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I’m watching the NBC Republican Presidential debate that was on last night. Something that stood out to me was that both Rick Santorum and also Mitt Romney expressed compassion for people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Rick Santorum says that he supports allowing people to deduct off of their taxes money that they lost in a bad home deal. And Mitt Romney is criticizing the Dodd-Frank law because it hinders people from being able to renegotiate their mortgage.
In my opinion, this is a step up from where Republicans have been. I remember Bill and Hillary Clinton in 2008 proposing that people be allowed to renegotiate their mortgages so that they could keep their homes, and (although John McCain adopted that idea in his own campaign) right-wingers considered that to be unconscionable! They called it a bail-out. They said that people should be held responsible for their mistakes, and that people should recognize that not everybody can live in a house. Their approach was “They made their bed, let them sleep in it”. So it’s refreshing to see Republicans—-a right-winger like Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney (whatever he is)—-proposing policies of compassion for people who have lost their homes. But it would also be saddening if Dodd-Frank were actually inhibiting people from being able to renegotiate their mortgages. That makes me wonder which party I should vote for. I think that, overall, the Democratic Party is more compassionate towards the middle class and low-income people than are the Republicans. And yet, some Democratic policies may do more harm than good.
UPDATE: According to this article, Romney has stated that foreclosures should be allowed to run their course.
