SB 8608: National Housing Trust Fund Expansion Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This clearly passes Paygo (which we need to trash already), so I’m not sure what all the fuss is about.

It saddens me that the left has taken its policy towards deficits straight from Dick Cheney.

We don't need to trash paygo, we need to stop writing trash bills.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also I am not satisfied that these numbers equal out to each other.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Lastly, while most of the discussion has focused on the ability to raise the money to fund this, an important item no doubt, but my most pressing concern is what are we getting for the $5 billion to the trust fund. What can the trust fund accomplish with that money and how much of an impact will have on the problem?

It is easy to throw money at a problem and say "we did something", it is entirely different to actually dig deep into a problem, identify the root causes and then actually fix something that makes people's lives better and that is what we need to be doing here.

Why is there a shortage of housing and what causes the shortage of housing? What policies at the federal level are contributing this? What policies at the regional level are contributing to this? How can we best change these policies to get a better impact on the situation?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would be satisfied if anybody would be obliged to explain anything in this thread. While pointing to two Republican Senators as shining examples of bipartisan support might work in real life, you might have failed to notice that the Federalist Party is not the Republican Party and for good reasons. Many times Republicans are just as happy to balloon the deficit and/or put special interests ahead of common sense and reason and I prefer not to repeat the mistakes of real life politicians when we are in many ways less corrupt and in some cases smarter.


That being said, can someone explain to me how this functions? Does this guarantee loans, does it subsidize housing prices, do these dollars magically turn into an affordable house in Dayton, Ohio? Even if we presume that each other understands all of these programs (which is misguided since for once I am ignorant of the situation), we also have to consider everybody else.

Now just explain in simple terms, doesn't have to be complicated or long, how this works from a nuts and bolts perspective and what marginal benefit we gain from this increase.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Some background info:

https://nlihc.org/issues/nhtf

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr3221

https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/HFSC_NLIHC_Testimony_12_21_2018.pdf

From the testimony linked above...,

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(I can't quote more to avoid copyvio)

My take is this may not be corporate welfare in the worst sense but I'm weary of attempts to block grant stuff to the states when a Republican IRL proposed such after Bill Clinton being the jerk that he was signed a bill in 1996 to do block grant welfare to the states, considering Republicans control most state governments and thus in a position to do whatever their donors want. But in this game, it may not be as bad of an idea since no one here takes corporate PAC money to play a fake election game (although in this case we'd give money to the regions).

I actually agree with you to a large extent and yes we don't have to rely on the difficulties of money in politics or radical anti-government types bought and paid for by special interests running state governments for the sole purpose of strip mining wealth and redistributing it to the same special interests.

As for block grants, I have not really been fond of block grants and speaking as a federalist, this is where the empowering of the individual comes into play. For instance on health care we let the Regions have a lot of say in the number of variety of provider options on the exchanges but the money followed the individuals and thus these regionally designed alternatives to Atlascare had to compete for those subsidy dollars one by one.

I would not be sure how best to handle that with housing since you have to spend the money up front to build it, but I think in general terms having the money follow the individual and then letting the regions handle some other aspect is the best means to empower both the individuals and the regions and not one at the expense of the other.

But definitely to make a long story short, I am not fond of block grants either.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also as to the recession, while I would agree that Clinton played by far the largest role in sowing the seeds for the 2008 recession (even while claiming credit for the 1990's economy and using it to pass himself off to the media as an economic expert in the early 2010's), it should be noted that his role in doing so was far more multi-faceted than just giving out loans to people who could not afford them.

He also deregulated derivatives leading to the proliferation of mortgage backed securities and prior to that signed Grahm-Leach-Bliley opening the door to the consolidation of banking firms. These two together are what turned the housing crisis itself into a global financial crisis as over exposed firms loaded up with MBS (throw in Credit Default Swaps and you have multiples of exposure), firms which are also fueling an economic expansion that was completely backed by debt. So when they tighten up lending in reaction to the housing collapse you have the credit crunch in summer 2007, you have the recession starting in December 2007 and finally the investment banks themselves becoming insolvent as early as Spring 2008.

Getting back to the whole debt fueled economic expansion, overlooked in all of this is the role played by outsourcing and gutting of American manufacturing and related jobs that were in turn supported by it. This didn't just effect rust belt, but also meant that a lot of sunbelt economies were through rural manufacturing, reductions in vacations, tourism, retirement and moving south etc. So you aren't just giving people loans they cannot afford, you are also sending their jobs to Mexico and China. At the same time the jobs are flowing out, there is massive flood of low skilled labor coming in as well reducing the few remaining manufacturing jobs from the high teens to just barely above minimum wage and flooding many of the construction fields as well.

These cannot be considered in isolation from each other as all of them played a role and both parties were involved in virtually all of these occurring as well.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^Yea, I know, don't get me started on outsourcing and Grahm-Leach-Bliley, ect but I didn't include it in the original post because I didn't want to get off on a tangent too much especially since it is late at night and I need to head to bed. I'll rant about those when we get to bills to address those issues

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=262631.msg5623064#msg5623064

While Glass-Steagal has been restored there is more work to be done as outlined at the time in that debate, linked above.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You know it says something when I have to debate the VP in the Senate. You know what means? It means there are five people not doing their jobs.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What is the status/progress on this one, Pericles?

Like with the other one where I asked the same of Lech, I would prefer to have regular posted updates so we can see the progress and thereby judge estimated completion and assist with completion. Also could thus allow for us to determine if we need to proceed with this at a later time.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I

What modifications were you expecting? I think we probably should wait for an analysis on this as to whether it passes Paygo, but I wasn't planning on changing the text of the bill.

When in this case a status update would be whether or not the GM team has been contacted, how long that was ago and how long we can expect to wait to get a report.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How about dropping it to the $1.7 billion that has funding present in the bill, at least for now. And then raising it to $3.75 billion once said funding in addition is found?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How about dropping it to the $1.7 billion that has funding present in the bill, at least for now. And then raising it to $3.75 billion once said funding in addition is found?

I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable with the funding being that low. Sorry I should have gotten onto this earlier, I'd forgotten about this.

At this stage, you should be thinking in terms of what can I achieve in this moment. Because judging by the interest so far, this bill is likely to die once you leave office.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Very well I motion for a final vote.

Senators have 24 hours to object to waiving cloture and proceeding immediately to  final vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A Final vote is now open on the legislation, Senators Please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This has enough votes to pass Senators have 24 hours to change their votes.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Good to see our attendance has improved.

Double PM/Discord DMing plus some outside help from I think Peanut and others have had a tremendous impact.

Also before I would just PM them to review the noticeboard update with the priority color coded. Now I am spoon feeding the direct vote link vote by vote. This means PM spamming is occurring as well spoon feeding.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Final Passage of Senate Bill 8608: The National Housing Trust Fund Expansion Act:

Aye (4): Devoute Centrist, Maineiac4434, Pericles and Zaybay
Nay (0):
Abstain (0):

Didn't Vote (2): Lechasseur and NC Yankee

With five votes in the affirmative and the none in the negative, this bill has passed and is presented to the Vice President for House Action.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A SENATE BILL
To expand the National Housing Trust Fund
Be it enacted in both Houses of Congress

Section 1; Title
1. This legislation may be cited as the National Housing Trust Fund Expansion Act.
Section 2; Expansion of the National Housing Trust Fund
1. Funding for the National Housing Trust Fund is increased to $5.0 billion annually.
Section 3; Funding
1. The top marginal rate of corporate tax is increased by 0.5%.
Section 4; Implementation
1. This legislation shall take immediate effect.

People's Regional Senate
Passed 4-0 in Atlasian Senate Assembled,

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Since the bill takes immediate effect, I assume that the corporate tax increase will be a part of the FY2019 budget?

Has to pass the House first. Opportunity to amend, or murder it in cold blood.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

NAY


Not fond of the immediate effectiveness clause at the end.