Bush Signs Mortgage Bailout Bill.

Yesterday, just after entering the white house, President Bush signed into law a mortgage bailout bill, but with none of the fanfare that usually attends these events. This bill is supposed to help some estimated 400,000 people who face foreclosures on their homes, as well as institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae who gave out the loans. Those in attendance at the bill signing were Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Steve Preston, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James B. Lockhart, also Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Housing Administration Director Brian Montgomery, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Karl Zinsmiester, and finally National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey. Even though President Bush initially swore to veto the bill, citing that it was too socialistic, pressure from a Democratic congress had forced him to take an all or nothing approach to the problem. This to me has set a dangerous precedent, it tells the American people that whenever they make a bad financial decision, whether it is a loan on a house they can't afford, to maxing out their credit cards, that it'll be the government (i.e. the U.S. taxpayer) and not the individual who bails them out. This bill is just one more entitlement in a land of entitlements. Worse still, it absolves any responsibility to not only the consumer, but the financial institutions who gave the bad loans, and in the end the only one who loses is the taxpayer. It's the taxpayer in the end that must make good on these bad financial decisions by the consumer and lender, while still trying to make enough to support their own families.