Word: interests
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mortgage interest deduction is about the most inefficient means imaginable for chaneling housing assistance to the needy. It is far less efficient, for example, than direct subsidies. Yet it was these subsidies that suffered more than any other program from Reagan's budget-cutting axe. In 1981, the federal government spent $33 billion on direct housing assistance. By 1989, it had been slashed to $8 billion. During the 1970s, the federal government built anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 units of low-income housing per year. This year, it will build...
...start with, the mortgage interest deduction has the National Association of Realtors (NAR), one of the richest and most powerful lobbies in the nation, steadfastly behind it. When former Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan's tax reform plan proposed eliminating the the mortgage interest deduction for vacation homes, NAR president David Roberts denounced it as a prescription for "less growth in the American standard of living and a lower quality of life...
...mortgage interest deduction has an even more powerful ally than the real estate industry--they have some liberal Democrats and members of Congress. When Ronald W. Reagan hinted during the 1984 campaign that just maybe the deduction could be reformed, Walter F. Mondale called the suggestion "the worst single idea around...
...mortgage interest deduction also benefits from its low political visibility. It's easier to spend $30 billion through the tax code than to mail out one million checks for $30,000. It wasn't until 1974 that Congress and the President were even required to list the revenue loss of "tax expenditures" such as the mortgage interest deduction as costs on the budget...
...mortgage interest deduction has the privilege of being one of the most sacred of sacred cows in the tax code. During the debate over the 1986 tax reform bill, proposals to limit the deduction to primary residences and to cap the rate of deduction at 14 percent were soundly defeated in Congress...