Obama Pulls a Pocket Veto on Foreclosure Bill

“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away,” as one wise troubadour put it, and luckily for struggling homeowners, President Obama took a good look at a bill that had cleared Congress and flexed his executive powers to send it back Thursday. –KA

AP via Google News:

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that Obama is sending a newly passed bill back to Congress to be fixed because the current version has “unintended consequences on consumer protections.” The bill would loosen the process for providing a notary’s seal to documents and allow them to be done electronically.

Obama will not sign a bill that would allow foreclosure and other documents to be accepted among multiple states. Consumer advocates and state officials had argued the legislation would make it difficult for homeowners to challenge foreclosure documents prepared in other states.

The White House said Thursday it is sending the bill back to Congress for revisions, and that the administration would work with lawmakers on it.

O. Max Gardner, a consumer lawyer in Shelby, N.C., said the bill would have made the problems with foreclosure documents worse. That’s because mortgage companies would have been able to mass-produce documents and affix a digital version of a notary’s seal rather than one on paper.

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