You grow up, get married and gain debt, just like pounds, whether you like it or not. You can not avoid it. What speaks well of you is if you manage your debt and not let your debt manage you. My wife and I have tried to do this as well as we can given we are living on one income. Our mortgage is paid every month right on time. So are our taxes and credit bills.

But Congress wants to penalize me and 90% of the country for being responsible. They want to take my tax money and bailout the other 8% of the country because they were not responsible. I say 8% because I would bet that roughly 2% of the ongoing foreclosures were not the fault of the people who own those homes. I think 2% may be a little high, but there have been a lot of layoffs lately because a lot of companies want to keep the profits at the levels they had a year ago and that simply is not going to happen.

If you think that the percentages are off, first check out how many total foreclosures there are now against the total number of mortgages currently in the US.

When we got our mortgage, we were required to pay off all of our other debt, like credit cards, car loans, etc. It was a requirement if you wanted the loan. So when we got our brand new mortgage, it was the only commercial debt we had.

Any responsible person getting a mortgage would make sure they had the income. It is simply good family economics. When we bought our house, we considered what would happen if we lost one income and looked for a house keeping that thought in mind. As a result, we bought a house in an area that created an hour commute for either of us. Responsibility obviously does not stop at a first mortgage, but any mortgage you get.

According to the New York Times, published on November 18, 2008, in part says:

The Treasury secretary, Henry J. Paulson, Jr., on Tuesday rejected pleas to use money from the $700 billion bailout program to help homeowners avoid foreclosure or to stave off bankruptcy by Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

Facing a barrage of complaints from Democratic lawmakers that he was ignoring the will of Congress, Mr. Paulson dug in his heels and said he wanted to put money only into financial institutions.

“The primary purpose of the bill was to protect our financial system from collapse,” Mr. Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee. “The rescue package was not intended to be an economic stimulus or an economic recovery package.”

Democrats pummeled the Treasury secretary in response, with some accusing him of carrying out a “bait and switch” by discarding his original plan and others expressing fury that the Treasury had allocated $290 billion for banks and insurance companies but nothing for individual homeowners.

But Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation warned that the country could expect a tidal wave of up to five million foreclosures over the next two years if the government took no additional action.

Under her plan, the Treasury would refinance mortgages for people if it is possible to reduce their monthly payments to about 32 percent of their monthly income. To encourage existing mortgage lenders to settle for lower payments, the government would accept responsibility for half of the losses if the homeowner defaults a second time. Democratic leaders have strongly endorsed the idea.

According to Reuters, December 10, 2008, Official: Re-Defaults are high after mortgage modifications:

More than half of mortgages modified in a bid to avoid foreclosure fell delinquent within six months, a top U.S. banking regulator said Monday, casting doubt on a proposal to rewrite home loans en masse.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan said it is unclear why so many borrowers ran into trouble again so soon after getting help.

“Is it because the modifications did not reduce monthly payments enough to be truly affordable to the borrowers? Is it because consumers replaced lower mortgage payments with increased credit card debt?”

“Is it because the mortgages were so badly underwritten that the borrowers simply could not afford them, even with reduced monthly payments? Or is it a combination of these and other factors?”

Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, has been a big proponent of a home loan modification program that would encourage lenders to rework a greater number of mortgages by pledging public money to share the cost of defaults on restructured loans.

However, Dugan’s figures suggested that the cost to taxpayers may be high. He said his data showed that of mortgages that were modified in the first three months of 2008, nearly 36% had re-defaulted after three months, and almost 53% were behind on payments by six months.

Starting to see something terribly wrong here?

John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said he had “concerns” about allocating too much federal money to loan modifications. FDIC’s Bair said bank regulators needed to look at the redefault data “carefully” to figure out what caused so many borrowers to slip back into arrears.

Rep. Barney Frank, the Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, told CNBC that he would agree to release the remaining $350 billion to the Treasury Department “only if they made it very clear that they were wrong in refusing (to use) it for foreclosure relief.

Yup, very mature stand there.

So who is running this runaway train? Obviously a number of government organizations believe the bailout was a mistake. There is no oversight, no advertising what they are doing with our money. Simple - you can not fix a problem you have no control over, namely the homeowners and the Banks.

If someone bought a house they could not afford, what would make anyone expect them to still be able to afford the house after they were bailed out? Obviously I don’t have the right college degree because I seemed to have missed the logic in that reasoning.

What gives a homeowner the right to walk away from their debt obligation if the value drops below the mortgage amount? No one told them to get loans up to or equal to the value of the house. But check this out - they are walking, apparently without shame and refusing to take any responsibility for their own actions.

And why should I have to bail out those who were not responsible in handling their mortgage? But I am sure that I will have to do just that, given the way Congress is acting. And no one ever asked me if they could do this, the one who has been struggling to make sure my mortgage is paid on time.

As someone told me, Congress is just pandering for votes for the next election, regardless of what the cost will be to 90% of us. Mighty expensive votes for such a small group of people.

From what I see, this isn’t anything about whether the Democrats or Republicans are responsible. The CONGRESS is responsible for Congress and whatever actions comes out of there.

Hello Congress! - Is it really worth it?

Can You Hear Me Now?