Not the home mortgage deduction

Now we’re hearing that the home mortgage deduction is on the table in the fiscal cliff negotiations.

And that’s scary to a lot of us because we thought they were only talking about cutting loopholes.

The mortgage deduction doesn’t sound like a loophole to us; it sounds like … a worthy tradition. That helps build strong neighborhoods. If deductions had an aroma, the home mortgage deduction would smell like a warm apple pie.

In fact, for families earning more than $250,000, it smells like about $5,500 a year of warm apple pie.

Debbie Scully, a real estate agent in Chicago, who’s been watching the housing market recover, doesn’t get it.

“It certainly wouldn’t be good. There’s sort of a glimmer of hope. It looks like things are stabilizing. Why would they do anything that could hurt that?”

But it’s being floated for a reason.

The outcome of these tax increase negotiations are going to depend on public pressure. Since the last go-round, the numbers haven’t changed, the Congress has changed only slightly. The one thing that has changed since the last time we had this debate is Barack Obama got re-elected after running on a clear promise to raise taxes on the rich.

And yes, we all know that raising taxes on the rich by itself will not fix everything, but what’s going to emerge in the next few weeks is that if you don’t raise them, a lot of stuff that non-rich people depend on, like social security, and medicare, and the home mortgage deduction, all of which are like fresh apple pie on America’s windowsill, will be pecked away by a bunch of crows. Who already look fairly well-fed.