Congressional Wrap-Up
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-01/congressional-wrap
As the year is rapidly coming to an end, congress has a long list of things to do. Among other things, lawmakers are debating the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, patching the alternative minimum tax, preventing cuts in medicare patients to doctors and a new proposal to end earmarks. A number of tax provisions are set to expire on December 31st. While congressional gridlock has been an issue all year long, there may be more motivation to get things done as some lawmakers say they want to be out of Washington, DC, by December 16th. A look at what’s ahead for congress as the year wraps up.
Guests
Humberto Sanchez
staff reporter at Roll Call
Janet Hook
congressional correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.
David Welna
congressional correspondent, NPR.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
Republican congressional leaders stressed a willingness Wednesday to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut due to expire at the end of the year, setting up a year-end clash with Democrats over how to pay for a provision at the heart of President Barack Obama's jobs program.
"We just think we shouldn't be punishing job creators to pay for it," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, scorning a Democratic proposal to raise taxes on million-dollar income earners.
For not-the-last time: the uber-rich are NOT "job creators". Does anyone believe this crap anymore? (oh wait....there's monte!) The true job creators are small and medium businesses....which then become big and send jobs overseas.
"Senate Republicans are expected to announce Wednesday how they would pay for it."
You think a party who believes deficits don't matter, tax cuts isn't spending, and trickle down really works, has a clue on how to pay for anything?
It appears I am alone here as anything resembling opposition, from yesterday here is a clear view as to why the government was to blame for the housing crisis.
It wasn't greed that caused the mortgage mess. In large part, the mess was the product of government policies designed to increase homehownership among the poor and ethnic minorities. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA created a demand for bad mortgages that encouraged mortgage brokers to generate millions of them.
Mortgage brokers had to be able to sell their mortgages to someone. They could only produce what those above them in the distribution chain wanted to buy. In other words, they could only respond to demand, not create it themselves. Who wanted these dicey loans? The data shows that the principal buyers were insured banks, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the FHA—all government agencies or private companies forced to comply with government mandates about mortgage lending. When Fannie and Freddie were finally taken over by the government in 2008, more than 10 million subprime and other weak loans were either on their books or were in mortgage-backed securities they had guaranteed. An additional 4.5 million were guaranteed by the FHA and sold through Ginnie Mae before 2008, and a further 2.5 million loans were made under the rubric of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which required insured banks to provide mortgage credit to home buyers who were at or below 80% of median income. Thus, almost two-thirds of all the bad mortgages in our financial system, many of which are now defaulting at unprecedented rates, were bought by government agencies or required by government regulations..
The role of the FHA is particularly difficult to fit into the narrative that the left has been selling. While it might be argued that Fannie and Freddie and insured banks were profit-seekers because they were shareholder-owned, what can explain the fact that the FHA—a government agency—was guaranteeing the same bad mortgages that the unregulated mortgage brokers were supposedly creating through predatory lending?
The answer, of course, is that it was government policy for these poor quality loans to be made. Since the early 1990s, the government has been attempting to expand home ownership in full disregard of the prudent lending principles that had previously governed the U.S. mortgage market. Now the motives of the GSEs fall into place. Fannie and Freddie were subject to "affordable housing" regulations, issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which required them to buy mortgages made to home buyers who were at or below the median income. This quota began at 30% of all purchases in the early 1990s, and was gradually ratcheted up until it called for 55% of all mortgage purchases to be "affordable" in 2007, including 25% that had to be made to low-income home buyers...
Big government makes YOU poor. Poverty enslaves you to the government. Enslavement to the government steals your freedom. This basic and irrefutable reality is lost on just about everyone who frequents and posts on these forums..
How do you look like a genius on this forum, write something the other 99% disagree with. 99% where have I heard that before?
"Disagree how to pay for the payroll tax cut?"
How about, at this point in the business cycle, just do that tax cut? What do economists say?
"A different mood on the Hill", indeed. When a Democrat is in the White House, the WATBs of the GOP are less interested in governance than ever.
Bottom line on this one monte is just because they can do it doesn't mean they should do it. It's called morality. If your morality is solely about making a buck, then your point is correct it is the government's fault, by allowing it to happen. Otherwise, morality and logic state that if the person that sits in front of you makes less than $40,000 per year shouldn't be getting a $400,000 mortgage, regardless if it is permitted or not.
I am encouraged everyday to make poor economic decisions, some of which hold the possibility of making me wealthy, but I don't choose to do them because of my morality. To blame the government for this is akin to saying "the Devil made me do it" and absolving them of any responsibility.
Teece Bowman wrote:
"Republican congressional leaders stressed a willingness Wednesday to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut due to expire at the end of the year,"
Dems want to pay for this with a tax increase on the top "300,000" earners. Here's an idea. Warren Buffett seems anxious to get his taxes raised. Perhaps the President should invite Warren up to the WH and ask him and 299,000 of his closest friends to just pony-up. Why does wealth have to be confiscated via tax increase?!
Demcrats love pay-as-you-go as long as you're paying with OPM.
And, no, monte. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!
"Big government makes YOU poor. Poverty enslaves you to the government. Enslavement to the government steals your freedom. This basic and irrefutable reality is lost on just about everyone who frequents and posts on these forums.. "
One of the most succinct statements with respect to liberal progressive policies I have ever seen. I'm going to save it for sure. Thanks, monte.
One thing that absolutely needs to happen is remove the cap earning and the social security taxes. I think it is a bit over 100,000 and if it was eliminated and all earnings were taxed would that not solve the SS problem?? It would be a way for the wealthy to help the struggling. Then of course the wealthy would have some form of limit on what they can draw.
Millionaires and Small Business Owners are not the same thing....Boehner is lying.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/nov/10/john-boeh...
Lazzie Faire Capitalism makes YOU poor. Capitalism enslaves you to the Capitalist system. Wage slavery enslaves you to the Capitalists who steal your freedom and your life. Capitalism insures only one thing....continued unemployment. It's built into the system!
"Capitalism enslaves you to the Capitalist system."
So, Teece Bowman, you would subscribe to the idea that it is wise government that has made this country great?
Most folks think that Capitalism is desirable…. until it runs amok, which is exactly what has happened since 2008. This is because this administration (got that, I’m criticizing Obama and the Democrats as well!) and the last couple have not established adequate regulations to control the drive for ever-greater profits, even at the expense of personal and organizational integrity.
We do not have a socialist government in this country and have not had one EVER! We have a capitalist government beholden to and owned by Wall Street.
It was said "the government should borrow more because interest rates are low" this has got to be the dumbest proposal for more government spending I have heard. Like that debt is going to disappear when interest rates go up, what a dufus!
I live in the Midwest, one of the areas hardest hit in the recession. There are jobs available in our area but they don't pay much or they are through temp agencies. I have worked at the state employment service and many times those who are unemployed have the perception that a possible new job must pay what they were making at their previous job or they won't accept the new job. They don't face the reality that they are starting over and may have to accept a smaller wage or a new field. I feel that this may be part of the problem with many who are still receiving unemployment benefits. They won't move on until they are forced to. I hope Congress does not extend benefits.
I guess I am not as smart as those who can pontificate as to the evils of Freddie and Fannie and the FHA. But, I do have some questions for those smart people, how many of those loans were actually written directly by someone at either of the agencies? Who came up with the idea of the "ownership society"? and Why were there no regulators looking over the shoulders of the people writing these loans?
One thing I do know, is if there are no jobs available, no one can pay for a home. Without a manufacturing base, this country has gone to a very sad state. The outsourcing of American jobs has created the problems we are living through, not the people who had jobs when they went to buy a home. The lack of income is the major problem many Americans face. When it is almost impossible to find products made in the U. S. that tells me many people are not in a state of employment.
The bigoted statement about minorities getting houses in infuriating.
monte wrote:
"this has got to be the dumbest proposal for more government spending I have heard"
He must be a student at the Paul Krugman School of Economics.
Too funny!
Teece Bowman wrote:
"Most folks think that Capitalism is desirable…. until it runs amok"
We actually agree on that. Glass-Steagall protected the American investor for many decades. Republicans broke down the wall between savings and investment monies which exacerbated the housing issue begun by the FG, Fannie, and Freddie, as monte has so eloquently summarized. Demcrats fought every opportunity to put GS back in place (the first led by Bob Dole still under Clinton and more recently by John McCain) for some inexplicable reason.
Dodd-Frank is whittling around the edges until GS is put back in place.
"He must be a student at the Paul Krugman School of Economics".
You guys been given a Nobel Prize lately? No....I didn't think so.
About Congress's 9% approval. Isn't the next question why? I mean, I bet that most people would approve of INDIVIDUAL Congress members along party lines. I believe the problem is both with the system and with the voting public: that the system does not allow for provisions when stubborn obstruction occurs, and that much of the voting public does not look past either the surface arguments or their own interests toward the interests of the country. People need to ask themselves who is working for the interests of the country, and who is working for their own interests, and the media needs to delve past these surface statistics to bring up questions, and not just expose the public's dissatisfaction. Of course their dissatisfied, that's not news.
Only in the bizzaro world that is Republican political thought could blame for the financial meltdown be attributed to a desire to make home ownership more affordable for a greater number of Americans: Republicans believe that no good intention can come to any good. But Republicans like Monte are simply wrong about the real causes of the financial crisis. It wasn't the fault of "poor and ethnic minorities" who got in over the heads that brought down the system. Yes, the GSEs were an important factor: but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been thoroughly corrupted by the Wall Streeters who took the GSEs public—they were no longer agencies of the government at all, but private corporations that enjoyed the special protection of the federal government without being accountable to it. Was it "poor and ethnic minorities" who devised the no down payment, no income verification mortgage products with 0% teaser rates that exploded into 29% rates after six months? Was it the poor and ethnic who fabricated the sales pitch cooed by a growing army of mortgage brokers that rising housing prices would ensure limitless opportunities to refinance? Was it the poor and ethnic who turned what ought to have been a prudent tool for risk management, the mortgage backed security, into a sucker's play? What world do you live in, Monte, that those with the least power are most to blame, and those with the most are the victims? Not the world I live in.
What we have at this point in history is crony capitalism coupled with federal government run unconstitutional social welfare programs (socialism). If congress and the president would do there number one job "upholding the Constitution" we would not be in this mess.
I find it interesting that there is no comment on my earlier post on morality
"You guys been given a Nobel Prize lately?"
You mean that award for being a socialist, the one handed out to people for what they might do, the same one that has lost all it's legitimacy, that Nobel Prize?
"who devised the no down payment...."
The housing boom was insufficient to absorb all the fictitious capital created by the Federal Reserve System. Therefore, much of the trillions of dollars pumped into Wall Street by Greenspan and Bush wound up in the stock market speculation and credit schemes to fleece the masses rather than in job-creating investment in production. In other words, parasitic activity among the bankers had run amok.
Interest-whether on subprime mortgages, on credit cards, or on the $1.2 trillion advanced for refinanced home equity loans- was “a TAX workers pay bankers” for the “privilege” of borrowing fund for their survival because they cannot live on their pay! This is another way for capitalists to enrich themselves at the workers expense in addition to direct exploitation on the job.
civres@aol.com wrote:
"Only in the bizzaro world that is Republican political thought could blame for the financial meltdown be attributed to a desire to make home ownership more affordable for a greater number of Americans: Republicans believe that no good intention can come to any good."
When a post begins with that kind of invective ("bizzaro world that is Republican plitical thought", I stop reading. But I will say this about what I did read and quoted above; "the desire to make home ownership more affordable for a greater number of Americans" is a lofty goal, but a bad idea. Anyone who says otherwise simply does not understand how free markets work or how government intervention can break them. There are people who SHOULD NOT own homes. I don't say that because I am a mean person. I say that because THEY CANNOT AFFORD THEM. If they cannot afford them, they should rent until they can afford to own - or - they should own a house of lesser value. That's how a sane market works. When governments put people in houses they cannot truly afford, the free market CEASES TO OPERATE. That is a very bad thing. It is much better for individual decisions to be market-driven than to be government-driven. A government that thinks it is smarter than the market is no different than a day-trader who thinks he is smarter than the stock market.
"on morality"
That is because morality doesn't exist in the universe of a capitalist. It doesn't appear on their radar. In the Capitalist system risk is like guilt in religion. It just gives it that "edge."
Mike Sergeant wrote:
"I find it interesting that there is no comment on my earlier post on morality"
I think you missed the whole point of what I posted, If you think the federal government is more moral than "wall street" your lost and beyond hope. Bad things were done no doubt, but most people were able through common sense to navigate the waters of easy credit and do quite well. Government with all it's stupid good intentions cannot give or force people to have common sense.
Teece Bowman wrote:
"You guys been given a Nobel Prize lately? No....I didn't think so."
No, but President Obama has. For doing nothing. Look at the history of the prize. When it strayed outside the bounds of science which Alfred Nobel intended for it to have, it lost its credibility completely. Al freakin' Gore has a Nobel Prize for presenting complete falsehoods! Duh.
Mike Sergeant wrote:
"I find it interesting that there is no comment on my earlier post on morality"
Welcome to the world of "we're not hanging on your every word".
"I think you missed the whole point of what I posted"
No...I didn't miss your point at all.
I've more important things to do with my time today. So long....