Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if we want to revive our economy, one thing we can do is to bring back and extend the home buyer tax credit we enacted earlier this year. It was for a limited time. It has expired, but it was hugely successful. It is an $8,000 tax credit for qualified first-time home buyers and a $6,500 tax credit for repeat, move-up home buyers. And this tax credit that we passed that was law was largely responsible for many of the homes that were purchased in States like mine, Florida, where the housing market has gone kaput. The mortgages were inflated when the housing bubble burst, the property values dropped and you see a number of our States that have been hit so hard, albeit, the entire Nation has been hit hard by the housing bubble bursting. Well, we tried this home buyer tax credit, and it worked. It was popular in other States, like California, like in Texas. Texas had a more stable housing market, but folks recognized that a good housing market provides a lot of ancillary benefits for the economy. It creates jobs. It generates consumer spending. The studies have shown, looking back on this tax credit we gave for housing, it was in the first quarter of this year, it led to a 6-percent increase in all home sales, and it led to a whopping 42-percent increase in the sale of new homes. Now by contrast, when that credit expired, the home sales plummeted. Well, what does it mean in real terms to real people and real families? It means jobs.…”