Senator Durbin on floor now trying to add bankruptcy judge provision amendment to help homeowners

[flpoljunkie]

Damn the Republicans who are siding with mortgage brokers over consumers! Contact your Senators now!

Note: A bankruptcy judge can now restructure any loan, except your primary mortgage. Now, who does that favor, I ask you. Not homeowners!

Senators ditch aid in housing bill
By: Victoria McGrane and Martin Kady II
April 3, 2008 10:20 AM EST

Mortgage companies are embracing it. The home builders who overreached in the housing boom stand to gain billions in tax breaks. And investors who snap up foreclosed homes will get a sweet tax credit.

But consumer groups?

They feel like the spirit of compromise on Capitol Hill has left them out on the curb.

As the Senate unveiled its bipartisan housing bill on Wednesday evening, it was clear that the path to passage meant ditching the provisions that might help hundreds of thousands of homeowners but would be seen as a “bailout” by Republican critics.

As a result, housing advocates are feeling steamrolled because a bankruptcy provision aimed at helping homeowners in foreclosure was removed from the bill. The compromise bill also slashed in half the foreclosure prevention funds proposed in the original Democratic bill.

Without empowering bankruptcy judges to reduce mortgage interest and principal for struggling homeowners, “this bill amounts to dancing around a fire when Congress is supposed to be putting it out,” Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said in a statement.

“When the government can bail out Bear Stearns — a company that made a fortune in bad mortgages — it can surely ease the strains of ordinary American homeowners who aren’t as sophisticated as a Wall Street firm and help them keep their biggest asset.”

The Senate will dive into full debate Thursday, and consumer lobbyists are likely to swarm Capitol Hill in hopes of changing the legislation.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=11AACB23-3048-5C12-00C2AC8AEF20A7BE

[SharonAnn]

1. Says it'll take 45 days to get amendment comments because of GOP

making one response every hour.

Now Reid is up, describing the obstructionism the GOP has used to prevent legislation being passed since election 2006.

Now Kennedy pointing out that $200 billion was used to bail out Wall Street but Dems can't get a vote on an amendment for homeowners.

[bdamomma]

2. Teddy up now!!

http://c-span.org/watch/cs_cspan2_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS2

Teddy is angry!!!

[SharonAnn]

3. Go, get 'em, Teddy!

[bdamomma]

4. love Teddy.

:loveya:

[flpoljunkie]

5. He says we taxpayers are on the hook for over $200 billion for Bear Stears and their ilk!

I am outraged, as well at the Republicans trying to protect the profits of the mortage brokers and not the American people who stand to lose their homes! There are 8,000 foreclosures a day now--8,000!

[bdamomma]

6. 8,000

40,000 people, out of their homes, now, it is time for pitchforks and torches, this is sickening, what they are doing to people.


Remember those immoral words:

You're with us or against us!!

we have a very defiant POS man who stole the office of Presidency.

He should really have his a$$ thrown out, this is a class war!!

[flpoljunkie]

7. Robert Reich says "The Senate Housing Bill Won't Do Squat." The lobbyists saw to it, the Dems caved!

Wednesday, April 02, 2008
The Senate Housing Bill Won't Do Squat

The housing bill emerging from the Senate is something Herbert Hoover would have been proud of. Like Hank Paulson’s much-touted plan for “overhauling” Wall Street by deregulating it, the Senate housing bill “helps” distressed homeowners by giving them lots of little things that won’t really help them at all. Lesson: The Fed (and, indirectly, taxpayers) can bail out investment banks but there’s no stomach for bailing out regular folk who got caught in the downdraft.

Paulson’s proposal, remember, leaves out the most important overhaul of all – forcing investment banks, hedge funds, and other bank-like financial institutions to maintain capital in proportion to the risks they take on. Now the Senate bill leaves out the most important things distressed homeowners need – changing bankruptcy law so borrowers have enough bargaining power to get refinanced, and letting the Federal Housing Administration guarantee the refinanced loans if lenders reduce the amounts the borrowers owe to reflect the reduced home values.

If the market were working, lenders would automatically refinance most of these loans. After all, it’s better for them to have someone in a house paying a mortgage than being stuck with an empty house and nobody paying anything. But as we now know, the loans were repackaged with other loans into securities which were then resold to other investors. So the original lenders no longer have the authority or the incentive to do the refinancing. Hence, there's no market that will automatically do the refinancing. That’s why we need carrots and sticks: A new bankruptcy law that would give distressed homeowners the power to go into bankruptcy to get refinanced if investors don't respond, plus federal guarantees to back up any investor who buys up the securities at a discount and then works with borrowers to refinance the loans.

But as with Paulson’s proposal, the bankers and lenders who are still in relatively good shape went into action. Their lobbyists, working with and through Republicans, watered the Senate Democrats’ housing bill down to almost nothing. If this recession turns much worse, all of them may rue the day they blocked the housing bill. And Democrats will regret how easily they caved.

posted by Robert Reich | 3:18 PM | 12 comments