FHA Refinance Program Termination Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. CANSECO. I thank the gentleman from Alabama.
Mr. Chairman, I am here to support the bill to terminate the FHA Refinance Program. This bill is not about programs that work. It's not about programs that have continually helped to create jobs and to help our faltering economy and our laggard job growth.
This bill is about a failed government program, because the FHA refinance program that went into effect in September of 2010 has failed to work properly. By the end of December of last year, of 2010, a mere 22 mortgages had been refinanced through the program at a cost of $50 million. That's an average of $2.3 million per mortgage. The conclusion is very, very clear. The program does not work and it's wasteful.
We are in an economic crisis. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Government is set to run a deficit for fiscal year 2011 of $1.5 trillion. If serious steps are not taken right now, we are set and ready to see in 2012 another trillion dollars added to our deficit.
This river of red ink is not sustainable. Americans are coming to grips with the fact that, if nothing is done, we will be the first generation in American history to leave for our children a legacy of insurmountable debt and economic stagnation.
And while there are a number of difficult decisions that we must make in the months and years ahead, common sense dictates that we can begin to get our spending under control by cutting programs that simply don't work, no matter how large or how small they are or no matter how beneficent they may sound. They just don't work. This one does not work.
Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle often think that we are just one government program away from solving our problems. But when you think that way, you end up piling one government program on top of another, wasting the taxpayers' money without even helping our fellow citizens who are struggling in this day and age.
The last 2 years have proven that government programs and government spending do very little in the way of stimulating jobs that we need most and economic growth. We in the Congress of the United States have a duty to be the stewards of the people's money, the people's tax dollars. The least we can do is tell our constituents that we are doing our job by cutting the stuff that does not work. This does not work.
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