
Stimulus Package
You no doubt have heard about the Stimulus Package agreement between Speaker Pelosi, Minority Leader Boehner and Treasury Secretary Paulson that was announced today and is supported by the President. I won’t go through all the specifics of it directly because you will hear and see that almost everywhere over the next 24 hours. But I would like to give you what I see as the pros and cons of the thing. First of all, the good stuff:
•Raises FHA loan limits to $750,000 and also raises the "conforming" or "jumbo" home limits on loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack to the higher of $625,000 or 150% of the median house price in a market. This will help to free up more and cheaper home loan money in high cost areas like Orange County. This should help ease the housing crisis.
•Gives some taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $75,000 (single) or $150,000 (joint) some of their tax money from 2007 back.
As far as I can tell, that’s it on the good side. On the bad side, here goes:
•Gives roughly 35 million people who paid NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES AT ALL a check for $300 per person in their… Read More