WHO IS IN CHARGE, AROUND HERE?
Senator Leahy, on the law's delay:
In December 2007, the Committee held a hearing on the Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2008, S.2136. ...
In March and April, this Committee considered and voted to report Senator Durbin's legislation to authorize bankruptcy courts to modify primary home mortgages to the Senate. The bill was reported in July and a Committee report in support was filed in September. Because the crisis persists and we have not been able to enact this measure, we are holding this follow-up hearing. It may serve to refocus on this measure now or in a few weeks when the Obama administration is left to resolve the foreclosure and economic crises.
Senator Durbin, on who really runs the U.S. Government:
Over the past year, I tried three times to pass this proposal - as part of Majority Leader Reid's housing bill in the spring, as part of the Senate Banking Committee's housing bill in the summer, and as part of the financial rescue bill this fall. Each time, the Mortgage Bankers Association and most of the financial services industry opposed my proposal, and nothing got done.
Senator Arlen Specter:
[no statement]
I would think that Specter's untimely objections could be met by providing bankruptcy courts specific guidance on how to modify particular types of loans, which would provide lenders with a sort-of schedule that they could use to estimate recovery rates.
A side note:
If you ever doubted the ability of one individual to change the course of an entire nation, notice that policymakers are relying, apparently, on information collected by a single Georgetown professor for a paper (cf. his blog).
In the face of national crisis, if you thought that the Federal Government of the United States could command the kind of comprehensive information gathering, in short order, that would make even EU bureaucrats blush, you'd be wrong.
