Obama's Housing Plan is Insufficient and Short Sighted

Many are hopeful that the new homeowner bailout plan will help to alleviate the pressure currently enveloping homeowners and the housing market. President Obama’s three part plan of changing lending rules to help millions of homeowners refinance, providing $75 billion to help millions of the most at risk for foreclosure, and giving $200 billion to mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to help keep mortgage rates low is the most aggressive proposal yet to help with the housing crisis. The purpose of the plan is to help provide millions of homeowners that have come to the point of financial ruin a chance to rebuild. The plan will be most effective in states such as Arizona, Florida, Colorado, and California, all of which have been hit hard by the housing crisis. The strategy is to hopefully have a plan that will start working as quickly as possible in order to reach those in the most need as soon as possible. The administration feels that the sooner those on the bottom receive help the better for the long term of the housing market. Meant to immediately help around nine million home owners, the plan is also meant to target those on the verge of falling into the red zone. Sheila Blair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, feels as though the effects of this plan could start showing as early as next month,

“I believe you'll start seeing a real impact in March, with meaningful, long term, sustainable modifications," Bair told ABC

However, is this plan, so lauded by man in the Democratic Party, even original?

The plan which Obama is proposing has drawn comparisons by many to a plan which was developed by John McCain during the Presidential race. Obama’s plan is meant to stop foreclosures before they have a chance to occur, an idea which can even be as much as pinpointed as to when exactly it was first introduced by John McCain, the second presidential debate. During the campaign Obama stated

“Taxpayers shouldn't be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped create this crisis. And that's the problem with Senator McCain's risky idea."

Obama also stated that the plan from Senator McCain, which was estimated to cost around $300 billion, would be too expensive. Yet the plan now being introduced by President Obama is going to bailout those that created the crisis, cost $275 billion, and be paid for by who else than the American taxpayer. Instead of coming up with a new solution for a problem so plaguing the American economy as many believed Obama would do, and as Obama led the American public to believe he would do, the Obama administration simply made minor adjustments to a plan that was already introduced during the campaign. Another disappointment from the Obama camp in what is still the infancy stage of his presidency. Still, this issue of originality over the housing bailout plan is minor to the major issues I see with the bill. This plan appears to me to be an effort to provide an easy way out for those that made irresponsible and knowingly reckless purchases of homes that they were aware they would never be able to afford.

The American taxpayers are paying people and banks to do that which they were already supposed to be doing.

“President Obama’s massive mortgage-bailout plan is nothing more than a thinly disguised entitlement program that redistributes income from the responsible 92 percent of home-owning mortgage holders who pay their bills on time to the irresponsible defaulters who bought more than they could ever afford. This is Obama’s spread-the-wealth program in action.”, Larry Kudlow National Review Online

The $275 billion dollar plan is simply creating further debt on a quick fix for the housing crisis. While expanding the control and power of major mortgage owners Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Obama plan does nothing to alleviate the pressure on small-time mortgage lenders or Wall Street. Instead of throwing money at those that made irresponsible decisions to purchase homes well out of their means bracket, Obama and his administration should do as much as possible to support new families looking to buy starter homes. After all in a free-market society that is how economic problems are fixed, by supporting an ever growing number of new that wish to buy into the system. Not by using big government to bail out the few at the cost of many. After all it is important to realize that while the prices of homes continue to drop, the number of those buying homes is continuing to rise. Have some faith in the free market system, President Obama, and try to develop some long term solutions for the issues at hand instead of quick, draining, and short-term solutions for problems that are of far greater reach. Deal with the loans that were issued as securities and help out all mortgage writers, not just the two major mortgage brokers that the government can control. Spark the economy, do not continue to impede its growth.

War in Afghanistan Could Be More of a Quagmire Than Iraq

The United States will possibly add more troops to the war effort in Afghanistan soon. It seemed as though the Taliban had been crushed and sent home with its tail between its legs in 2001. However, it has become apparent that the Taliban has regrouped, and this time they are stronger and far more fiercely dedicated to the fight. This regrouping is believed to have taken place in neighboring Pakistan and the Pakistani bases are believed to have been the Taliban’s launching point into Afghanistan. Slowly but surely, and with some local resistance, the Taliban has swept across Afghanistan to now control a large portion of the country. Along the way they have picked up some valuable tribal allies. Important talks in Afghanistan have begun with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke having been sent in for the discussions. The focus of the discussions will be to determine what level of increased involvement for the U.S. is necessary to establish security in Afghanistan. It is believed that the U.S. will add more troops to the effort in Afghanistan but exactly how many is still undetermined. With the fighting in Afghanistan intensifying it is believed that more troops are necessary in order to establish security for the Afghan presidential elections on August 20. However, will more troops truly solve the problem in Afghanistan, or merely create another quagmire such as the one in Iraq? We have seen that heavily splintered nation-states are extremely difficult to bring together through the example in Iraq. When a battle between peoples has been raging for thousands of years, it is difficult to believe that those from the outside could step in and solve the problem in a far shorter period of time. If we have learned anything from the Iraq war it is that throwing more troops into the fray is, if anything, only a quick fix. There comes a point in which one must concede that some battles are unwinnable, some problems unsolvable. The Middle East is the perfect example of such a problem. The wars and fighting that takes place in this area of the world are not merely over land or resources, but religious doctrines and beliefs. It is difficult to believe that sending our troops into the area will do much to help such a deep seeded and long lasting struggle. How can you bring together a country which has never really been unified before? Unification is something that must happen from within a country, through the means of that country’s people. Not from the efforts of an outside force. Such a unification as this will be weak and brief. If the United States is to assist in unifying the country, however, it will need to be able to trust its connections within the country. This is something that the United States has not been able to do.

Take for example the missing weapons in Afghanistan. The United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars on obtaining and shipping around 242, 000 weapons to help equip the Afghan National Security Forces. However, 87, 000 of those weapons are now missing and unaccounted for within Afghanistan. The missing weapons are blamed on mistakes made throughout the supply chain. Still, it is easy to believe that some, if not most, of those mistakes were intentional. This puts the U.S. in the position of possibly battling weapons that were paid for by the U.S. and shipped over by the U.S., a scenario which should never occur.

"What if we had to tell families [of U.S. soldiers] not only why we are in Afghanistan but why their son or daughter died at the hands of an insurgent using a weapon purchased by the United States taxpayers? But that's what we risk if we were to have tens of thousands of weapons we provided washing around Afghanistan, off the books," Rep. John Tierney, D-Massachusetts

Even many of the experts are not sold on America’s ability to succeed in Afghanistan. Without the ability to trust the connections within the country how can any headway in the battle for unification be expected to take place? After all the foundation of any unified state is trust. Not only are the difficulty of unification of Afghanistan and the inability for U.S. forces to fully trust its contacts within Afghanistan serious impediments to success on the Afghan front, but also the history of Afghanistan with invaders and the layout of the country itself seem to be working against the United States.

Afghanistan has garnered the nickname “graveyard of empires” because it has crushed forces from many nations much stronger than itself. Afghanistan has never truly been a modernized, unified country. It has always operated as a tribal society. The Taliban forces that America is fighting are located in mostly rural areas and are well funded. Much of the Taliban forces are located in village areas that are scattered throughout a large area. This tribal, rural area operates under practically free reign due to the fact that there is a distinct separation between the rural areas and the cities. These rural areas are dominated by drug lords, most of which are involved in the drug trade and backing the Taliban. Therefore, the Taliban is currently in possession of the dominant location of the countryside, operating with practically free reign in this area of countryside, and being backed by drug money which runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars brought in annually. Such a combination is most certainly a recipe for failure, not success, in Afghanistan. Yet it seems as though President Obama is going to send a large number of more troops into the country to try and fix the deteriorating situation. The new administration was supposed to have a different and more effective strategy than the previous one? It seems as though the new administration is merely continuing the same tried and failed techniques as the last. Has nothing been learned from the conflict in Iraq? A full and unapologetic change is needed in the strategy for America’s Middle East involvement. Yet it seems little change is on the way from a President that ran on the platform of change.