Today the Senate is scheduled to vote on the housing bailout bill that has been circulating on Capitol Hill for so long its title today is simply “a bill to provide needed housing reform and for other purposes.” When a bill’s title includes the phrase “and for other purposes,” you know the American taxpayer is about to get a raw deal. This bill is such terrible public policy in so many different ways that it’s hard to pick which one is the worst. But we’ll try. Bails out the banks most …
Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) authored a bill (with 11 co-sponsors, including Sen. Barack Obama) that was incorporated into a housing bill passed by the Senate Banking Committee 19-2 before the Memorial Day recess — a bill that creates a national fingerprint registry. According to a Martinez press release, the language merely “create[s] national licensing and oversight standards for residential mortgage originators.” One of the standards, John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute says, may “require thousands of individuals working even tangentially in the mortgage and real …
