Maybe instead you could pray to Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, Jerry Falwell, or the other false prophets Bush endorses.

Currently the mortgage tax deduction results in about $40 Billion dollars of tax benefit to US citizens. Congress should increase the deduction for mortgage interest for a temporary period, 3 years maybe. everyone could claim as a deduction 150% of the interest paid on their first mortgage. This rewards both those in trouble and those that struggle and make the payment. Pay for this by adjusting the Bush tax reductions.
In addition, it will make home ownership more desirable. Further, all mortgages that have been issued in the past 6 years would be made fully assumable to a buyer. This could help increase the options available on the market.
Let us not try to solve this problem by taking care of the banks and investors. Let’s solve it at home.

RESPONSE BY HOPING FOR CHANGE

While your increase the interest deduction might help most folks financially, it seems to me that the USA somewhat shot itself in the foot with a long-time tax policy that has subsidized the overextension of consumers into buying unaffordable houses. We have a lot of citizens whose purchasing power has now been destroyed due to declining home values because they tapped into second mortgages and home equity loans and taking tax deductions.

The implications of this destroyed home equity purchasing power on the entire economy could be grim. A perception is– that in the past– rising house prices and the prospect of tax deductible interest (fed by a shaky mortgage origination process) drove consumers into believing they had new wealth. It also led to the purchase of what the auto industry called “option creep up” resulting in expensive cars and even for trips to Las Vegas.

It is easy to argue that our long time tax deduction priviledge for homeowner interest expense has encouraged irresponsible purchasing and is causing least a portion of the current credit crisis.

It’s also worth noting that our citizens seem to fully support public policy that encourages home ownership because it leads to stronger neighborhoods and less crime, etc.

But, right now, in some cities like Cleveland where the foreclosure are extreme and will depress housing prices for a long time to come even for the responsible homeowners. This is not the outcome we want. It’s going to get a lot worse too as the Bush/Paulson bailout plan appears to be pretty limited.

From what I can tell, the new Bush/Paulson plan also ain’t quite as good as it might have initially seemed it was. It’s helps only a small sub-set of borrowers in trouble who have relatively low credit scores but are not yet late on payments. The social service agencies who have been helping distressed borrowers claim that it won’t do anything for 90% of their clients. This bailout seems aimed only at upper crust of sub-prime borrowers.

I sure don’t see any easy solution here at all. The nation has to get its grips around a very difficult problem that affects thousands of peoples lives. Bush and the Treasury and the Fed were all late to the game in understanding how the sub-prime mess could cause a national and worldwide liquidity crisis. We can’t undo their bad judgment overnight.

Unfortunately our government has encouraged a lot of unsophisticated folks who have speculated in real estate who bought brand new houses from builders and now have defaulted. The builders and lending industry are big Republican political supporters. Thousands of brand new houses are empty and there are lots of jobs on the line here in the house construction industry.

My feeling is that Bush currently claims he won’t bail out “the speculators” but in the end he will slip something into a bill to help out shaky lenders and this group of greedy flippers just to keep the building industry going. We will see…..

Comment by texaslady — December 6, 2007 @ 5:17 pm

Hey, you tried. This is no surprise — his record as President is similar.

1-800-SUK-DICK.

Another “independent moderate” who goes out of his way to defend anything and everything Bush, to the point of spending hours posting unending, barely-coherent babble to prop up his Dear (mis)Leader.

Independent moderate? Riiight….

Comment by DreamCrusher — December 6, 2007 @ 6:35 pm

You toe the exact line that Rush Limbaugh spouts from his drug-addicted face. You are no moderate, and you certainly aren’t a part of the silent majority. The majority is liberal, that’s may be why the media used to lean left, years ago, until the Alzheimer president destroyed all sense of balance and fairness in the media, turning it over to the uber-rich foreigners like Murdoch. You are inexcusably ill-informed, and we’d all be much better off if you were, in fact, silent, instead of coming here to incessantly whine about how the right is mistreated by the truth. Evil? yes, evil. Bombing families to try to kill one man is evil. Leaving American citizens to die in New Orleans is evil. Taking away the Constitutional rights of American citizens is evil. The right has earned that title, and your moaning and pissing about it makes no difference. You’re all cowards, opportunists, and intellectually lazy, and your unthinking, goosestepping support for the man responsible for 9/11 is sickening. And your lying about your moderate wide stance is a joke.

Comment by Theresa — December 6, 2007 @ 8:31 pm

That site is hilarious. I have going there since 2001. The action figures links to ebay are a hoot, and I would hope someone gives me the Bobblehead Bush for the Holidays.

Comment by Southern Man — December 6, 2007 @ 4:28 pm

Dumbya Bashing is much more healthier and moralistic than midget throwing. However two important points.

1 – He is the perfect goon for the front end of diabolical stealth policy makers, much like Hitler was.

2 – Let’s hope he does not declare Martial law by either a real or false flag event.

how courageous

You mean http://www.whitehouse.org versus http://www.whitehouse.gov?

i thought you righties all hated those “ivory tower intellectuals” anyway.

everyone else here thinks so too, and they’ve told you so, 8 ways to Sunday, but you just won’t quit, and that is funny more than it is informative or anything else.

oh, that’s right – there aren’t any, because they’ve never been more than pissing distance from having control of everything.

Lefties is tougher than any people you know of Fluffer.

If you doubt that, try offering some of your tripe to Pat Tillman’s brother, and see how he thanks you.

or would you prefer I cook you up another batch?

Our National Embarrassment and his foot soldiers (like Coulter, Limbaugh, O’Reilly et. al) have been calling *US* filthy names for the last 7 years.

You need to get used to being a despised minority, boy. Adapt or die.