Nuts!

The New York Times has an article today on the impending expiration of a number of low mortgage "teaser" rates on adjustable-rate mortgages.  Basically, several million people agreed to mortgages with low initial payments, but the payments are about to jump, and there are fears (probably at least somewhat accurate) that many won’t be able to pay.  The good news is that even Barney Frank–not exactly a free-market hero–is refusing to initiate a broad bailout.

“You cannot simply decree that there will be no foreclosures,” he tells the Times. But a modicum of economic common sense, while welcome, isn’t enough.  He and several of his fellow Democrats still want to meddle in any number of ways, at least one of which–the creation of an "affordable housing fund"– is particularly problematic.

But… "affordable housing!" That sounds nice, right?  Except that what Frank refers to an affordable housing fund is really just a slush fund for radical left-wing groups like ACORN.  NRO had an editorial on the fund and the group a couple of months back:

The money in the fund — expected to total more than a billion dollars over the next five years — would be siphoned through hard-Left activists like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

ACORN is a fringe political group of the “stop being so polite” variety, and it has a history of shady activity. Promoting environmental regulations and government programs is its stock in trade, and it has long advocated such causes as a “living wage”— even while quietly asking to be exempt from California laws that would force it to raise wages for its own workers. A 1994 grant from AmeriCorps to the group’s housing division — the same division that would benefit from the housing fund — was cut off after an investigation determined that the group had engaged in political activity using AmeriCorps recruits.

Throughout the country, the group has run voter drives that the Heritage Foundation says were “aimed at signing up voters most likely to vote against the President.” The election director of St. Louis all but accused the group of fraud. ACORN ran afoul of the law in Kansas, where four of its employees were indicted for turning in false registration information to election officials. And in Ohio, one former ACORN employee traded crack cocaine for fraudulent registration materials.

A variant on the affordable-housing fund was included in a 2005 version of the reform bill, and many Congressional Republicans had harsh words for it at the time. Sensing that it was little more than a money dump for groups friendly to Democrats, Rep. Tom Feeney (R.., Fla.) responded incredulously to the suggestion that it wouldn’t be used for political purposes: “Could you imagine if I had proposed an amendment to give $500 million to the National Rifle Association and said they could not use it to educate school kids on guns?”

Ah, bureaucracy.