Delaware Democrats Following Charlie Copeland

I received the following Twitter notice earlier today. Looks like Delaware’s Democrats are interested in what I’m doing 140 characters at a time. Really, I’m very flattered. Brevity is the core of wit, and following my life 140 characters at a time would be a real hoot. Now I’ll have to watch my tweets so that I don’t give away deep, dark secrets.

It’s pretty cool, though. I mean at the moment, I’m one of only 237 people that Delaware Democrats are following on Twitter — just a small Congressional majority — or a large Congressional majority after the upcoming November elections. Of course, it could all be for nought. Delaware Democrats could stop following me or “the account may have been suspended for a Terms of Service violation” (Is that something like a Term Limit — what a good idea!).

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Homebuyer Tax Credit Extension

7/1/2010 Further Update:

The bill was passed last night by unanimous consent in the Senate.  The National Flood Insurance Program was also extended through September 30 by unanimous consent.  It now goes to BO.

6/29/2010 3:45 pm Update:

The house just passed a standalone bill (H.R. 5623) to extend the settlement date deadline to the end of September.  Vote was 409-5.  It now goes to the senate.  The text was not available yet, so I don’t know if it was junked up, but the vote suggests it was not.  It is interesting that the sponsors were virtual unknowns, Reps. Frank Kratovil (Md.), Travis Childers (Miss.) and Kathy Dahlkemper (Pa.).

Original post begins here:

There has been a lot of misinformation regarding this.  Homebuyers wishing to claim the $8,000/$6,500 tax credit had to enter into a binding agreement of sale by 4/30 and must settle by 6/30.  Many buyers who otherwise qualify are having difficulty in meeting next week’s deadline due to no fault of their own and should be given some relief.  Some reasons include congress having not extended the flood insurance program yet which prevents settling, overwhelmed mortgage companies and overwhelmed settling attorneys and title companies.

This is a confusing mess given that the news has been reporting that something passed.
What passed 60-37 is an amendment,  SA4344,  to a controversial bill, HR4213, that would have to pass the senate and then go back to the house before it would go to Obama.  That is if the bill were not amended again in the house.  It failed a recent test vote in the senate, so right now it is going nowhere.
This bill is the usual trojan horse.  It extends unemployment benefits again, extends COBRA subsidies, contains the medicare Dr. fix to prevent medicare from cutting Drs. fees, deals with some satellite  TV issues and increases taxes by $63 Billion among many other things.
If they just put in a bill to extend the June 30 deadline, it would surely pass but they won’t run a clean bill.  Even this amendment is not clean.  It would make punitive damages from lawsuits taxable to the recipient and no longer deductible to the payer, so even the amendment is controversial.

Just more gamesmanship, I am sick of this nonsense.

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