Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:42 pm
A group of Democratic Senators led by Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) launched a website inviting the American people to share their stories of how their lives were impacted by the practices of Trump’s “foreclosure king” Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin.
The Democratic Senators described Mnuchin’s foreclosure practices in a statement:
As the CEO and owner of OneWest Bank, Mnuchin oversaw an operation that was called a “foreclosure machine,†repossessing the homes of tens of thousands of American families between 2009 and 2015 and intensifying the economic pain of the Great Recession. Despite the fact that there were programs available specifically to help banks like OneWest work with families to modify their mortgages and keep them in their homes, OneWest instead pursued an aggressive strategy of foreclosing on families to rack up profits. OneWest executed 39% of all foreclosures on federally-insured reverse mortgages from April 2009 through April 2016, despite servicing approximately 17% of the market.
OneWest used illegal tactics like “robo-signingâ€â€”falsifying key documents—to create a wave of foreclosures that kicked more than 36,000 families out of their homes. In one case in Florida, OneWest foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman over a 27-cent payment error. In another case in Minnesota, a homeowner in a foreclosure dispute with OneWest came home in the middle of a blizzard to find that the locks on her house had been changed.
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Sen. Warren said, “After years peddling the kind of dangerous‎ mortgage-backed securities that eventually blew up the economy, Mnuchin swooped in after the crash to take a second bite out of families by aggressively–and sometimes illegally–foreclosing on their homes. This man has engaged in the worst kinds of practices on Wall Street and directly hurt thousands of working families – and now, Donald Trump wants to literally hand him the keys to the Treasury where he can make big banks even richer at the expense of America’s families.â€
President-elect Trump hasn’t drained the swamp. He has filled it with the most dangerous predators. The big banks are going to be ones who are making financial and economic policy in the United States. Instead of a populist rebellion, Trump voters handed the keys to the economy to the very people who have left them behind.
Sen. Sanders added that Mnuchin’s nomination marks the return of the same old crowd that continues to harm America’s working class, “During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump told the American people that he was going to change Washington by taking on Wall Street. But now that the election is over, Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury Secretary is the same old, same old Wall Street insider who made a fortune during the financial crisis as millions lost their homes. If confirmed, Steve Mnuchin would be the third Treasury Secretary to come from Goldman Sachs in the last 17 years. That is not the type of change that Donald Trump promised to bring to Washington – that is hypocrisy at its worst. The last thing we need is another Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs and another broken promise from Donald Trump.â€
The Senators are urging people who were impacted by Trump’s nominee’s foreclosure practices to share their personal stories here.
The resistance to Trump is going cyber, as Senate Democrats are using every method of communication to get Americans engaged and involved to fight against the corporate takeover of the United States government.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
