ThinkProgress Logo

Economy

A Closer Look At Romney’s Strange Debate Comments On Qualified Mortgages

By Guest Blogger on Oct 4, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Our guest bloggers are John Griffith, a policy analyst with the economic policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Julia Gordon, Director of Housing Finance and Policy at CAPAF.

Housing barely came up in last night’s presidential debate. When it did, Mitt Romney didn’t discuss his much-maligned housing “plan,” nor his vow to let the foreclosure process “run its course and hit the bottom.” Instead the Republican candidate focused on a little-known consumer protection from the president’s financial regulation law:

Dodd-Frank correctly says we need to have Qualified Mortgages and if you give a mortgage that’s not qualified, there are big penalties. Except they didn’t ever go on and define what a Qualified Mortgage was. It’s been two years. We don’t know what a Qualified Mortgage is yet. So banks are reluctant to make loans…It’s not that Dodd-Frank always was wrong with too much regulation. Sometimes they didn’t come out with a clear regulation.

Romney is alluding to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law’s “ability-to-repay” rule, which requires lenders to consider whether a borrower can afford a mortgage before giving it to them. Lenders get special protections from liability if they make loans that are presumed to be safe and sustainable based on certain features, known as “Qualified Mortgages.”

We’re thrilled to hear Romney give such a full-throated defense of the ability-to-repay rule. It’s a welcomed about-face from his recent calls to repeal Dodd-Frank and dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency that’s responsible for enforcing the rule. That said, Romney has a few key facts wrong.

As Romney points out, the ability-to-repay rule has not yet taken effect as regulators are still defining the “Qualified Mortgage” exemption. But the Republican candidate neglected to mention that the final rule isn’t due until January 2013 — a deadline regulators appear to be on pace to meet. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau submitted its proposed rule back in April and is currently hashing through public comments.

Romney seems to imply some sort of negligence or malfeasance from the Obama administration that is preventing the rule from being completed. Alas, no scandal here. The Dodd-Frank law is actually quite clear about what type of loan should be considered a “Qualified Mortgage.” The loan must be well-underwritten with verified income, employment, and debt information. Loan payments can’t exceed a certain percentage of the borrower’s net monthly income. The loan can’t contain risky feature like negative amortization, interest-only payments, or balloon payments. The list goes on.

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Arsonist Sentenced to 10 Years for Attack on Abortion Clinic | A Florida man who set fire to a women’s health clinic has been sentenced to ten years in prison today. Bobby Joe Rogers, a vagrant with a number of run-ins with the law, confessed to firebombing the Pensacola, FL facility because he objected to the fact that abortions were performed there. The same facility was the site of the infamous double-murder of a doctor and his security guard in 1994 by radical anti-abortion activist Paul Hill. Harassment against abortion providers has been on the rise over the past two decades — and studies show that such behavior may be influenced by restrictive anti-abortion legislation. — Nate Niemann

By Guest Blogger on Oct 4, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Security

New Ad Questions Romney’s Ability To Serve As Commander-In-Chief

By Ben Armbruster on Oct 4, 2012 at 5:49 pm

(Photo: AP)

Progressive foreign policy group the Truman National Security Project today released a new ad that features several 9/11-era veterans questioning whether Mitt Romney is qualified to be commander-in-chief.

The one minute video first highlights Romney’s various foreign policy fumbles throughout the campaign, including his confusing Afghanistan policy, his failure to mention the war there and commemorate U.S. troops in his RNC speech, and his campaign’s reluctance to talk about national security. “You have shown us from London to Libya that you are over your head,” an Army vet says, with the ad closing with three other vets saying they don’t trust Romney to lead the military. Watch it:

Apart from Romney’s foreign policy missteps, veterans should have cause for concern. Romney hasn’t laid out any concrete plan for how he would tackle veteran unemployment or any other issues the nation’s military members face after serving in war.

Drew Sloan, a West Point graduate who served combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, appeared in the ad and spoke at the Truman Project’s launch event. “Neither of us really want to make this kind of video,” Sloan said, referring to a fellow vet that also took part in the project. But, Sloan added, “Mitt Romney is not qualified to be commander-in-chief,” citing the fact that Romney appeared to go to great lengths to avoid service in Vietnam in the 1960s and has now surrounded himself with those who took the United States to war in Iraq.

“The ad will run on television in Ohio – a key battleground state in the Presidential election – starting today,” said a Truman statement, adding that it “is part of a significant buy which will also run online in Florida, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Ohio.”

Climate Progress

Avoiding Obama’s Mistake, Senate Candidates Slam GOP Opponents Over Climate Denial

By Joe Romm on Oct 4, 2012 at 5:21 pm

The less said about Obama’s inexcusably lame debate performance, the better. Kudos to team Romney for figuring out that in a nationally televised debate with only one, passive moderator, the winning strategy is the Gish Gallup: ”the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments” that there is no time to refute them all).

Obviously, Obama left many of his best arguments at home in many arenas. Heck, Obama didn’t mention the 47%, his campaign manager explained, because “It just didn’t come up in the debate. It wasn’t a deliberate decision.” Seriously!

So it’s just as likely his failure to press Romney on climate change was a (small) part of his overall dreadful debate strategy not to take the fight to the challenger as that he was silent on climate change under the (mistaken) belief it is not a winning political issue — see Polling Expert: Is Obama’s Reluctance to Mention Climate Change Motivated by a False Assumption About Public Opinion?

In sharp contrast, some Senate candidates, including independent Angus King, have figured out that global warming is in fact a winning political “wedge” issue.

Climate Progress has reported on the many, many polls and analyses that make this point — and just last week Bloomberg had another one:

Democrats and independent voters overwhelmingly accept the scientific evidence that human activity is warming the earth’s temperature, while almost two out of three Republicans don’t.

Among likely voters, 78 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents believe humans are warming the earth, according to a Bloomberg National Poll. That finding is consistent with other polls that show undecided voters, and majorities in contested states such as Ohio and Virginia are in line with President Barack Obama and most Democratic candidates in wanting to address the issue.

For those other polls see Polling In Swing States Shows, “Candidates Who Take A Pro-Climate-Action Stance Will Find It To Be A Vote Winner” and links below.

The key point is climate action is a classic political wedge issue for Democrats. That is, a candidate advocating climate action splits the anti-science Tea Party extremists from independents and even some moderate Republicans who favor cutting carbon pollution.

If few Democrats realize this, at least one Independent clearly does, as Politico reported this week in Morning Energy:

KING HITS GOP OPPONENT OVER CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE: In a new TV spot, Angus King, the independent running for Maine’s Senate seat, slams Republican opponent Charlie Summers on climate change science. “Charlie … doubts climate change science, favors taxpayer subsidies for big oil, and thinks Washington isn’t broken,” King says into the camera. “I want to bring common sense to the budget, get us off foreign oil with cleaner energy made in this country.” The ad: http://youtu.be/FuJ6kz_OvpU

Back in 2010, only two Senate races saw a candidate’s position on global warming become a major issue.  In those two Senate races, the candidate that stood with the Senate’s top global warming denier — James Inhofe (R-OIL) — and embraced denial of basic scientific reality lost.

The first was Carly Fiorina in California (see After Inhofe’s endorsement, Carly Fiorina challenges climate science — unlike the company she once ran! and Politico on CA Senate debate: “Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23″).  She was crushed by climate hawk Barbara Boxer.

The second was the Colorado race — see “Did Ken Buck’s global warming denial cost the Tea Party favorite a Senate seat?” The Democract Michael Bennet was still behind his opponent, Tea Partier Ken Buck, by two points in the aggregate polling on October 21, but when Buck embraced Inhofe and denial that day, Bennet pounced, Colorado scientists rebuked him, and the media covered it (see “Ken Buck would let climate change ruin Colorado and unilaterally disarm its clean energy leadership“).  By election night, Bennet beat the final polls and won by almost one percentage point.

In a debate last month, Elizabeth Warren explained to Massachusetts voters that if they choose Scott Brown and turn the Senate over to Republicans, denier Inhofe could become head of the most powerful Senate environment committee:

Read more

Economy

Romney’s Own Website Refutes His Claim About Tax Cuts For The Rich

By Guest Blogger on Oct 4, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Tax cuts for the rich are unpopular, unaffordable and have repeatedly failed to deliver any measurable economic benefits to the rest of the country. So it’s no wonder that during last night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney didn’t want to embrace a policy of massive new tax cuts for the rich. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans,” Romney said.

It would be nice if Romney really was abandoning the failed theory of “supply-side” economics, but his actual tax proposals tell a very different story. Below is a screenshot from Romney’s own website, taken this morning:

Tax proposals that would disproportionately benefit rich households are underlined. As you can see, that’s almost all of them. And what would all these tax changes mean for the bottom line at America’s ritziest kitchen tables? The Tax Policy Center estimates that the richest 0.1 percent of Americans would reap a $725,000 tax cut from these proposals.

Now, Romney has also said that he’d like to close some loopholes that favor the rich, but TPC has also found that there simply aren’t enough of them make up the entire difference. And even if there were, Romney has refused to say which ones he’d eliminate.

The fact is that Romney has proposed some very clear and specific tax policies, and nearly every one of them would result in a tax cut for the rich.

NEWS FLASH

Poll Shows Iowa Justice Targeted By Anti-Gay Campaign Poised To Keep His Seat | Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins, the fourth justice targeted by a coalition of anti-gay groups in retaliation for their unanimous decision recognizing that marriage discrimination violates the Iowa Constitution, is in a strong position to survive this effort. A recent poll finds 49 percent of likely voters will vote to retain Wiggins, while only 41 say they support removing him from office.

Health

47,000 Women Die Each Year From Unsafe Abortions

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 4, 2012 at 4:42 pm

According to the Guttmacher Institute, complications from unsafe abortions in the developing world contribute to 47,000 preventable deaths each year. The advocacy organization points out that reducing the number of unsafe abortion procedures worldwide is a public health imperative, since every woman should have the right to make safe reproductive choices for herself without risking her life.

In order to raise awareness about the essential need for safer abortion services, the Guttmacher Institute released a video highlighting the disparity between access to reproductive rights across the globe, as well as the commonalities between women who seek abortions:

In all parts of the world, women have abortions for similar reasons, often for the very same reasons that woman who have access to modern contraception choose to use birth control. Women want to be able to delay having children if they are financially unable to care for a child or additional children, if they are not in a stable relationship with a partner who can help them care for a child, or if they still need to finish their education. But contraception isn’t readily available in many of the countries where women are dying from botched abortion procedures. Guttmacher estimates that about 222 million women in the developing world are trying to avoid pregnancy, but aren’t using a modern form of contraception, putting themselves at risk for an unintended pregnancy and an unsafe abortion.

On the other hand, Guttmacher points out that the legality of abortion — unlike access to contraception — has absolutely no correlation to the abortion rate, since women have abortion procedures regardless of the law. In fact, some of the highest abortion rates in the world are in countries in Latin America and Africa, in places where abortion is highly restricted but where women have many unintended pregnancies because they lack adequate access to contraceptive services. On the other hand, some of the lowest abortion rates are in countries in western Europe, where modern contraceptives are more readily available and where abortion is safe, legal, and accessible.

Expanding access to contraception, rather than restricting abortion, will ultimately save women’s lives. As the video puts it, “It is the basic right of every woman to decide whether and when to have a child without having to put her health or her life at risk. It is time for all countries to make that right a reality.”

NEWS FLASH

Many Americans Forced To Start Companies Out Of Economic Necessity | Conventional wisdom holds that America is one of the western world’s havens for entrepreneurship. And indeed, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2011 report found that the United States has, at 12.3 percent, a higher portion of entrepreneurs with businesses less than three and a half years old than any of the other developed, “innovation-driven” economies. But The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann flagged another datapoint in the same report that’s a reminder of the country’s ongoing economic hardship and rampant inequality: In America, more of these nascent entrepreneurs went into business out of economic necessity — as opposed to trying out a new idea or innovation — than in most of the innovation-driven countries.

NEWS FLASH

Gay Undocumented Immigrant Denied Asylum | The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Efren Neri-Garcia’s plea for protection today. Neri-Garcia, a gay man from Mexico living undocumented in the United States, claimed that homophobia is rampant in his home country, and would endanger his livelihood if he was deported. While a witness testified to this, and Neri-Garcia was attacked for his sexual orientation in Guadalajara in the 1990′s, the Federal appeals court ruled that such fears are unfounded. Roberta Skylar, a spokeswoman for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, disagreed, saying, “Marriage equality in one city doesn’t mean there is equality for everyone throughout the country and hate violence and discrimination still happen.” Efren Neri-Garcia now faces deportation.

-Nate Niemann

By Guest Blogger on Oct 4, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up