U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Treasury Department’s
Mortgage Modification Programs:
A Failure Prolonging the Economic Crisis
Minority Staff Report
U.S. House of Representatives
111th
Congress
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
INTRODUCTION
This report by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Republican Staff tracks the history of the Obama Administration’s foreclosure mitigation programs, focusing on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), the most active and highest-profile of those programs. HAMP is a $75 billion taxpayer-funded program that incentivizes mortgage companies to lower mortgage payments and renegotiate rates for homeowners facing foreclosure. In return, The U.S. Department of the Treasury subsidizes the modifications through direct payments to servicers, lenders, and borrowers.
These federally-imposed mortgage modifications are a questionable use of taxpayer resources and they have failed to have a significant effect on rising foreclosure rates. HAMP’s failure to assist anywhere near the 3-4 million distressed homeowners to whom the Administration promised aid demonstrates that technocratic tinkering is not an effective way to solve economic problems. The only viable long-term solution to falling housing prices and rising foreclosures is a broad-based economic recovery.
In its current form, HAMP both hurts homeowners who might otherwise spend their trial-period mortgage payments on rent and also distorts the housing market, delaying any recovery. Treasury owes American taxpayers and homeowners an honest explanation of HAMP’s ill-advised creation and ongoing mismanagement.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
HAMP has failed. By every empirical measure, HAMP has failed. In March 2009, the Administration promised it would “help up to 3 to 4 million homeowners avoid foreclosure.” As recently as November 2009, Treasury suggested that HAMP would permanently modify mortgages for 375,000 borrowers by the end of the year. But at the end of January 2010, the program had produced only about 116,000 permanent modifications – despite pressure from the Obama Administration on mortgage companies. Meanwhile, a record proportion of U.S. mortgages are now in foreclosure.
HAMP may actually hurt more homeowners than it helps. HAMP grants a trial modification while the homeowner’s paperwork is being examined. After the homeowner’s eligibility has been confirmed – so long as mortgage payments have continued uninterrupted – the program grants a permanent modification. Treasury’s own data suggests that hundreds of thousands of homeowners would receive temporary modifications but fail to qualify for permanent ones, thus ultimately leading to default. These homeowners would have been better off if they had defaulted earlier and spent the payments on more affordable housing options.
Treasury is trying to hide the failure of HAMP. Despite repeated promises of transparency, Treasury has tried to cover up HAMP’s failure. For example, Treasury stopped reporting a key number in January 2010, a move that effectively prohibited government watchdog groups and news organizations from calculating and reporting HAMP’s success rate to the public.
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Treasury Department’s
Mortgage Modification Programs:
A Failure Prolonging the Economic Crisis
By not letting the natural market forces to play its course, and thus prolonging the financial nightmare for millions of people,the clowns in Washington are getting more and more desperate by the day to hold onto their power joy sticks.HAMP is yet another scam-scalping,(cash for clunkers so called program) by the gangsters in Washington DC and Wall Street banks in cahoots, designed to suck the every last dime out of the unemployed workers pockets who are trying to save their homes and their families.Every time Washington tells you, through their complicit media, how they will fix the economy and save you from poverty,they have another scam ready up sleeve.Smokescreens, one upon the other, putting you to sleep.The reality is that they don’t really give a s%#t for the masses. The have stolen so much wealth that they don’t need you anymore.
I think you need to take this report with a grain (if not a shaker) of salt. HAMP may not be working as well as anyone hoped, but to take a Republican hit job on an Obama Administration program as proof of why the program isn’t working, or what the ramifications may be, is problematic.
This particular report is rife with political motives, and should be seen as such.