John McCain's revolting plan

Senator John McCain vowed Tuesday night that as president he would "order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home-loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes -- at the diminished values of those homes -- and let people be able to make those payments and stay in their homes."

If you weren't already nauseous from the gyrating stock market, that statement ought to do it.

So go and get a bucket while we explain to Senator McCain why this is not a good idea.

Senator, it is un-American and dishonorable to take the tax dollars of people who acted responsibly and use them to reduce the debts of people who acted like jackasses.

America Wants To Know would like to interrupt the national weep-fest for struggling homeowners to point out that an awful lot of people intentionally and knowingly bought houses they couldn't afford, drained the equity out of their homes and spent the money on bullshit, refinanced multiple times into stupid loans that were too good to be true, and generally acted like, well, jackasses.

America Wants To Know lives in California, can you tell?

If the government steps in and just relieves these irresponsible, grandiose people of their debts, penalty-free, there will be a national riot.

Here's a better idea. Instead of absorbing a home's loss in market value with your tax dollars, the government should extend the term of the mortgage for as many years as it takes to get the payments down to a level the homeowner can pay.

Even if it's a hundred years.

That will allow homeowners to stay in their homes and out of foreclosure, without using tax dollars to relieve them of their obligations in a way that's unfair and demoralizing to everyone else in the country.

Or we could just have the riot.

Looting is fast becoming the new national pastime.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Bush to Little Red Hen: 'Pay up.'"

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