March 07, 2009 06:11 PM UTC

Markey Missteps?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Fort Collins Coloradoan reports:

Rep. Betsy Markey broke with the Democratic leadership in opposing a bill that would give bankruptcy judges the ability to lower mortgage payments for troubled homeowners.

Markey, a Fort Collins Democrat, said the bill passed by the House Thursday night “had the right intentions, but the wrong approach.”

“This bill isn’t fair to people who have stayed on top of their mortgage payments, but are now seeing their home values decline because of foreclosures in their neighborhoods,” Markey said.

“The bill is also unclear about who could qualify for federal aid. It will be extremely difficult to fairly judge unscrupulous or irresponsible borrowers.

Families are hurting, and people need help, but Congress must ensure that this crisis is addressed in a more targeted and fiscally responsible way.”

The House passed the bill 234-191, with Markey among the 24 Democrats voting to oppose the measure.

We were a little confused when we saw this AP report yesterday that mistakenly claimed Markey had voted with the rest of the Democrats from Colorado in support of the bill, while the Clerk of the House said otherwise. Apparently, the AP confused Betsy with Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA).

Bad reporting aside, we have no choice but to consider this vote a mistake. For one thing, promoting “fiscal responsibility” sounds good in the abstract but doesn’t really apply here: the CBO estimates that this bill will actually generate revenue from court and related fees, not cost money. But on a simpler political level, we cannot help but recall the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent hammering Markey’s defeated opponent Marilyn Musgrave for her repeated votes against bankruptcy rights and foreclosure prevention. This message was deeply resonate in places like Weld County that are consistently near the top of lists of foreclosure-plagued communities nationwide, and part of the reason Markey is in office today.

There are swing voters in Markey’s district who will not be able to reconcile that message with this vote, and she should expect to be confronted by them at her next town hall meeting. Of course there will also be ‘responsible’ homeowners who haven’t (yet) fallen behind there thanking her too. And let’s not forget the banks, who–let’s be honest–were the people really opposing this bill.

Having said that, one thing we don’t expect is for this vote to give much ammunition to Markey’s GOP opponent next year–only 7 House Republicans voted for the bill, certainly no Colorado Republican representatives, and none of the current expected crop of hard-right challengers will be able to credibly say they would have. Not to mention that Republicans are trying to paint Markey as a Pelosi satellite tax-and-spender (rather bumblingly), and this vote doesn’t exactly free-associate “Pelosi satellite.”

That last might have been Markey’s bottom-line intention, since the bill was assured of House passage anyway. And we see the value in making that differentiation. We’re just not sure this was the ideal place to do it.