GOP obstructionists block Senate action on housing crisis
The professional obstructionists who constitute the GOP minority in the Senate have blocked a bill aimed at addressing part of the sub-prime mortgage crisis:
The housing proposal includes billions of dollars for local communities to buy up subprime mortgages and a controversial rewrite of bankruptcy laws to allow judges to slash interest rates for low-income homeowners. The mortgage industry has waged a stiff lobbying campaign against the bankruptcy provision.
Democrats mocked Bush's statements at yesterday's news conference, where he urged giving the $168 billion stimulus package approved this month a "chance to kick in first."
"That, to me, is straight out of the Herbert Hoover playbook," Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters, adding that his bankruptcy measure would save family homes. "Right now, there will be a question on the floor of the Senate as to whether the mortgage bankers are going to win or the American families facing foreclosure are going to win."
The answer to that question is unsurprising, of course. Even less surprising is the pronouncement by the fork-tongued Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) who said, apparently with a straight face, that "the bankruptcy provisions don't have anything to do with the housing problem." Obviously, they have everything to do with the problem, since sub-prime borrowers who can't pay their escalating mortgages face bankruptcy as a consequence.
The only thing that matters to the GOP in the Senate is maximizing the profits of predatory lenders.