DaytonDailyNews.com

It's safe to say Mike Turner has a burr in his saddle over the bank crisis.

There he was last week, one of a long line of lawmakers laying into executives for the collapsed Lehman Brothers and the saved-by-bailout AIG at two hearings held by the House Committee on Government Reform.

Other members of Congress blasted disgraced Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld for his high compensation and his lousy management of the firm.

But Turner didn't go there.

Instead, he focused on something that's tweaked him since the $700 billion bailout bill hit the floor of the House a few weeks back. Turner believes that bill was inherently flawed because it didn't hold banks accountable, and that the same lousy loans that helped earn Dayton its place as one of the prime places for foreclosures are still available now. He wants the proverbial pound of flesh.

Everyone's looking for blame in this crisis. Some blame easy credit, the rapid zig-zag of house prices, and the fact that homeowners banked on the idea that their homes would shoot skyward in value, and some decided to use their houses as the equivalent of ATMs.

Here's where Turner, R-Centerville, disagrees. He thinks many of those homeowners were doomed in the first place, that too many properties in his region were valued too high at the time of loan origination, and homeowners never had a fighting chance of seeing their houses hit even that level.

"I believe that if you issue a loan at origination where the loan value exceeds the property value, and that you then issue securities based upon that loan, and you don't disclose that gap that existed at loan origination, that you are, in fact, I believe, stealing," he told Fuld.

Sure, he said, some homeowners took out mortgages on the equity of their house that they ultimately couldn't afford. He'll concede that.

But what he wants bank executives to concede is that many of those loans were inflated in the first place.

Fuld testified that he didn't believe any of the original mortgage securitizers would've taken a mortgage whose values were in excess of the value of the home. "I find that very difficult to either understand or believe," he said.

Turner was skeptical. He pressed Fuld, asking him whether it would be his testimony that none of the original loans issued by Lehman Brothers exceeded the property value at origination.

Fuld said he did not review each and every loan.

Here's Turner: "I thought I heard you say that no one would do that and I can tell you that the experience in Ohio is that is exactly what was being done."

And Fuld: "I would say no one would do it knowingly."

The next day, Turner was back, pressing the same issue with former AIG CEOs Robert Willumstad and Martin Sullivan. Both testified that they knew of no loans originated at a higher level than their value.

Jane Mitakides, the Democrat challenging Turner in November, agrees that some loans were originated at too high a level. But she argues that's one piece of a set of causes that includes the 1999 vote to revoke the Glass-Steagall Act, which barred the same financial company from being both a commercial bank and an investment bank. She said the 1999 vote loosened restrictions on banks, a move which contributed to this mess.

"I think there's enough blame to go around in the financial markets in terms of how these things were done," she said.

Turner, meanwhile, is convinced that the lenders who originated loans at a higher value than the property stole. It's why he voted against the bailout and it's why he's focused on this issue during hearings where there were innumerable questions to ask.

Turner will argue – and with validity – that he's been involved in this issue since the mid-1990s.

But now, he's more than involved. He's furious.