Here is a 1997 leftist article praising the Democrats and the Clinton administration in particular for forcing banks to offer loans to people who were not qualified by traditional standards.

Baffling quotes (emphasis mine):

In fact, the CRA is one of the most remarkable success stories of the 1990s. Under strong pressure from a second wave of grassroots activism that began ten years ago, many banks have recognized the potential for profitable business in neighborhoods that they had written off without a second thought not so long ago.

... CRA opponents claimed that it requires risky loans that could undermine a bank's profitability and threaten its survival. Actually, the reverse is closer to the truth. The 1980s were marked by massive speculative lending to wealthy real estate developers and get-rich-quick schemers that resulted in the failure of more than two thousand banks and S&Ls. Yet not a single bank failure has been caused by making too many bad loans to disadvantaged borrowers.

Recently, Federal Reserve Board researchers found "no evidence of lower profitability" at banks that specialize in mortgage lending to lower-income borrowers and neighborhoods and, in a nationwide survey by the Kansas City Fed, 98% of banks reported that their CRA lending was profitable. A recent investigation by the Comptroller of the Currency found that affordable home loans had "the same level of losses" as standard mortgages.
...
The swell of grassroots support overwhelmed pressure from industry lobbyists and produced unanimous opposition by congressional Democrats to every proposal that would have weakened CRA. In addition, the Clinton administration never wavered from an early pledge to veto any bill containing such provisions.

I want to know who those congressional Democrats were. I want names.

I'd pay good money to know what Joe Biden said at the time about this. Surely the Congressional Record can shed some light on this shadowy subject...