The Handout President

Last week, with eyes glazed to the tube and hands filled with overflowing tubs of popcorn, the nation watched as the most powerful man in the world temporarily stepped down from his post to serve as a mere committee chairman of the bipartisan health care summit.

The Chairman-in-Chief spoke condescendingly, counted everyone’s minutes except his own, and ultimately watched his team get thoroughly embarrassed on national television in a political Stupor Bowl.

For nearly the past year, Congressional Democrats have run around like chickens with their heads cut off, ignoring the opposition to the president’s legacy-making initiative, and feverishly making deals which each other so enough support could be garnered to get a bill passed–any bill.

In their haste to make history, it’s unfortunate that the manufactured-crisis of health-care reform has unnecessarily dominated the national debate while a real, alive-and-well, housing crisis has continued to manifest itself.

Last year, the president’s signature housing program, Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), was supposed to stem the tide of foreclosures. In the words of his Treasury Secretary, the initiative would “show results quickly”, but homeowners, mortgage companies, and legislators all questioned its effectiveness. For a few months, foreclosures were down, until December, when filings had its first month to month increase since July.

Was the increase a sign of things to come?

In a word, yes.

On Christmas Eve, while the nation was more engaged in holiday festivities than the day’s news cycle, the president calmly and coolly signed an executive order that issued a blank check to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to cover their losses from the reeling residential real estate market.

Freddie Mac had to be ecstatic; after all, it posted a $7.8 billion loss in the year’s Q4. But CEO Charles E. Haldeman, Jr. proclaimed we’re far from being out of the woods of the housing crisis.

“We start 2010 with some early signs of stabilization in the housing market, with house prices and home sales likely nearing the bottom sometime in 2010. We expect that low mortgage rates, relatively high affordability and the homebuyer tax credit will help continue to fuel the recovery. Still, the housing recovery remains fragile, with significant downside risk posed by high unemployment and a potential large wave of foreclosures.”

The president’s administration already has a solution to the potential large wave of foreclosures coming down the pike; banning foreclosures altogether. This past week, Bloomberg reported that the administration is hoping to convert HAMP into the ultimate authority on foreclosures. The program’s bureaucrats would have the power to screen and reject foreclosure attempts.

Coming from a president who purports to not be a proponent of big government, I’m absolutely shocked, and by shocked I mean I’m not surprised at all.

People shouldn’t be given the ability to remain in homes they can’t and won’t be able to afford. It’s only furthering their misery and allowing Freddie Mac to celebrate a decrease in losses on its balance sheet.

This nation needs a leader who understands that until individuals and businesses accept responsibility for their actions and take the subsequent losses as a result, the economy can’t possibly recover because there won’t have been any sort of correction to allow it to do so.

Unfortunately, in November of 2008, the electorate of the greatest nation ever known to man chose the handout president, who’s determined to control the nation’s resources and provide its citizenry with what he feels it needs. The never-ending gifts of housing, unemployment benefits, expansions of already existing entitlements, and creations of new entitlements will expand the societal underclass and perpetuate its dependence upon the government for its way of life.

This is not the American dream; he’s not The One.