There they go again. Obama administration officials, that is, throwing billions of tax dollars (borrowed from China and other foreign lenders) to bail out mortgagers and thus keep them from suffering the consequences of the toxic assets created by their ill-advised lending. Only this time, it’s not a highly suspect private sector operation getting the billions, it’s state and local government housing agencies.

The feds are planning to shell out at least $35 billion to enable these housing finance agencies to continue making low-interest loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers trying to buy homes. The HFAs are a comparatively small part of the home mortgage industry, but they are especially sensitive to federal housing policies, including those adopted during the Clinton years to “loosen up” lending standards in the ACORN-encouraged effort to make government the lender of first resort for people who cannot qualify for loans from private lenders.