NAHB PAC locks congressional war chest
By Glenn Roberts, Jr., Tuesday, February 12, 2008.Bookmarking Sites
The president of the National Association of Home Builders trade group today announced that the group is freezing all contributions from its political action committee to federal congressional candidates to protest a perceived lack of federal action to lift the housing sector.
"This extraordinary action was taken because the NAHB BUILD-PAC Board of Trustees felt that over the past six months Congress and the Administration have not adequately addressed the underlying economic issues that would help to stabilize the housing sector and keep the economy moving forward," said NAHB President Brian Catalde in a statement.
"More needs to be done to jump-start housing and ensure the economy does not fall into a recession. This action will remain in effect until further notice."
Less than an hour before this announcement, NAHB had applauded the Bush administration for an agreement among six major lenders to postpone foreclosure proceedings for some borrowers while pursuing workout plans.
In that earlier announcement, Catalde called upon Congress to modernize the U.S. Federal Housing Administration and reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
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Submitted by Anonymous on February 12, 2008 - 6:43pm.
Maybe if NAR would just pick one party or the other to support instead of hedging their bets Congress wouldn't be deadlocked on so many housing issues.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D000000062
Just kidding.
But it's hard to believe that four or five years after the management and accounting scandals that hobbled Fannie and Freddie, Congress has yet to pass a GSE reform bill.
Or that while Congress was contemplating bringing FHA loan programs into the 21st century, they allowed subprime lenders to invent a new business model and take away FHA's market share before self-destructing, leaving loan servicers to pick up the pieces while the House and Senate continue to debate the pros and cons of letting FHA do risk-based pricing.
With the exception of the creation of the FHASecure program for delinquent borrowers, the temporary increase in the conforming loan limit, and voluntary workout initatives being undertaken by loan servicers, it's remarkable how little things have changed since last summer, when I was foolishly suggesting on this blog that Congress might still "sprint through a minefield to keep the downturn in the housing market from becoming a bust."
http://blog.inman.com/inmanblog/2007/06/do-this-dont-do.html
Of course, there's always room for healthy disagreement about how much the government should interfere in the housing and mortgage markets. But it's probably safe to say that what NAR wants now is big government, Democratic Party style (presumably without the added regulatory burden sometimes associated with the blue staters).
If the numbers from Open Secrets in the link above are any indication, before NAR locked up the war chest, they'd already decided to switch their allegiance from the Grand Ol' Party (who were no doubt of great help in keeping the regulators at bay during the boom) to the Democrats (who are more likely to be generous with taxpayer funds in the crisis situation that's developed). I'm sure they'll get the key out again long before November.
Submitted by Anonymous on February 12, 2008 - 7:01pm.
Oops. I missed that it's the home builders, not the realtors who have locked up the campaign war chest.
Here's a link to Open Secrets' numbers for NAHB's BUILD PAC:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.asp?strID=C00000901&cycle=2008
Looks like Republicans will suffer more than Democrats.