Entitlement Nation: Even Housing Is Now An Entitlement (Corker-Warner NOT Reform)

Confounded Interest ^ | 10/09/2013 | Anthony B. Sanders

[whitedog57]

As former Reagan adviser David Stockman said about Obamacare, “It is a massive entitlement to end all entitlements.”

But housing is an entitlement as well.

Last week, no less than 63 members of the House and 13 Senators wrote to Financial Housing Finance Administration chief Ed Demarco demanding that he not lower the maximum loan limit for mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In earlier correspondence to DeMarco, first reported by National Mortgage News, National Association of Realtors (NAR) President Gary Thomas questioned the legality of FHFA reducing the loan limits at this time.

“Our nation’s housing market is still on the path to recovery. While there has been some return of private mortgage lending, without the benefit of a federal guarantee, it remains limited and available only to the most highly qualified borrowers,” the NAR letter said. Thomas then went on the attack: “You have not yet made public your legal authority for overriding the statutory prohibition against reducing conforming loans limits,” he growled.

I saw a similar show at the American Action Forum / Progressive Policy Institute meeting last week where I spoke. Activists and industry lobbyists pushed for lower and lower capital requirements for lenders and wanted no end to risky low/no down payment lending.

In other words, housing and housing finance have been an entitlement.

Here is my op-ed with Satya Thallam on Corker-Warner which is a continuation of housing entitlements, not reform.

Corker-Warner reminds me of when Ford changed the name of the Taurus to the 500. Then promptly switched back to Taurus. Same car, different name.

And if Janet Yellen is approved by the US Senate as Fed Chair (very likely), she will try to support the housing entitlement lobby.

Sarpeidon_prosecutor

[whitedog57]

It has been an entitlement, but it is getting worse.

[PGR88]

I am waiting for America’s food supply to be put under a distribution and allocation program like Obamacare.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

A majority of the country expects to live at a higher standard of living than their productivity warrants. They want to live the good life on someone else’s dime and expect the government to force other people to pay for it. The old comparison of the Welfare State to people in a wagon is spot on. Initially, there are two or three people in the wagon and 10 people pulling. Later, there are 10 people in the wagon and 3 people pulling. At a certain point, the two or three people pulling are just going to say screw it and give up. Its just not worth it. And then the freeloaders will have nothing and the whole system will collapse. Then no one will be talking about housing as a “human right.”