Michelle Malkin leads the stampede:
I can’t underscore enough what a rotten idea John McCain’s ACORN-like government mortgage buy-up is. I said it during my liveblog. And I’ll say it again: “HE WANTS TO EXPAND THE BAILOUT. He wants to do what ACORN wants to do. We’re Screwed ‘08.” This was his supposed “game-changer.” This was the very first thing out of his mouth during the debate tonight — his big pitch right off the bat. The McCain campaign immediately sent out this fact sheet on the proposal, which will cost at least $300 billion. The proposal involves directing the Treasury Secretary to “purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers.” That’s on top of the trillion-dollar crap sandwich (update - McCain says it would be included in the crap sandwich), the $85 billion to AIG, the $25 billion to automakers, the $200 billion in capital and credit lines to Fannie and Freddie, and who knows what else we’ll be forking over to California, Massachusetts, etc., etc., etc. He spent the entire debate assailing massive government spending — while his featured proposal of the night was to heap on more massive government spending to pursue home ownership/retention at all costs. If Obama had proposed this, the Right would be screaming bloody murder about this socialist grab to have the Treasury Department renegotiate individual home loans and become chief principal write-down agents for the nation. And the comments below her post are long and "not helpful."
Stephen Spruill at NRO:
McCain Proposes... What? ... didn't Congress just enact major legislation to address this problem? The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 created a federal mortgage-insurance program for lenders who agree to reduce mortgage payments for struggling borrowers. How is McCain's plan different? I'll try to explain. Let's say you have a $200,000 adjustable-rate mortgage. Your home's value has declined, your interest rate has gone up and you can no longer afford to make the payments. Under current law, the government will guarantee your mortgage if your lender agrees to work out a deal with you. Under McCain's plan, the Treasury Secretary would buy your mortgage from whoever owns it and then deal with you directly. In many cases, the Treasury Department would already own your mortgage, because it is about to buy up $700 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities. But under McCain's plan, Treasury would also become your loan servicer. ... If Treasury were also to become the loan servicer for hundreds of thousands of mortgages, it would have to outsource those duties, too. And those jobs would go to a lot of the same people who lowered their lending standards during the housing boom, put people in mortgages they couldn't afford and then sold those mortgages to Wall Street. McCain's plan is redundant, and it would create significant new responsibilities (and costs) for an already-beleaguered agency. I'm not sure what the campaign was thinking.
Doesn't sound like McCain is bringing too many people (in his own party) together... Labels: 2008 election, John McCain, presidential candidates, presidential debates |
