Most Americans are still angry about the recent taxpayer bailouts. Among bailout recipients, American International Group (AIG) is portrayed as the poster child for irresponsibility and a multibillion-dollar cost to taxpayers. But two lesser-known financial institutions, the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), are quietly being revealed as being more costly to taxpayers — much more costly.

While AIG received more than $100 billion in taxpayer funds, the insurance giant is planning to sell a part of its business to raise money. It also reported a $1.5 billion profit in the first quarter of this year. So, AIG could repay most or even all of its bailout money. In the case of AIG, progress is being made.

The same cannot be said for the twin government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Few people understand what role Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had in the mortgage crisis. Even fewer people know what's now going on in these government-owned companies.

But taxpayers should know about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, precisely because they are financial black holes that most in Congress rather would not talk about.

During the inflation of the real estate bubble, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying mortgages from all of the big banks and mortgage companies so that those companies could continue selling loans to homebuyers, including many homebuyers unlikely to repay their loans. This continued even as lending standards were relaxed to the sub-prime market — when "liar loans" were common. It was thought the ability to repay a loan didn't matter because house prices would continue to rise, forever. But, they didn't.

And as the real estate bubble burst, and many private companies left the mortgage market, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were left holding the bag — a giant bag of poor quality mortgages. The two companies financed or backed about 70 percent of single-family mortgages and now own $5 trillion in housing debt, much of it considered shaky.

But eight years ago, when concerns about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being raised, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in response at a House Financial Serv-ices hearing on Sept. 10, 2003, "I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially." Responding to requests to strengthen oversight or reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he said, "I want to roll the dice a little bit more on this situation towards subsidized housing."

At the same hearing, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said, "We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae."

What are Frank and Waters saying now? Nothing. Few in Washington want to talk about the vast and growing troubles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

For whatever reasons, the financial reform legislation now being finalized in Congress does not address Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the Congressional Oversight Panel that taxpayers should recover much of the bailout money. Geithner said banks have repaid about 75 percent of the money they received, and he said prospects at General Motors and Chrysler are improving, which increases the odds of the two big automakers repaying their bailout money. He did warn, however, that AIG might only repay some TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds, and that taxpayers still could be hit with a loss on AIG.

Geithner never mentioned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

At this point, Fannie and Freddie have received $145 billion in taxpayer funds, and a recent report said that there was no chance of a return to profitability for the "indefinite future."

The latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will cost taxpayers $389 billion by 2019. Other estimates, by non-government analysts, suggest that in a worse-case scenario, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cost taxpayers $1 trillion.

Very few in Washington are talking about this — because they share a large part of the blame. But taxpayers and voters should not be kept in the dark about how Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac became the biggest drain on taxpayer dollars of all the recipients of bailout money.