Last month, before members of Congress headed back home for the spring recess, House Republican leaders distributed a “recess kit” to help members for their “district work session.” The kit provided members with talking points and reference materials to help them stay on message while dealing with constituents back home. The kit covered such topics as “the urgency of entitlement reform,” the “Bipartisan Border Security Discharge Petition,” the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, and suggested a variety of strategies for bashing Democrats on taxes. Conspicuously absent, though, was the one issue on everyone’s mind right now: the foreclosure crisis.
Even as analysts were predicting that 2 million people were likely to lose their homes, and as the BBC burned up the Internet with its broadcast on “Bushvilles”–the tent cities sprouting up in California, full of former homeowners, Republican House members didn’t think the issue warranted much attention. A spokesperson from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office told The Hill that the glaring omission was “appalling.” Constituents back home, apparently, set most members straight on the issue.
