In Washington, I won a victory for common sense when the House members of the conference committee on the financial regulation bill accepted my amendment to include the two failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

While it remains to be seen whether my language will be accepted by the Senate, since 2008, even while they have been under government control, in a failed attempt to stabilize housing prices and maintain politically motivated affordable housing goals Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have continued to buy suspect mortgages at the cost to taxpayers of $7 billion a month.

My language is at least a small step toward putting them on the same footing as other failed institutions and ending their status as the poster children for crony capitalism.

The financial regulation bill is about 2,000 pages long. Most of us would agree that Wall Street is in need of reforms that will lead to smarter regulation. Unfortunately, it appears that rather than eliminate the crony capitalism abuses that led to the $145 billion — and counting — taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bill as written will perpetuate and perhaps even expand the concept of “too big to fail.”

As it stands, GM and Chrysler can continue to be deemed “financial companies,” and too big to fail, so what’s to prevent any other big company from becoming a “financial company” under this bill? Knowing how creative minds can be in the nation’s capitol, it appears to me that almost any large concern could come within the gambit of this legislation.

If the majority party continues on this path, we will effectively designate a number of firms to be “too big to fail” and this concept will not be restricted to what most of us would define as actual financial companies. These “too big to fail” companies will have advantages in the market that others do not have.

That is certainly not an end I am looking for.