Federal anti-foreclosure plan doing little to help

Despite promises from the Obama administration to use $50 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to fund loan modifications and prevent hundreds of thousands of homeowners from losing their homes, a new report from the CBO says that the administration will only spend a quarter of the promised money on the program. The Huffington Post reports:

The Obama administration will spend less than a quarter of the $50 billion it promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report Monday.

The CBO projection raises fresh questions about the success of the administration’s foreclosure-prevention efforts and its commitment to helping homeowners, even as unemployment hovers near 10 percent. Corporations and large banks appear to be in full-fledged recovery — last quarter, corporate profits reached an all-time high of $1.66 trillion on an annual basis — but households and small businesses seem to have been left out.

Washington policymakers talk constantly about helping “Main Street” recover from the steepest downturn since the Great Depression. Spending less than a quarter of the money promised to help residents of “Main Street” keep their homes may not seem in line with that goal.

I’d call that an understatement.