The boy geniuses controlling the public face of the GOP in Washington, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, have whipped themselves up a list of mighty questions to throw at the feet of the administration, in light of today's unveiling of a national plan to help deal with the foreclosure problems.
If you can stomach it, you can read about their exercise in Rush Limbaugh-inspired obstructionism here. But let's cut to the chase -- below are their questions, straight from the "Gotcha" task force of the RNC.
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- What will your plan do for the over 90 percent of homeowners who are playing and paying by the rules?
- Does your plan compensate banks for bad mortgages they should have never made in the first place?
- Will individuals who misrepresented their income or assets on their original mortgage application be eligible to get the taxpayer funded assistance under your plan?
- Will you require mortgage servicers to verify income and other eligibility standards before modifying mortgages?
- What will you do to prevent the same mortgages that receive assistance and are modified from going into default three, six or eight months later?
- How do you intend to move forward in the drafting of the legislation and who will author it?
Political realities will keep the administration from opening up both barrels in responding to this tripe. But let's speak the truth here for the benefit of our listening audience with a few enumerated points of our own:
- The 90 percent of homeowners will benefit because this measure will keep the other half of their new McMansion neighborhood from turning up vacant next Tuesday, taking the projected value of their own home right with the departing neighbors who are headed down the street and into the gutter. As far as the "righteous outrage" sure to be part of that 90 percent's reaction, it would be helpful to remind them that this shit sandwich was prepared for them by eight years of Republicans absolutely asleep at the switch, letting anyone who wanted to pass himself off as a banker or Wall Street Wizard conjure up whatever set of rules they wanted when it came to giving out home loans. Bottom line: The principle of fairness long ago ceased to be a relevant part of this discussion. The issue now is what is the quickest and most logical way to get to the door that gets us out of this Republican-borne mess.
- Banks making loans they never should have made? Hmm, let me see, who again was in charge of overseeing that preventative chore? Again, Job One is getting us back to a functioning banking system. There will be plenty of time to lay out blame later. Unfortunately, most of that task will be left to historians, because the people who should have been engaged in that work of late were otherwise occupied in Jack Abramoff's sky box.
- Misrepresentation of assets and income originally is, again, part of the past. Are they close to being able to make the payments now? That's the relevant question. We were all liars and deniers of reality back in 2005. Dubyah assured us it was the patriotic thing to do. We can go back and punish the little guys who took advantage of outrageous offers just as soon as we're done doling out the payback to the bankers and mortgage officers who knowingly engaged in this little international con game. So, little guys, look out -- we'll be coming for you in 2025 or so.
- Duh. It might take some retraining though, as apparently people in those fields haven't had to do much more than go through the motions on these processes for about the last five years or so.
- Um, isn't that pretty much covered by Question No. 4? Not everyone will make it, of course, but a return to the traditionally acceptable rate of default that the system could tolerate would be just fine, thank you.
- Overheard in conversation from inside Boehner's office: "Can anyone think of just one more question? I think we've really got them with these, but five just doesn't seem to be quite enough. If we could get to six, well then, everyone would know that we are very serious and important people and deserve to be invited on more golf outings."
OK, that's just my take on this. Feel free to throw in your own points of ridicule in the comments.