The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) — which is theoretically the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure prevention program — has been sputtering along, with far more enrollees being dropped from the program than receiving a permanent mortgage modification. In July, the numbers got truly ugly, with fewer than 17,000 trial modifications getting underway and more than 100,000 borrowers being bumped from the program. In all, nearly half of the borrowers who began the program, about 1.3 million, have not received a permanent modification.

The Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasiripour has a nice chart detailing the carnage. The blue line is canceled modifications, while orange is newly started trial modifications. Under the program, orange should turn to red after the borrower has successfully made three months of payments:

“The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy, who predicts that the program will ultimately help only 500,000 homeowners. Currently, “one in seven mortgages is delinquent or in foreclosure.”

Treasury is aware that the program is producing such lackluster results and has initiated some new, small programs targeted at the states hit hardest by the foreclosure and unemployment crises. But as Mike Konczal reported, Treasury officials are also “sticking by HAMP“:

The narrative seemed to change from helping homeowners to spacing out the foreclosures. I asked them to repeat it, because the idea that billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to smooth out foreclosures for banks struck me as new narrative – it’s explicitly extend-and-pretend, and also fairly cynical.

Steve Waldman at Interfluidity added, “officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least.” The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) issued a report criticizing HAMP as a program “that merely kicks the proverbial foreclosure can down the road,” and it seems like Treasury is confirming that it knew this would happen all along.

According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, “without more intervention, the housing market will continue its ‘slow motion’ adjustment that will continue to inhibit economic growth and drag down consumer spending.” The lack of urgency when it comes to finding a solution for this very real problem affecting people all over the country is incredibly discouraging.

John Kasich, the “former state senator, congressman, Fox News talk show host, and financial firm manager” running on the Republican gubernatorial ticket in Ohio, has taken to calling the Ohio budget a “disaster,” and talking up his past experiences as giving him the insight to turn the state around. “How did we get here? Sloppy, no knowledge, tired, worn out, no ideas. Politics as usual. What do you do? You take a businesslike attitude. You have to serve the customer,” Kasich has said.

Kasich’s plan to reinvigorate the state includes completely eliminating both its income tax and its estate tax. But when asked how much his tax plan would cost the state in terms of revenue loss, Kasich admits that he has absolutely no idea, as the Toledo Blade reported:

Ask specifics about how and when he’d follow through with his plan and where he’d reduce state spending to offset the potential loss of revenue, and the path becomes less clear. “All the specifics on this are all being constantly worked,” he told The Blade in a recent interview in his downtown Columbus campaign headquarters. “I will lay out a program whenever I feel I’m satisfied with the program, when we understand the revenue, when we’ve worked this effectively,” he said.

Kasich was even more forthcoming about his cluelessness when it comes to the budget two weeks ago, saying “people want to know the details of my plan. I don’t have the revenues.”

It’s odd that Kasich can’t seem to find the numbers for this, as the Ohio Department of Taxation has some exceedingly easy-to-access tables detailing just how much of a hole Kasich is proposing blowing in the budget. Eliminating the state income tax — which brings in nearly half of the state’s revenue — would cost about $8.3 billion next year alone. Eliminating the estate tax would cost another $288.5 million (and 80 percent of estate tax revenue already gets redistributed to state and local governments).

Kasich “flatly rules out tax increases and that, in his mind, includes any effort to broaden the tax base or close loopholes.” And his campaign’s plan for cutting the budget is remarkably short on details, not identifying one single program that Kasich thinks needs to be trimmed.

Ohio’s already facing an $8 billion deficit next year, and Kasich’s tax proposals would more than double that, with no clear path towards spending cuts or tax increases that could come close to making up the difference. It’s the height of fiscal irresponsibility.

California’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is basing her campaign on her time as Ebay’s CEO, saying that her experience there gives her the job-creation bona fides to run a state. “I came to understand (at eBay) that job creation is dependent on a fragile mix of circumstances – circumstances all too often disrupted by the intrusive hand of government,” she has said.

Whitman reiterated this message at the state’s Republican convention Friday night, saying that creating jobs in California is “the number one thing we have to do“:

2.3 million Californians wake up every morning not know what they’re going to do. And I see this tearing at the fabric of our very culture. And that’s why the number one thing we have to do is we’ve got to put Californians back to work.

Watch it:

But if Whitman believes that job creation is the most important thing she could do as governor, she has a funny way of showing it. According to an analysis by Michael Reich, Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, “her policy proposals are likely to have negative effects on jobs and economic growth and to deepen the state’s budget crisis.”

Whitman promises 2 million jobs will be created by her administration, but according to the California State Department of Finance and from independent forecasters, most of that job creation would happen anyway, “without any of Whitman’s policies.” And her determination to slash certain government programs would cause a hemorrhaging of jobs, including more than 63,000 at Medi-Cal and Calworks, California’s Medicaid and employment services programs.

Whitman would also cause all of this economic pain for individual households while simultaneously exacerbating California’s budget crisis. She likes to make a big show of her planned $15 billion in unspecified spending cuts, without noting that California’s fiscal hole for just next year is $20 billion. Her tax plan would also add $6 billion to $10 billion to California’s deficit, offsetting two-thirds of her planned cuts.

A group of 20 California economists — including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow — have signed a letter stating that “the evidence and theory that Whitman uses to diagnose California’s problems are unscientific and an unsound basis for policy. As a result, her diagnosis and her proposed economic policies are both deeply flawed…If implemented, Whitman’s program would worsen California’s budget malaise and its economic performance.” And her program certainly wouldn’t accomplish what she sees as the number one thing she has to do.