1. Offer lender incentives to reduce the borrower’s mortgage balance.

2. Double the incentives given to lenders to modify second mortgages, such as piggyback loans.

3. Offer incentives to lenders who allow owners to sell their home through a short-sale, rather than foreclosing.

4. Have the FHA help underwater borrowers by taking up to 10% of their mortgage balance.

At this point, you might be in shock. When you purchased your home, you might have actually preferred another property but didn’t buy it because the payments would have been a stretch. You saved for a down payment, have a good credit history, and wanted to make sure you could handle your mortgage. You’re responsible, and you tried your best to do things the right way.

Now, we have people who should have never owned a home getting help. These are the people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford and didn’t understand. This practice, with all its easy money, contributed to a rapid, unsustainable increase in home values. Lenders are certainly not blameless, but too many people seem to look past the irresponsible behavior of borrowers. Then what happens? They get rewarded by having their mortgage balance reduced, payments lowered, and the ability to refinance into a loan with a lower interest rate. Would you like the same benefits? Sorry, you pay your bills on time, so you’re not eligible. If you had only skipped a few.

By this point, you might be wondering how this is going to be paid for. Like many other things, this program will be paid for using TARP funds. You remember TARP, don’t you? It was the slush fund requested by Hank Paulson and George Bush that never seemed to have a firm plan for its use. Now, it is nothing more than a slush fund to use at the President’s discretion.

Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes and discussed Afghanistan, health care, and “fat cat bankers” who receive exclusive blame for all that is wrong in the world. The majority of the interview dealt with Afghanistan, and the President mentioned that the decision to send more troops isn’t popular, but is necessary. I agree, but it’s also fairly easy to see that he attempted to make it more popular.

The President stated that the success of the tropp surge will begin to be known in December of 2010, with a reduction of forces to begin in July of 2011. Barack Obama states that a deadline is needed to make a point to the Afghan people, to drive home the point that the United States will not have an open-ended commitment. I agree, but of course, there’s no mention of how many soldiers will return home, or a final date to fully withdraw.

This assures that no matter what happens, Barack Obama can pretend it was his plan all along. He can send two soldiers home in July of 2011, and technically, he is keeping his word. Basically, he’s walking a tight rope trying to be everything to those on the left, and those on the right. Hopefully, the surge is successful, and American soldiers can return home as quickly as possible.

I’m not sure if Barack Obama realizes this or not, but these banks are private businesses. Once they pay back TARP funds, what they do with their earnings is none of the government’s business. Of course, in Barack Obama’s socialist-leaning world, everything should be the government’s business.

Maybe it’s me, but shouldn’t we be happy that banks are able to pay funds back in full? I know it’s popular to pile on those who are successful, but this seems rather foolish.

The next stimulus would include tax breaks for small businesses, more money spent on transportation and infrastructure, and a “Cash for Caulkers” program which would stress weatherization and energy efficiency projects for homeowners. So, how much would this cost, and how would he pay for it?

Right now, no cost estimates have been released, but it’s safe to say it will be in the hundreds of billions. So, how will this be paid for? The full funding mechanism isn’t yet know, but it looks like $200 billion will be used from TARP. So rather than return that money to reduce our massive deficit, we will keep on spending. I think Senator John Cornyn summed it up nicely:

“Now, with unemployment at 10 percent, the President proposes another special interest slush fund using ‘savings’ from the TARP program. This is absurd,’ said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “TARP should be shut down as soon as possible and any unused funds should be returned to taxpayers by reducing our $1.4 trillion deficit.”

One of the major problems with the Obama administration can be summed up by this Bush quote:

“the role of government is not to create wealth, but to create the conditions that allow entrepreneurs and innovators to thrive.”

I couldn’t agree more. Government should take care of the basics, then get out of the way. Some will succeed and some will fail, but it isn’t the government’s job to pick winners and losers, only to make sure the playing field is level. From listening to Barack Obama and following his actions, he thinks government is the solution to all our problems. George Bush seems to say the right things, but let’s not forget that he’s the one who helped open the flood gates.

Barack Obama spends money like there’s no tomorrow. He has no equal. With that said, George W. Bush was far from a fiscal conservative. A true conservative wouldn’t have run up deficits, and would have paid down a substantial portion of the National Debt during his eight year presidency. He would have made sure prescription drug coverage and wars were properly financed. Most importantly, he would have slashed the size of government.

George W. Bush opened the flood gates and made Barack Obama’s exorbitant spending and ideas acceptable. This is where the term “too big to fail” began to gain traction. In 2008, TARP was created, a $750 billion price-tag was announced, and no one seemed to know where the amoun came from or how the money would be used. We had the Big Three car companies begin the process of looking for handouts, along with AIG, which turned into a financial vacuum sucking up every dollar in sight.

Many people, both Democrats and Republicans, will argue that TARP, and other bail-outs were necessary to avoid economic conditions even worse than those we are currently experiencing. To some extent, they may be correct. Things might have been worse if the government hadn’t bailed out the dregs of corporate America. We’ll never know for certain. What we do know for certain is that a precedent has been set. If you have a poorly run business, you might end up needing to file for bankruptcy, but if you’re “too big to fail,” the taxpayers will be there to give you a hand. I might be wrong, but that doesn’t seem like a free market approach to me.

When voters begin learning about new congressional candidates in 2010 and Presidential candidates in 2012, I hope they can look past the buzz words used by neoconservatives like George W. Bush, and seek out true fiscal conservatives who can bring order to the economy. Our economic future depends on it.