Daniel Indiviglio finds 74 studies nestled within the House and Senate financial reform bills. One of these is titled “the effect of drywall presence on foreclosures”. I dug into the house bill and found out that it is even more absurd that you might first assume:
Subtitle J: Study of Effect of Drywall Presence on Foreclosures – ( Sec. 9901) Directs the HUD Secretary to study and report to Congress regarding the effect upon residential mortgage loan foreclosures of: (1) the presence of drywall imported from China between 2004 and the end of 2007; and (2) the availability of property insurance for residential structures in which such drywall is present.
The amendment that created this study was offered by Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, and according to his website he is a member of the “Congressional Contaminated Drywall Caucus”… yes, such a thing does exist.
Financial reform seems to be getting distracted.
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Tuesday ~ June 8th, 2010 at 12:37 am
bkmacd
Where else should this go?
It is not big enough to justify its own bill. It would be even less topical in Health Care. It might of made it into ARRA but considering that the NYTimes didn’t get to it until 10/09 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/business/08drywall.html ) it was nowhere near critical mass. And it is topical enough for the financial crisis.
Considering that a house that has bad drywall is uninhabitable and requires approx 50k of work to make habitable, it would stand that it does lead to more foreclosures (or a least jinglemail) because it makes a $300k house worth $0k. Quantifying the problem would seem to be important, and caucusing around the problem seems justified. I’m sure that for the Representative who has developments that are filled with Chinese Drywall, it seems like a big problem.
You’ll need to find a better example of $200 wrenches.
Tuesday ~ June 8th, 2010 at 2:52 am
Niklas Blanchard
Can we remove all the worthless crap from the FinReg bill and just fill the entire thing with these studies? I’d vote for that.