General Discussion

On Saturday, Bill Pulte, the Trump loyalist who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, announced via social media that the Republican administration is working on making 50-year mortgages available — a move the FHFA director described as “a complete game changer.”

Two days later, during Donald Trump’s latest Fox News interview, for example, host Laura Ingraham asked whether a 50-year mortgage is “really a good idea.” The president responded as if a half-century-long mortgage was a modest change from the status quo. “I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years,” the Republican said, overlooking the fact that 40-year mortgages are practically unheard of for most consumers. He added, “All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time.”

The following morning, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council and one of the most influential voices in Trump’s inner circle on economic policy, appeared on CNBC and touted 50-year mortgages as a “really good” idea......

But as the public conversation and political debate advances, a related question hangs overhead: How exactly did Trump come to endorse such an idea in the first place? Politico reported on Pulte’s role in securing presidential buy-in.

On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below ‘30-year mortgage’ and one of Trump below ‘50-year mortgage.’ The headline was ‘Great American Presidents.’ Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time[/i].

......And therein lies the larger point. It is, to be sure, a problem that the White House stumbled into extending its imprimatur to a misguided idea on housing policy. But stepping back, it’s just as serious a problem that the White House doesn’t have a robust policymaking process in place in the first place. What it has instead are unqualified loyalists who persuade an unqualified president to embrace ill-advised policies without forethought, analysis or due diligence.

There’s no reason to expect this governing model to change anytime soon.