Romney Won’t Help 11.5 Million Americans With Underwater Mortgages, Top Adviser

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Romney Won’t Help 11.5 Million Americans With Underwater Mortgages, Top Adviser Says

Mitt Romney won’t offer “targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth,” Lanhee Chen, his campaign’s policy director, told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt. Chen described such policies as insufficient for stabilizing the housing market:

HUNT: There are, as you know, 11.5 million Americans with underwater mortgages. Will Governor Romney do anything to help them immediately, or is this something that the market just has to work out? [...]

CHEN: Governor Romney has indicated that there are some steps we ought to take to ensure that we’re growing our economy. But on the housing market specifically, I do think we have to resist the temptation for short-term approaches. And I think the President has fallen into that trap a little bit…. We have to do everything we can to get this economy going because ultimately that’s what’s going to get the housing market going again

Watch it (at 6:00)
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/02/494101/romney-wont-help-115-million-americans-with-underwater-mortgages-top-adviser-says/

Chen’s comments are a departure in tone from what Romney himself told voters in Florida — the seventh in the nation in foreclosures — while campaigning against Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential nomination. In January, the former Massachusetts governor said at a roundtable that banks should, in fact, write down mortgage principal — the amount outstanding on a mortgage — for borrowers who find themselves with a mortgage that costs more than their house is currently worth.

[rusty fender]

1. According to Barney Frank, Obama, after his election, had the

chance to make the bailed-out banks forgive mortgage debt, but declined to do so. Wouldn't this make him the same as Romney on this issue?