Dem Rep Lofgren (CA): "All we get is the old yokey-doke," (on foreclosure aid)

Foreclosure Aid Fell Short, and Is Fading

By MICHAEL POWELL and ANDREW MARTIN
Published: March 29, 2011

Officials unveiled a $1 billion program to offer loans to help the jobless pay their mortgages until they could find work again. It was supposed to take effect before the end of the year, but as of today, the program has yet to accept any applications.
“We wait and wait, and they keep saying it’s coming,” said James Tyson, 50, a Philadelphia homeowner who lost his job a year ago.

That could be an epitaph for the administration’s broader foreclosure prevention effort, as tens of billions of dollars remain unspent and hundreds of thousands of homeowners have been rejected. Now the existence of the main program, the Home Assistance Modification Program, is in doubt.
Saying it is a waste of money, the Republican-controlled House voted on Tuesday night to kill the foreclosure relief program. The Senate, which the Democrats control, will pursue a rescue. But Democrats, too, consider the program badly flawed.
The effort has failed to stanch a wave of foreclosures and a decline in home prices, which have fallen for six consecutive months and are now just barely above their recession low, according to a key index updated on Tuesday. All of this threatens the fragile economy, which is also being buffeted by foreign crises.
“The banking industry fought us tooth and nail, and we ended up with a program that is failing homeowners,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California. “The administration doesn’t give us real enforcement or answers; we just get the old yokey-doke.”


snip

¶Congress set aside $50 billion for foreclosure prevention, amid administration projections that three million to four million homeowners would benefit from modifications. So far, the Treasury Department, which oversees the program, has spent slightly more than $1 billion, and just 607,000 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications (of those, 11 percent have defaulted).

¶The companies that service mortgages, typically large banks, continually lose homeowner paperwork and incorrectly tell homeowners that they must be delinquent to qualify.

¶Treasury officials have not fined any servicers, and the government-controlled company hired by the Treasury to oversee the program has expressed reluctance to crack down on banks


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/business/30foreclose.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

... and we ended up with a program that is failing homeowners,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California.

Basically just said that the banking industry is running the whole show.