I’m looking through the enumerated powers in the Constitution, but I’m coming up empty. “General welfare” does not mean “One person’s welfare”
I was looking for a stream on a radio station in Geneva Ohio, and the front page has an advertisement with an attractive young woman with nice looking teeth (Guess: 20 years old) announcing that she got a 1% mortgage from the USDA to buy her $133,000 “dream house”. No mention of whether she has a husband or children.
Geneva is close to Lake Erie a short distance from Pennsylvania. It’s a resort area. Doing a quick real estate search, for $109k, you can buy a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home (1200 sq feet) built in 2005 on 1/3 of an acre. There are 29 houses under $50k in the general area.
So there is in fact a USDA rural development mortgage program that will give “qualified” people a mortgage “as low as” 1%.
http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/Home.html
I can’t provoke the ad to show itself again :) She claimed buying a $133k house and her payment was only $610 a month. Excuse my math, but 1% of $133k is $1330 per year interest or a tad over $100/month (the USDA mortgages are for 30 or 33 years, so there is little principal during the early years). Median property taxes for the city are around $1k/year.
Is she paying $500 a month for property taxes and insurance in “undeveloped rural” Ohio or is someone cheating her?
“I don’t care what the price is – the government is paying for it – what is the monthly payment???”
Oops, those darn Mortgage spammers :)
So what we have here is a great example of government evil. The USDA has committed to a 30 year mortgage subsidy that Congress can’t undo. They have to fund it – if they don’t the bank will sue the USDA and win.