimulate the economy."

Frank dismissed the criticism, saying the bailout package was aimed at restoring the country's credit markets, which affect everything from home and auto loans to the state's ability to issue bonds for cash to pay its bills.

"As far as Wall Street is concerned, here's the deal: Some of them behaved badly. You know what? They have so much money that they're going to live well no matter what we do," Frank said. "This is to help people from being laid off in automobile sales room because you don't get the credit to buy cars on cash, to help small businesses to get their inventory. When credit gets choked off, it's the middle-income people who get hurt. The guys on Wall Street, if they never earned another nickel, would live better than they have any right to live."

-- The Associated Press