Obamanomics Worsens Home Foreclosure Crisis

WASHINGTON – President Obama flew to Las Vegas Monday to talk
with distressed homeowners and see what Nevada’s 13.4 percent
unemployment first hand. While he was there, he had lunch at the
lavish Bellagio hotel and gambling casino with 300 very rich people
who gave him checks of between $1,000 and $35,800 for his re-election
campaign.

He went out there to unveil yet another plan to rescue
underwater homeowners, but also took a shot at Congress for being
hopelessly “dysfunctional,” vowing to take action on his own without
them. His latest $447 billion jobs plan has run into a buzz saw of
opposition in the Senate from Republicans and Democrats who think his
tax plan won’t be any more effective than his last one which blew more
than $800 billion with little to show for it.

Of course, by dysfunctional, the president could have been
thinking of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who said on the Senate
floor last week that “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have
been doing just fine; it’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost
huge numbers….”

Just fine? What planet is Harry Reid living on? (Actually, he
lives here in the Ritz Carlton.) With a nationwide 9.1 percent jobless
rate, 16 percent if you include Americans forced to work part-time or
in temp jobs, the private sector employment picture is bleak.

But maybe Harry had a bad day and wasn’t thinking clearly,
especially after several Democrats broke ranks and joined Republicans
in voting against the president on his jobs proposal.

When Reid brought up just one part of that bill for a vote last
week, which would raise taxes to finance a $35 billion giveaway to the
states to pay for government jobs, three Democrats flatly voted no:
Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, Arkansas’s Mark Pryor and Connecticut’s Joe
Lieberman.

Obama neglected to say anything about those desertions in his
remarks at the Bellagio.

“We can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do
its job,” he said. “Where they won’t act, I will.”

But after submitting his jobs bill to Congress, some of his
advisers told him that even that’s not going to get the economy
working again until he does something about the 10 million Americans.
who owe a great deal more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

So Obama came up with a revised scheme to tinker with his
earlier Home Affordable Refinance Program that he proposed in 2009. At
the time, the White House said it would help up to 5 million people
avoid foreclosure. In fact, almost three years later, it has helped
relatively few people and the foreclosure crisis is worse than ever.