Yaaa!!! Main Street!!!

Sometimes I really wonder if the Democrats are better than the GOP.

After working through Tuesday night to flesh out a bipartisan agreement, lawmakers unveiled a bill that rejects the most ambitious plans for aiding distressed homeowners, including a Democratic proposal to permit bankruptcy judges to modify the mortgage on a person’s primary residence.

Instead, lawmakers settled on a sharply scaled-back array of measures that would provide $4 billion in grants for cities to buy foreclosed properties, temporary tax breaks worth up to $7,000 for home buyers who purchase foreclosed properties, and new tax deductions for almost every American who owns a home. The package, which would cost about $15 billion over the next 10 years, also would jump-start stalled legislation to streamline the Federal Housing Administration, one of the top priorities of the Bush administration.

Families who cannot afford to repay their home loans — the group at the heart of the mortgage meltdown — would benefit mainly from $100 million to expand foreclosure counseling services and greater latitude for local housing authorities to use tax-exempt bonds in refinancing subprime loans.

Home builders and other businesses suffering losses in the flagging economy, meanwhile, would get the lion’s share of federal spending in the bill: $6 billion in tax rebates.

Seriously?

Really?

So American families are losing their houses at an astonishing rate, and the government, such that it is, sees fit to bail out Bear Stearns and homebuilders. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

My tax dollars are going to prop up what amounts to a fancy betting house and people who build houses, while families that are trying to just better themselves are losing it all. Now, I’m not going to pretend that people didn’t take risky loans. They did. However, Bear Stearns turned mortgages into a craps game and homebuilders were selling houses to people they knew couldn’t afford them. So they get bailed out and homeowners get “counceling”. Great. Fuck you. Really.

Continuing:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) lauded the agreement as “a robust package” that is “good news for the American people.”

Yeah Harry, it’s robust…as robust as an ass fucking. With. Out. Lube.

More:

But the lead negotiators on the deal, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and the panel’s ranking Republican, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), acknowledged that the legislation does not go as far as either side would like and represents only their first attempt at helping to resolve the nation’s housing problems.

It better well damn be.

Look, even an amature like me understands that the economy has been propped up by people over spending and borrowing on their equity. Others have bought into an over-priced housing market, people who wanted to get a slice of the “American Pie”, though whatever means they could, so they too could over spend. Often it was through stupid means. Everyone is to blame for this fiasco. From the lenders to the borrowers to the builders to the buyers.

Everyone.

However…it’s the house of cards this economy was built on, and bailing out the enablers isn’t going to do anything but enable them to fuck us all again at some future date, since they sit at the top of the house. Stabilizing the bottom, the foundation is what we really should be looking at. Should people who took out risky loans skate? No. I have a solution!

…..but I’ll blog about that tomorrow.