mike viqueira at the white house for thus morning. it s going to be a busy day there. we re going to get into more of that in a minute. savannah, quickly on this housing thing, this has not gone very well. less and that 200,000 have been able to modify their mortgages. this is a big problem. to the extent it hasn t been fixed the economy really can t bounce back. so they ve got to address it, no question. it s reunion time in arizona today. he made her a national figure. today she will try to repay the favor by injecting some conservative street cred into his campaign. mccain and palin reunited on the trail this week. chief washington correspondent norah o donnell is in tucson, arizona this morning. norah, it s very interesting. they really stood by each other, weathered the storm and now palin s coming to help him out in a pretty tough campaign, right? reporter: that s right. reunited and john mccain hopes it feels so good with voters here in this state because is he facing a re
there. i talked to mark zandy who said he thinks this will be a significant boost to the economy. it gets to your point, savannah, it will brighten the outlook for the rest of the year if this plan gets executed. go ahead, steve. just going to say, beyond the politics, i would say the economics are as follows you can pay me now or pay me later. the administration could put some money out there to try to stop foreclosures or can let these go. the foreclosures end up sinking the banks, the government takes over the banks government gets the real estate, else is the real estate at half price and ends up sinking the market. so the conclusion of the government here is it s better off paying on the front end and that letting it go to an rtc type conclusions like we had in the s & l crisis. what about the banks? it was a year ago or so that the administration unveiled its first foreclosure mitigation plan and it hasn t worked out that well. do you think the banks in this year an that
feet. yeah, it s certainly one of the keys savannah. i think that display underscored the political problem that the administration faced and the pressure that they were facing, that there were all this money that was given to wall street and they kept trying to do different programs and kept kind of nudging up to the edge of where they are right now. now they ve taken i think a more significant step. what everybody has been screaming, people in the housing market in the know who i ve known have been like principal write down. you must write down the principal. here s the administration with a series of incentives to help banks write down principal and keep people in homes. i would add though that this doesn t solve the political problem for the administration because they re going to get it now from the other side. there s going to be people in america who say wait a second, i didn t overborrow. i didn t extend myself too far. why should i hope those people who did. i guess my que