Responsibility

Personal responsibility continues its trip toward extinction. Run up huge credit card bills and the evil credit card company made me do it; take out a mortgage you never had a chance of paying and the evil bank made me do it; smoke 3 packs a day for thirty years and its an addiction; get drunk and drive over someone and it was the bartender’s fault. The truth is that the credit card company doesn’t force anyone to buy anything; the bank gives out stacks of disclosure statements about what the payment is that no one bothered to read; and millions of people have quit smoking and drinking. The airwaves are full of attorneys advertising that if anything ever happened for any reason to anyone, they should call and have a consultation about a law suit. No matter what happened, it must be someone else’s fault.
The result of all this is an increase in medical costs, insurance rates, unsafe roads, fewer doctors. All at the expense of people who are prudent with their purchases

To push this epidemic along the President has determined that anyone who has a mortgage that they can’t pay should get a do over. Regardless of how big the mortgage is, he will cap your payments at 31% of monthly salary. Of course, that is what the reasonableness test of a mortgage was for years. Obama’s plan means that regardless of income level, the home of dreams is within reach. A terrific plan: get a million dollar house and make $1,000 a month. The house payment is only $310 dollars per month. The criterion to get in on this is simple – just take out a loan that you never had a chance of paying back.
This is economic policy on a par with making the minimum wage $50 an hour so that everyone makes $100,000/ year and we have no problems. Ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people who pay their mortgage (and may be struggling to do so) get to foot the bill.