Newest GOP Complaint On Stimulus: There’s Not Enough Housing Aid (Which We Voted Against Last Week)

[ProSense]

Edited to note this is dated January 27:

Newest GOP Complaint On Stimulus: There’s Not Enough Housing Aid (Which We Voted Against Last Week)

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Today, Roll Call reports that conservatives’ newest line of attack will be on housing — specifically, that there isn’t enough addressing this crisis in the economic recovery package:

Republicans now appear set to draw their line in the sand over the issue. One senior Senate GOP aide said Republicans were coalescing Monday evening around a plan to demand that Obama and Congressional Democrats reconfigure the stimulus to help mitigate foreclosures and spur buyers to invest in new homes.

“Republicans are increasingly concerned that the stimulus bill is leaving the housing crisis out of the equation,” the aide said.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is not supposed to focus on housing. Instead, its key areas are: energy, science and technology, health care, education, infrastructure, tax cuts, and helping workers hurt by the recession.

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders aren’t planning to ignore housing, however; they are attempting to address the foreclosure crisis through separate legislation. Last Wednesday, the House passed Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) legislation. As the Gavel pointed out, a key part of this legislation — in addition to stabilizing the financial markets — was helping Americans stay in their homes. Some provisions that were included:

– “Calls on Treasury to immediately commit up to $100 billion (with a mandatory minimum of $40 billion) of the second $350 billion TARP funding on a comprehensive foreclosure mitigation plan (to be developed by Treasury by March 15 and implemented by April 1).”

– “Makes changes to the Hope for Homeowners refinancing program to encourage more lenders to refinance home loans for borrowers at risk of losing their homes.”

– “Mandates that the foreclosure mitigation plan include at least $20 billion for a systematic program to guarantee loan modifications to help families in danger of losing their homes.”

Conservatives seem to be the ones actually “leaving the housing crisis out of the equation.” Only 18 Republicans voted for the TARP legislation; 156 voted against it. Last summer, conservatives also put up a vicious fight against Democratic-sponsored housing legislation.

UPDATE As the Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo pointed out, the economic plan House Republicans delivered to Obama last week included a $7,500 home-buyers credit intended to “encourage responsible buyers to enter the market and stabilize (housing) prices." This, however, wasn't a real effort to address the housing crisis, but rather a gift to the real estate industry. More on why here.

[ej510]

1. Blame your opponent for what your doing. Lol!

[Coexist]

2. up is down

*sigh*

[ShadowLiberal]

3. That's nothing, they claim only 10% of the package is real stimulus, less then the tax cuts in it

I don't have an article linking to it, but my dad (who watches Fox news a lot and is a hard core republican) was saying this when I got home today. He said he heard it on Fox news, that only $90 billion of the $850+ billion package is 'stimulus'. Tax cuts make up at least $300 billion dollars of the stimulus package I think.

You know what that means, republicans are demanding tax cuts and nothing but tax cuts, but they're also claiming that even tax cuts aren't stimulus!

Or wait, I guess those tax cuts only qualify as 'stimulus' if a republican suggested them! Or maybe tax cuts don't do any good in the republican's world if there's government spending going with it!

[ej510]

4. Like I said yesterday. The repukes want to make tax cuts permanent.

[ProSense]

6. The Republicans are a Party in search of a whine. n/t

[malletgirl02]

5. Infrastructure

Republicans are also claiming that there isn't enough money infrastructure even though in negotiations they said it was too much going to it.

[ProSense]

7. When it comes to message, the GOP is in disarray. n/t

[AllentownJake]

8. They are a ship without a rudder

W ruled them like a feudal king and because they had some intial success with scaring people with terrorist they followed him. Now they don't know what to do now because nothing they did in the past 8 years was done on any principle other than keeping their feudal king in power and by proxy themselves.

They are sticking together for now because they don't know what to do and they are under siege...soon comes the phase where ideas on how to fix their situation occur and they fight amongst themselves. When that happens you will see more and more of them ready to talk.