I'd like to interrupt this presidential contest's regularly scheduled mudslinging with your policy questions about the economy:

BlogHer Voter Manifesto

Topic: America's economic future
Questions:

1. Will you give a tax credit to people who are self-employed and need to buy health insurance?
2. How will you address predatory lending practices to ensure Americans buy homes they can really afford?
3. How will you create federal public policy that helps families break the cycle of poverty?

Read all 12 questions

I'm going to focus on question #2, in honor of BlogHer member Suzanne Suzannadanna, who published the story of her family's foreclosure on her blog, Suzannesez and on BlogHer this week:

"We've all heard about the astronomical numbers of foreclosures currently clogging our courts. All over the US, people are in dire straights and losing their homes. Folks, count us in those numbers. Today, I'm going to tell you our story to put a face on what is happening everywhere..."

* Foreclosure, a personal story
* A day later
* Seek, then seek some more
* School choice makes our neighborhood choice
* Scratching them off the list
* The punch list, version 1.0
* We'll take it

When I took Suzanne's situation to the Web sites of presidential candidates, seeking their solution to the mortgage crisis, here's what I found -- in alphabetical order, first by party and second by last name:

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Democrat
Senator, New York state
Site: www.hillaryclinton.com

BlogHer Voter Manifesto question: How will you address predatory lending practices to ensure Americans buy homes they can really afford?

Answers by Candidate Clinton:

12/5/2007
Hillary Calls On Wall Street To Address Housing Crisis

"Hillary goes to the Nasdaq stock exchange today to call on Wall Street to help clean up the housing foreclosure crisis it helped create. Wall Street not only enabled reckless mortgage lending, it encouraged it - 1.8 million home foreclosure notices have been filed this year, a 74% increase from 2006. Now it’s time for lenders, homeowners and investors to come together to solve this crisis and stem the tide of foreclosures.

Hillary will challenge lenders and financial institutions to take three immediate steps today: 1) Voluntarily support a moratorium of at least 90 days on home foreclosures; 2) freeze the fluctuating rates on subprime loans for at least 5 years until they can be converted into fixed rate, affordable loans; 3) Require regular status reports on the progress they’re making in converting unworkable mortgages into loans families can afford so we have real accountability.

Hillary is proposing a comprehensive work out - not a bail out - that would end the foreclosure crisis. If Wall Street refuses to act, Hillary will propose legislation to tackle the problems in the housing market head on..."

More: Video

Barack Obama
Democrat
Senator, Illinois state
Site: www.barackobama.com

BlogHer Voter Manifesto question: How will you address predatory lending practices to ensure Americans buy homes they can really afford?

Answers by Candidate Obama:

From BarackObama.com on Economy: "Create Fund to Help Homeowners Avoid Foreclosures: Obama will create a fund to help people refinance their mortgages and provide comprehensive supports to innocent homeowners. The fund will be partially paid for by Obama's increased penalties on lenders who act irresponsibly and commit fraud."

This section leads to a two-page PDF entitled "Protecting homeownership and cracking down on mortgage fraud, which begins:

"Barack Obama recognizes that the real victims in the subprime mortgage crisis are not the lenders, but the
millions of borrowers who followed the rules and whose only crime was taking out mortgages that lenders told
them they could afford... [Followed by sections on]:
I. Create a foreclosure prevention fund to help Americans keep their homes
II. Close the bankrupcy loophole for mortgage companies
III. Provide a new motgage interest tax credit
IV. Combat mortgage fraud and subprime loans
V. Mandate accurate loan disclosure

Mike Huckabee
Republican
Former governor, Arkansas state
Site: www.mikehuckabee.com

BlogHer Voter Manifesto question: How will you address predatory lending practices to ensure Americans buy homes they can really afford?

Answers by Candidate Huckabee:

Note by Lisa: I had a little trouble identifying explicit answers to this question on Candidate Huckabee's site or on other sites, so I've provided the following questions and links below.

From MikeHuckabee.com: "I'd like you to join me at the best "Going Out of Business" sale I can imagine - one held by the Internal Revenue Service. Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all - personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish. Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth. When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness."

From NPR: In an interview on Fox News recently, you said that the government should not be bailing out people whose mortgages are about to reset to interest rates that they can't afford. Foreclosures are at record rates right now. Wouldn't doing nothing — as millions of Americans risk losing their homes — smack of Herbert Hoover deferring to the market as 25 percent of Americans were unemployed in the Depression?

Not at all. What you have is a situation where you have culpability on the part of the lenders and the borrowers. The fact is you need to encourage the lenders to try to work with those who have borrowed to keep from foreclosure because ultimately nobody wins. The banks don't need an enormous inventory of property on their hands that they can't move any more than the market can. The lender doesn't need to be in default and ultimately bankruptcy and out of a home.

But what we don't need is a government bailout. That is not the purpose of government, to prop people up from every poor decision they make. In fact, when you do that … whether it's in the world of finance or the world of drug addiction … it creates an enabling codependency. It's the last thing that really helps people.

Is there some way to bring some resolve to it? Yes. But it needs to be handled by the … people who made the mistake in the first place: overambitious borrowers and greedy lenders, who saw a way to suck people into interest rates that they should have known they couldn't afford in the long term...more

John McCain
Republican
Senator, Arizona state
Site: www.johnmccain.com

BlogHer Voter Manifesto question: How will you address predatory lending practices to ensure Americans buy homes they can really afford?

Answers by Candidate McCain:

Note by Lisa: I had a little trouble identifying explicit answers to this question on Sen. McCain's site or on other sites, so I've provided the following links below.

From JohnMcCain.com: Cut Taxes For Middle Class Families: Hard-working American families need lower taxes. John McCain will permanently repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) -- a tax that will be paid nearly exclusively by 25 million middle class families. John McCain will repeal this onerous tax, saving middle class families nearly $60 billion in a single year. Under McCain's plan, a middle class family with children set to pay the AMT will save an average of over $2,700 -- a real tax cut for working families.

From The Plain Dealer: Feb. 25, 2008 - Republican candidates aren't talking as much about mortgages. GOP front-runner John McCain says he wants to help those at risk of losing their homes without rewarding "greedy speculators" who lost money on investment property. The Arizona senator and other Republican candidates back recent Bush administration efforts to rein in foreclosures.

The administration's anti-foreclosure initiatives include the Hope Now program, which put a five-year interest rate freeze on some types of subprime mortgages, and Project Lifeline, in which six of the nation's largest lenders agreed to a monthlong foreclosure suspension while they work out more-affordable loan terms with customers.

Instead of reading these candidate Web sites as a policy wonk and voter, I read them with Suzanne, her husband and her children in mind. The result? I felt ...impatient, alone and cornered. (Although if you read her blog entries at the top of this post, you'll see that Suzanne and her family are anything but.) Americans in foreclosure crisis don't have the luxury of waiting until Election Day for a solution, which is why I think the best immediate next steps can be found in this comment on Suzanne's first post from BlogHer Contributing Editor Nordette Adams:

Heartbreaking. Perhaps people will work to take action
By: Nordette

Hi, Suzanne.

I've been hearing stories similar to yours more than I'd like to and listening to phone calls for help. I wish you didn't have to go through this, but sadly this story is becoming more and more common in this country.

For anyone who wants to get more involved in addressing the foreclosure crisis, consider this ACORN action to Tell Your Senator to Support the Foreclosure Prevention Act.

ACORN, a social justice nonprofit, has been working hard to help families facing foreclosure; however, the group has focused more on homeowners crushed by subprime loans and predatory lenders. Nevertheless, ACORN offers other programs tto help people facing problems finding affordable housing.

Okay, what have I missed? What do you think of the candidates' answers? Who or what would you add? (As I've reported before, BlogHer continues to invite presidential candidates to respond to a request by women in this community to answer 12 policy questions we developed in a voter manifesto. Thus far, no candidate has accepted. We'll keep trying.)