[Alice] I’ve got a quick Legislative Update for you. Actually, I love once in a while when there’s a bill that everybody agrees on and it gets unanimous of votes and in this case, we did have HR695 pass. This was to increase the compensation to those who have received the Medal of Honor. There you go. Completely un mortgage related, but I love when every once in a while we all come together and get something good passed. We do have that the House also passed a SBA loans component that will impact SBA loans. This is just House Bill 825. It did pass, it’ll be going on its way to the Senate to just simply make sure that anyone who has 20% or more of a company if they have any convictions, fraudulent convictions, finance related convictions, that they would not be eligible to participate in the Small Business Administration products. That will be moving forward, we hope. It does have some better than 50% chance of also making its way through the Senate. So those really from a bills standpoint related to mortgage, that’s all that’s out there. But we are watching closely, making sure that we get a new budget passed. We’ve been working on continuing resolutions for many months now and so we do have that the House continuing resolution did pass February 25th. I was looking at the numbers in this and it’s really interesting. I’m newer at studying. So I will preface this. I’m newer at actually looking at the numbers in the last couple of years and this particular one in the house, it’s CR14 that passed 225 shows everything going up. So I know we keep saying, DOGE is, finding all this money that’s been wasted and is going away. But I thought it was interesting that the bills that are being presented are still showing deficit and spending increasing. So we’ll watch that closely, see what the final numbers actually are. Bill, I know you watch this closely. Am I missing something in what I’m seeing in the numbers? They’re very high level. But you’re looking at 450 billion chain of federal revenue increasing it each year, but the debt is still increasing by trillions each year.
[Bill] Yeah the phrase death spiral comes to mind as interest rates have moved up and let’s, not talk about six months. Let’s talk about over the last five years. The debt that is rolling over just keeps getting reissued at higher interest rates. So, one of the realities now is even if the debt itself is not increasing. The debt expense can still increase and the level of that outstanding is still increasing. So, that’s where the spiral starts to become really problematic and there’s going to be a reckoning I think that’s what Musk and everybody at least. Trying to start getting their arms around it, you got to rein in spending anywhere and everywhere you can. That’s a long process and my opinion, just you have to start seeing progress and turning the battleship. It’s not going to happen overnight though.
[Alice] And for this perspective on the show, it’s watching to make sure that we do get a budget approved because we want to make sure FHA, VA, USDA, all the entities we rely on are getting funded and that business doesn’t discontinue. Marc, any thoughts on where we stand right now with trying to get a budget passed?
[Marc] I think that the biggest issue we have to do with is the the split in the House and Senate I really think that getting anything passed anytime soon, and I think the Democrats will leverage every bit of it to get what they want on some bills that they got out there that will increase spending again. But, it’s going to happen that way. I don’t think that the it’s an insurmountable task to get the budget approved. But I think there’ll be a lot of politics played in it more so than we’ve ever had in any previous budget adjustment, and then budget approval in the past to get the budget extended and approved. I’m thinking that way mainly. It’s just going to be much more troublesome than it’s been before, a lot more arguments, and take maybe longer, and I just hope we don’t stop the government and screwing around one we can’t get together and talk things through.
[Alice] Yeah. So we’ve got this deadline coming up of March 14th, I believe it is and then we have a little bit more time, hopefully they get something through by early summer is what we are watching from. Yeah, the legis. Go right ahead. Yep.
[Marc] Yeah, and I think the timeline’s important on that, where I think. See what happens by the first deadline and then see what happens the rest of time period we’re talking about and I’m hoping for positive things but there’s such a diverse, look at what’s going on in this country right now between the two parties. I just don’t see any major communication and cooperation All right, sorry to be so sorry to be so negative.
[Alice] No, I, it’s I agree. And I think that’s why I wanted to make sure we talked about it for our listeners, because, there is that 1 piece of making sure the departments we need continue to operate. So we’ll continue to watch that and make sure things are, we don’t get any kind of impact to our industry related to that. All right, that wraps it up for this Legislative Update.
Alice Alvey, Master CMB
She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.
Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.
She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.
Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!