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Why the public is lukewarm to Obama's mortgage rescue package
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Obama's plan to subsidize homeowners with troubled mortgages is receiving a tepid reception with the American public. As reflected by CNBC's Rick Santelli's exasperated plea on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, many Americans sense that with the mortgage rescue plan as well as Obama's gargantuan stimulus spending package, we have crossed the Rubicon in many ways in terms of defining ourselves as a nation of individuals who should bear responsibility for our own actions and decisions.
How does the mortgage rescue plan square with the notion that for the most part, individuals in a capitalist society should be free to enter into contractual arrangements as they see fit, and concomitantly, be obligated to abide by the terms and conditions of such agreements, including the risk of suffering the consequences of their poor choices?
Despite his disingenuous protestations to the contrary, Obama's mortgage rescue plan makes no distinction between those who knowingly bought more house than they could afford, and those who are are truly in need due to unforeseen or unanticipated events beyond their control, or who fell prey to truly unscrupulous lenders. No government bailout plan is ever going to be able to weed out get-rich quick speculators and/or profligate spenders. Obama's failure to honestly acknowledge this inescapable reality is mendacious at best, deceitful at worst. It is a prime example of Obama remaining comfortably in campaign mode instead of governing as our Chief Executive.
Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress, are only too happy to add distressed mortgage holders as another group of individuals who will be dependent on the beneficence dispensed by an ever expanding government. Where then does that leave the rest of us? Footing the bill, naturally, for those who are now in financial peril. The central question, which no Democrats have addressed is this: Is it the proper role of government to act as a guarantor for the losses sustained by the improvidence of those whose appetite for the good life exceeded their ability to pay for same?
One can make an honest and compelling argument for the necessity of the mortgage bailout for a number of different reasons. But there is a question that transcends and is wholly independent on whatever one's position on the necessity for the mortgage rescue plan may be. Most Americans are paying their mortgages on time. As such, there is no escaping the inequity and fundamental unfairness of asking those who played by the rules to subsidize the spendthrift habits of their neighbors who did not.
If one believes in the wisdom of aiding financially distressed homeowners, why did the government not make those whose life or retirement savings were dissipated in an instant due to the Enron scandal whole? In that case, rampant fraud, artifice and deception were the fundamental causes for the debacle, and those who suffered damages were for the most part inculpable. In terms of a compelling argument for recompense, how is the Enron incident factually distinguishable from the sub-prime mortgage crisis?
Most Americans have serious reservations about the salutary economic effects of the massive pork-laden spending bill recently passed by Congress. Santelli's comments on the mortgage rescue plan may just be indicative of a latent public disapproval of the largest peacetime expansion of the federal government since the Great Depression. Santelli's comments struck a raw nerve in the White House. Perhaps this is why when asked to comment on the CNBC reporter's fervent critique, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went out of his way to disparage Santelli in a personal and excoriating manner.
