On Tuesday, a hearing was held in front of the US House Committee on Financial Services. That committee that is chaired by Rep Maxine Waters. On the agenda was, Housing in America: Oversight of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. There were many tense interactions, as Democrats grilled HUD Secretary and brain surgeon Ben Carson. When it was first-term California US House Rep Katie Porter’s turn to ask questions, she talked to him like a child and asked about a little-known term, known mostly to those buying and selling foreclosures.
Katie Porter states in the video on Twitter:
“As you look it up I’d also like you to get back to me if you don’t mind to explain the disparity in REO rates, do you know what an REO is? No, not an Oreo, an REO. Real estate owned. That’s what happens when a property goes to foreclosure, we call it an REO. And FHA loans have much higher REOs, that is they go to foreclosure rather than to loss mitigation or to non-foreclosure alternatives like short sales than comparable loans at the GSEs. So I’d like to know why we’re having more foreclosures that end in people losing their homes, with stains to their credit, and disruption to their communities and their neighborhoods at FHA than we are at the GSEs.”
SEE TWEET AND VIDEO BELOW:
As you can see, the condescension was very palpable. Whether Dr. Carson knew what the term meant or not is unclear, it is likely he did, considering the fact that it appears on the HUD website. It is questionable as to why she would use that term in the first place. Foreclosure would have been the proper term because REO refers to a situation after the foreclosure has already taken place and cannot be used interchangeably as she did here.
To his credit, Dr. Carson played it off in a classy tweet.
SEE TWEET FROM BEN CARSON BELOW:
Rep Porter won a district in California that went Democrat for the first time in the past election. Five Republicans have already declared their intentions to unseat her in 2020 and whoever wins the nomination should have a good shot with the Presidential voter turnout.
A Tweet from a popular right-leaning Twitter commentator seems to sum it up well.
SEE TWEET BELOW: