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The plan could have tremendous importance because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee nearly 31 million U.S. mortgages, or nearly six of every 10 outstanding. Still, government officials did not have an estimate of how many people would qualify for the new program.

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To qualify, borrowers would have to be at least three months behind on their home loans, and would need to owe 90 percent or more than the home is currently worth. Investors who do not occupy their homes would be excluded, as would borrowers who have filed for bankruptcy.

Borrowers would get help in several ways: The interest rate would be reduced so that borrowers would not pay more than 38 percent of their income on housing expenses. Another option is for loans to be extended from 30 years to 40 years, and for some of the principal amount to be deferred interest-free.

Indeed, Tuesday's announcement comes too late for Troy Courtney, a 44-year-old San Francisco police officer.

He moved out of his home in Mill Valley, Calif., at the start of this month — taking his children, three dogs and one cat with him — after failing at several to attempts to get a loan modification or a short sale — where the lender agrees to receive less than the loan is worth.

Courtney worked overtime and tapped into his retirement account to try to catch up with two loans on his home. But in the end he couldn't convince Countrywide Financial, which managed the loan for Wells Fargo, to modify the loan.

"I feel like I missed the boat," he said of the new efforts to help more homeowners. "I'm just mad at the whole system."

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Obama plans to reverse the "Mexico City" policy, which restricts U.S. international foreign aid to family planning programs abroad that use their own funds to provide abortion services or lobby governments regarding abortion right

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Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said the plan "falls short of what is needed to achieve wide-scale modifications of distressed mortgages."

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Much was made about President-elect Barack Obama’s association with some very shady characters to no avail. People that were informed just didn’t care. Most people don’t even know who Obama associated with during his years as a Chicago politician.

President-elect Obama filled his first cabinet position when he named Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Let’s look at one of Rahm Emanuels’ associations, he was a board of director on Freddie Mac during the time when the scandal was just becoming news.

Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot “red flags,” according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

Much like Barney Frank Rahm Emanuel saw no need to regulate or even to warn congress that something needed to be done to reign in the fraud that was occurring at the company at which he was a board of director. The entire board of directors is being accused of negligence in government documents.

the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) of having “failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.”

The board of directors failed in it’s duty to follow up on the fraud that Freddie Mac was involved in. Rahm Emanuel was on that board.

During the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to the SEC, Freddie Mac substantially misrepresented its income to “present investors with the image of a company that would continue to generate predictable and growing earnings.”

Rahm Emanuel was on the board from 2000-2001, during the height of the scandal. His spokesperson would have us believe that he was concerned about the fraud.

while on the board, Emanuel “believed that Freddie Mac needed to address concerns raised by Congressional critics.”

Yet he did nothing and he said nothing. The board was told about possible accounting problems, yet did nothing.

The oversight report said the board had been apprised of the suspect accounting tactics but “failed to make reasonable inquiries of management.”

Evidently the board and Emanuel didn’t think that their wrongful accounting was worthy of addressing, no matter how they try to spin it now.

Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae are the two biggest players in the mortgage meltdown which led to the economic crisis and credit crunch that we are now feeling and Rahm Emanuel was on the board of directors during the time that the fraud was being committed. He was silent, he did nothing and he said nothing. Now the economy may be headed into a recession.

American’s may not care about Obama’s associations, but isn’t Rahm Emanuel’s association with Freddie Mac an association that Americans should care about?

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WASHINGTON -- The most elite private schools here are competing for Obama's daughters, and Michelle Obama toured two of them during a Monday day trip.

Since the Obama girls, Sasha, 7 and Malia, 10, already attend a private school -- the University of Chicago Lab School -- it seems unlikely that the Obamas would enroll the kids in public schools here.

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