Republicans Obstructing Relief in Housing Crisis

Posted by Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! at 2:31 PM on May 29, 2008.

Republican governors tend to be less ideological and more practical than the extremists and fanatics their party routinely sends to Congress. They have to actually govern, something that is anathema to the Inside the Beltway GOP-- from Bush and Cheney all the way down to the very bottom of the barrel: naysayers Mean Jean Schmidt and James Inhofe. This morning the two heads of the National Governors Association-- Republican Tim Pawlenty (MN) and Democrat Ed Rendell (PA)-- urged, strongly urged, Congress and the White House to get their collective asses in gear and enact housing-stimulus legislation "so that states can rebound from decreasing tax revenue and increasing crime and neighborhood blight due to a record foreclosure rate."

Pawlenty, chairman of the association, noted that most governors are attempting to deal with the issue because 47 states in 2007 had a foreclosure rate that was at least 20 percent higher than 2006. "I find very little public resistance to using government money to help people who unwittingly got trapped in this," said Rendell, vice chairman, after appearing at an NGA summit on the crisis. "We're not looking to help people who took risks to buy McMansions."

Rendell, a Democrat, said he supports a measure by House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank that would allow the Federal Housing Administration to insure up to $300 billion in new fixed-rate mortgages for at-risk subprime borrowers, providing that their lenders voluntarily write down their current notes to below-market value. Dodd has a similar measure. Rendell said he would like to see two modifications to the Frank bill, which passed the House this month: language to ensure that those who go through the process would not suffer any downgrade to their credit scores, and an increase in the FHA guarantee under the proposal. In its current version, the Frank bill insures the new loan to only 90 percent of the property's current value, while Rendell said he would like to see the rate raised up to 97 percent to get more participation. "It would more likely produce the results we are looking for. You are asking lenders to take a hit and they got to get that in return," he said. Pawlenty, a Republican who has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick, said he would like Frank to reach out to get more bipartisan support, but he did not go into specifics of the bill. Rendell agreed, adding, "We need action here, [even] if that means compromising some tenets of the Frank program."

You watched Garrett? His northern New Jersey constituents aren't stuck with this bizarre anomoly. This year they have the opportunity to elect one of the most outstanding candidates running for any office anywhere in America, Dennis Shulman. We contacted him this evening and asked him about Garrett's out-of-touch record on the housing crisis.

"Sadly for northern New Jersey and the nation, Scott Garrett is completely out of touch with the reality of our economy. This past fall, Garrett disparaged claims of a housing crisis as fear mongering and claimed that 'under 2 percent of the entire housing market segment is having a problem. The rest of the economy is good and the rest of the housing market is doing good.'

Garrett's is just as wrong about the economy as a whole-- indeed, as recently as January, 2008, Garrett argued that 'fundamentally the national economy is in good shape.' Northern New Jersey and the nation deserve representatives who are in touch with the challenges their constituents face day in and day out."

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Tagged as: gop, mccain, mortgage crisis