Mother Jones
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Last week, President Barack Obama laid out his new housing plan, emphasizing the importance of safe, simple, affordable mortgages. But lawmakers in his own party are working against him, trying to gut historic new safeguards on home loans.
A new mortgage rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that takes effect January 1 limits fees on new home loans to three percent. The regulation is “one of the most direct and important responses to the mortgage crisis,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) argued in a recent editorial in American Banker. But 12 House Democrats and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have joined with Republicans to cosponsor bills that would eviscerate the new cap and clear the way for lenders to steer Americans into riskier, higher-cost loans.
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