Once again, thank you Virginia Republican’ts! This time, as Del. Scott Surovell clearly explains, it’s about Republican’ts misappropriating money for foreclosure victims.
In early February, the Attorneys General of nearly all states negotiated a $25 billion settlement with the major banks who were guilty. This is the second largest settlement in U.S. history. It is second only to the tobacco settlement…
…Virginia is being given $69 million. According to the settlement document the money was intended to be disbursed as follows:
“The funds may be distributed by the attorneys general to foreclosure relief and housing programs, including housing counseling, legal assistance, foreclosure prevention hotlines, foreclosure mediation, and community blight remediation. A portion of the funds may also be designated as civil penalties for the banks robo-signing misconduct.”
So, what did the Republican’ts in charge of Virginia right now actually decide to do with the money? Use it for foreclosure relief, legal assistance, housing programs, etc? Uh, no. Instead, as Del. Surovell explains:
The budget we voted on last week, takes the state’s share and simply dumps it into the General Fund to cover our budget hole. This is wrong.
This one was so obvious, even Del. “Sideshow Bob” Marshall could figure it out, which is why he introduced an amendment “to require that a $68.9 million received in a settlement payment by the state attorney general’s office actually be used for the settlement and not for other purposes.” A no brainer, right? Well, believe it or not, as Sideshow Bob explains, “The amendment was rejected by the Virginia House of Delegates on a 28-70 roll call vote.” (slams forehead on desk repeatedly)
Out of curiosity, I checked the roll call vote, and almost every Democrat (but not Algie Howell, Bob Brink – both in the “WTF” category – or the corrupt Johnny Joannou and Lionell Spruill – no surprises there) voted for this commonsense amendment. Other than that, it was pretty much Republicans all the way to grab money for foreclosure victims and put it in the general fund to use however they’d like. Nice, huh?
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