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by the rules. The ultimate goal was to save 7 to 9 million mortgages. 32
    One of the primary causes of the financial meltdown in the first place was the government’s mania for incentivizing and pressuring lenders to make uncreditworthy loans. But Obama, instead of belt-tightening, applied a little hair of the dog, and the housing industry got drunk all over again. In the end, Obama’s extravagant plan didn’t quite turn out as he’d predicted. The New York Times reported in January 2010 that the plan had “been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.” 33 The program was believed to have raised false hopes among people that they could keep homes they still couldn’t afford, causing them to waste payments on inevitably failed mortgages they could have used to move into cheaper homes or apartments. Many borrowers were surprised to find that participating in the program had damaged their credit ratings.
    Despite the manifest failure of the program, Obama’s tone-deaf Treasury Department insisted the program was on track and “meeting its intended goal of providing immediate relief to homeowners across the country.” It was a crass denial of responsibility for egregious recklessness that not only further damaged the nation’s fiscal condition, but harmed the very homeowners it was designed to help—just more liberalism 101. To get an idea of just how miserably the program failed, by mid-December 2009, some 759,000 homeowners had received loan modifications on a trial basis that lasted 3 to 5 months. But only 31,000 received permanent modifications. The administration maintained the temporary users were benefitting, but mortgage experts and lawyers said trial participants often ended up worse off. 34
    And the bad news didn’t stop there. In June 2010, it was reported that more than a third of the 1.24 million borrowers who enrolled in the mortgage bailout program had already dropped out. One major reason for this is that the Obama administration pressured banks to sign up borrowers without insisting first on proof of their income and ability to repay. 35 That month CNN Money also reported that “between 65% and 75% of loans that are modified through [Obama’s] Home Affordable Modification Program but not backed by the federal government are likely to go bad, according to a report released by Fitch Ratings, a N.Y.-based credit-rating agency.” 36

    CAP AND TRADE
    Global warming alarmists in the administration and Congress tried to foist on the nation another boondoggle called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a.k.a. the “Waxman-Markey bill,” the “cap and trade bill,” or “cap and tax.” This bill, with its Draconian provisions, was based on the increasingly discredited view that man-made global warming will produce catastrophic, even apocalyptic consequences. But accepting the premise for purposes of argument, the salient questions are whether the bill would effect significant improvements and, even assuming it would, whether it would be worth the enormous costs it would generate. The inescapable fact is that the bill would involve colossal de facto tax increases (as documented in chapter three) and other prohibitive expenses while producing negligible results, at best.
    Climate scientist Chip Knappenberger of New Hope Environmental Services has calculated that Waxman-Markey would reduce the earth’s temperature by just 0.1 to 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100. Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and the Environment at the Heritage Foundation confirms he has seen no “decent refutation of the assertion that the temperature impact (of the bill) would be inconsequential.”
    But the negative impact of the bill would not be inconsequential—it would be devastating. It would cause estimated net “job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2030.” Some of the jobs would be lost