Housing Crisis: Even Representatives May Be In Trouble

Sub prime mortgages crisis has apparently reached Congressmen, too. CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) reports that Democrat Laura Richardson’s Sacramento home has been sold into foreclosure. The Representative from California claims that this happened without her knowledge and contrary to an agreement with her lender, but Richardson failed to make mortgage payments on the property for nearly a year, and didn't pay approximately $9,000 in property taxes on that home. She has defaulted on other home loans as well. Her house was bought at a foreclosure auction by James York on May 7, 2008 for $388,000.

CREW investigates the story because there is a strong smell of foul play: Richardson has an awful credit history, and it is quite possible that she counts on her connections to take advantage of the situation. However, a U.S. Representative now has a gross salary of about $100,000 per year, that is about € 60,000, peanuts compared to the indemnities of Italian Senators and Deputies, and she may well be in financial troubles...

Republicans lose seat they had hold for 22 years

On Saturday, Republicans lost former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in a hotly contested special election in Chicago (IL-14). Bill Foster, a Democrat running for his first political job, will go to Congress after defeating Republican millionaire Jim Oberweis 53% to 47%, a result that was unthinkable just weeks ago.

Hastert resigned his seat, and the special election was called to fill the remainder of his term. In November, the same two candidates will campaign for the full term 2009-2011.

The district has at its heart Kendall County, a reliably Republican fast-growing area in exurban Chicago that elected Hastert for the first time in 1986. Hastert was the Speaker of the House between 1999 and 2007, the longest-serving Republican in this capacity ever.

The special election is a huge psychological blow to the Republican Party, handicapped by a stream of senators' and representatives' retirements that forecast larger Democratic majorities in Congress after November. Hoping to turn the tide, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $1.2 million on the race, to no avail.