Mitt Romney’s Policy of “Throw People Out of Their Homes and Onto the Street” Wins Endorsement of Wall Street Journal Editorialists

Finally Mitt Says Something Despicable Enough to Please Conservative Critics

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages have not cottoned to the candidacy of Mitt Romney.  Their main complaint has been his sponsorship of universal health insurance in Massachusetts and his refusal to disavow that position (Mitt:  It’s okay for Massachusetts, it’s not okay for anybody else). 

Recently Mitt took the position that the foreclosure process should go ahead at full maximum speed, that any attempts to help families save their home when they can no longer afford the payments or when the mortgages is higher than the market value should not take place.  Instead maximum effort should be made to foreclosure, evict and force families into, well, into whatever housing they can find. 

The editors of the Wall Street Journal think that this is great policy, and firmly endorse it. 

After five years of politicians trying without success to levitate the housing market by postponing foreclosures, Mr. Romney dared to tell the truth. Parts of the U.S., including Nevada, still have too many homes, and that supply needs to be sold off and fixed up so the market can find a bottom before home prices can start to rise again. The faster that process proceeds, the faster the recovery will take hold.

And even better, the WSJ finds that this policy of forcing folks onto the streets and out of housing is beneficial to the evictees!

To the extent that it encourages a faster recovery it is also more compassionate.

So Mitt, now that you are at least temporarily back in the good graces of the WSJ, here are some ideas that will keep you in their favor.

1. Repeal Child Labor Laws and the Minimum Wage and send children to work in factories.  This will not only reduce pressure and spending on public schools, leading to tax cuts, it will turn children into wage earners, allowing them contribute to the family income and reduce welfare programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance.

2. Eliminate Unemployment Insurance:  Conservatives know that unemployment insurance just encourages the unemployed to remain unemployed.  Eliminate it and show how you do have a jobs program.

3. No Taxes for Millionaires:  Since Conservatives believe that cutting taxes for wealthy people will create jobs, why not go all out and have wealthy people pay no taxes at all. 

4. Prohibit Women in the Workforce:  The unemployment rate would drop dramatically if women were prohibited from working.  At the very least make it illegal for women to be physicians or lawyers.  This worked well in the 19^th century, and the WSJ editorial staff certainly wants to go back to those days.

Mr. Romney is a very wealthy man.  He grew up in a very wealthy family.  Housing was never a concern of his, and today he owns several.  The people that go through foreclosure are scarred for the rest of their lives.  They lose a basic human right, the right to decent housing. That any serious political leader would argue for policy to hasten foreclosure and homelessness is callous beyond pale.

Furthermore, this is not the first time Mr. Romney has shown disdain for middle class Americans; his solution to the auto industry crisis was to force GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy that would have destroyed the companies the destroyed hundred of thousands of jobs. 

Oh, and what about the flip-flop issue?  When Mr. Bush was President and proposed a government agency re-finance housing instead of allow people to suffer foreclosure and be forced into the streets, it seems Mr. Romney was all for that in 2007

Well, the President has taken action that should calm a good portion of the market, which is he said look, these people who borrowed money from the sub-prime world with these reset provisions, where the payments go up in later months, and they were told by their mortgage banker in many cases don’t worry about that, we’ll refinance it when that time comes, well, now the mortgage banker’s gone, they can’t refinance it. And so he’s saying, the President’s saying let’s have the FHA refinance these mortgages. It’s not a bailout, but it is a setting which gives people stability, and will calm the markets to a certain degree.

So for  Mr. Romney  this is not an issue of principle, it's about sacrificing the housing of middle income Americans for political gain.

The Dismal Political Economist has said before, and it bears repeating now that Mr. Romney’s religious problem is not his Mormon religion, it is that he lacks the principles of compassion and decency that is part of any devout religious person.