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Bush Vows to Veto Housing-Relief Bill in House
By David Stout
The New York Times
Thursday 08 May 2008
Washington - As the House prepared to vote on a housing-relief bill offered
by Democratic leaders, President Bush on Wednesday told the lawmakers, in effect,
not to bother.
"I will veto the bill that's moving through the House today if
it makes it to my desk," the president said at the White House, after
meeting with Republican House leaders. "I urge members on both sides of
the aisle to focus on a good piece of legislation that is being sponsored by
Republican members."
The president's remarks were not surprising, given that the administration
issued a statement on Tuesday evening declaring its opposition and saying that
White House advisers would urge the president to veto it.
But Mr. Bush's personal pledge to veto the measure championed by Representative
Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Financial Services Committee,
made it less likely that a bipartisan housing deal will be achieved soon, especially
in this election year.
The House is expected to vote on the Frank bill, which would expand access
to federally insured mortgages to help troubled homeowners refinance their loans,
on Wednesday or Thursday. Under the bill, lenders would be required to reduce
the principal balances for borrowers at risk of default. The troubled loans,
typically with high, adjustable interest rates, would then be refinanced into
more affordable 30-year fix-rate loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration.
The new loans would be limited to 90 percent of a property's value, based
on an updated appraisal, and the government would retain a stake in any future
sale of the property.
The Bush administration prefers a more limited expansion of federally insured
mortgages and has argued that housing relief can be accomplished by the Federal
Housing Administration without new legislation.
The president on Wednesday repeated his opposition to a bill "that will
reward speculators and lenders" who have suffered because of their own
foolishness. More modest measures are pushed by Republicans leaders, and Mr.
Bush said those steps "will do the right thing for the American people."
Mr. Frank, anticipating a veto pledge, said on Tuesday evening that a veto
would signal that the president was abandoning efforts to help homeowners and
would mean that "he's stopped trying to govern." Moreover,
Mr. Frank and other Democrats said Republicans in the Senate would read the
president's remarks as a signal that they should stand fast against the
Frank-backed bill if it reaches their chamber.
Though Democrats enjoy a considerable advantage over Republicans in the House
(235 to 199, with 1 vacancy), and some Republicans have been gravitating toward
the Frank bill, the political math would appear to be in the president's
favor. Even if Mr. Frank's bill sailed through the House with the two-thirds
majority needed to override a veto, the odds of the Senate passing it with the
necessary two-thirds majority would be much slimmer, since the Democrats control
the Senate by only 51 to 49.
With six months to go until his successor is chosen, Mr. Bush is sometimes
referred to as a lame duck. But as he spoke on Wednesday on the north portico
of the house he will soon vacate, he showed his unwillingness to surrender power
before he has to.
He called on Congress to pass a $108 billion war-supplemental bill "without
any strings," meaning anything that smacks of a withdrawal timetable for
Iraq; to give his Colombia free-trade agreement "an up-or-down vote"
instead of letting it stall in the House; to make his "temporary"
tax cuts permanent, and to allow "environmentally friendly domestic exploration"
for oil.
The reference to oil exploration sounded like an allusion to the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, which the president has long said can be explored in a way
that would do no damage while enhancing energy independence. The House has endorsed
the idea a dozen or more times in recent years, but it has always stalled in
the Senate.
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David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting.
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