Speaking in Falls Church, Virginia on Wednesday morning, President Obama delivered a speech on a new proposal that would help middle-class homeowners. But Obama admitted that his previous program, designed to aid homeowners as well, “didn’t work at the scale we’d hoped”:
Already, the housing plan we launched a couple years ago has helped nearly one million responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages and save an average of $300 on their payments every month. I’ll be honest – it didn’t work at the scale we’d hoped. Mortgage rates are as low as they’ve been in half a century, and when that happens, homeowners usually flock to refinance their mortgages. But this time, too many families haven’t been able to take advantage of the low rates. Falling prices locked them out of the market. So last year, we took aggressive action that allowed more families to participate.
