House passes homeowner-relief bill
Item by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
The House of Representatives has passed back to the Senate a bill that would help homeowners caught up in the ongoing foreclosure crisis, even as a pair of Virginia congressmen facing re-election battles voted against the measure.
“Congressman Goode is clearly out of touch with the honest, hardworking people of the Fifth District who are watching the value of their homes plummet. We need a leader in Washington who is actually willing to fight for real solutions for Virginia families,” said Jessica Barba, the communications director for Fifth District Democratic Party congressional nominee Tom Perriello, who applauded the move of the House to pass the American Housing Rescue & Foreclosure Prevention Act, HR 3221, yesterday.
Goode and Sixth District Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte voted against the measure, which is drawing the ire of conservatives due to its $300 billion price tag and provisions contained therein that include rescue plans for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee $5.2 trillion of the nation’s home mortgages, or nearly 70 percent of the home mortgages on the books in the U.S.
President Bush has indicated that he will not veto the legislation. Even so, only 45 members of the House Republican Caucus voted in favor of the bill, and no Republicans in the Virginia delegation voted in favor.
“Congress is finally doing its job and both parties are working together to stabilize home prices and revive our economy,” Perriello said. “Families all across our district are watching their homes lose their value and this compromise will help turn around the housing market. It’s about time Washington rolled up their sleeves and focused on long-term prevention instead of quick fixes. I’m also glad this bill supports our brave soldiers as they return home, helping them find and keep homes and preserve the American Dream.”
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Chris
The problem with such bills is that they also “bail out” folks who simply made very bad financial decisions. Do you think you should be paying for your neighbor’s bad / risky decision on how to finance his home.
yes, there are honest folks who were duped by mortgage sellers and deserve some help AT THE SAME TIME the company that bilked them gets hurt in some way.
Pariello’s comment that folks are being hurt because “their homes are losing value” is way out of bounds as far as I am concerned. My home has lost lots of value in this market…so has yours. Why should we get a bail out. Do we pay something back if the value goes up?
Messing with the market is unwise. Helping folks who are real victims is a good thing, but it seems that the house bill is way beyond helping those folks and digs into many who are losing money because of their own risky speculation.
Charles
The federal government (under the GOP Congress and President Bush) opens up the real-estate market, which leads to artificial expansion, then when high gas prices (fueled by increased demand, a weakening dollar and speculators) put the crunch on people who purchased homes in that artificial expansion, thus putting the crunch on the financial markets that threatens to topple the whole deck of cards, so Congress bails out the big boys (and they do that first, I will note), then finally get around to propping up the little guy on the trickle-down end.
And this is now happening with a Democratic Congress and President Bush.
Is it the perfect solution? No. Was the artificial expansion of the early part of this decade anything more than politics designed to paper over a deep tax cut in a time of war and that recession that greeted President Bush when he first took over? No. It was politics. This is politics.
I don’t disagree with you about markets. I also understand, and you probably do, too, that markets are esoteric, intangible things, and that people and families are living, breathing, tangible things. I don’t want to mess with the market any more than anybody else, but I’d rather mess with markets than mess with people’s well-being. FDR’s New Deal wasn’t good economic policy, except that it put money into circulation and put people to work, and so it was.