Houston drops idea to pay off personal debt

A proposal to hand out $3,000 to individuals who did not have  good enough credit score to qualify for mortgages has been crossed off the Houston city council agenda this week.

The idea was to use the $3,000 to help individuals improve their credit score by a few points so they would qualify to buy a home.

Of course, it really does not matter that these individuals should not be buying a home in the first place.

The mayor got a bit embarrassed by all of the news coverage on Web sites like Drudge Report and nixed the idea before it got to council. You can bet if liberals were able to do this on the sly, it would have gone through and taxpayers would be paying off credit card debts and car loans for folks with crappy credit scores so they can buy a house that they can not afford.

From the Houston Chronicle…

Mayor Bill White this afternoon announced that a plan for the city to pay off some debts for first-time home buyers has been pulled from tomorrow’s City Council agenda.

Council members are now professing their “embarrassment” about the proposal, which has hit the national news circuit, including drudgereport.com., which picked up this morning’s Houston Chronicle story about the plan

“This issue has hit a nerve across this country,” said Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck. “Not just here in the city of Houston. Giving people the ability to increase their credit score artificially because we’re allowing them to pay off their credit cards is exactly what got us into this (national economic) crisis in the first place.”

No kidding?