A Tale of Two Houses

Everyone seems to be chiming in on Senator Santorum’s cyber school situation so I’ll add my two cents as well. First off, let me say that I don’t really like the senator. I don’t care for many of his policies but beyond that I just don’t like him personally, and for the reason that we often like or dislike people we don’t actually know, he reminds me of someone. In this case it’s the basketball star in my college Latin class who talked about the great job he had lined up as a stockbroker after graduation and suggested I sit in front of him so he could look over my shoulder during exams. I shifted to a chair across the room. So, knowing my prejudice, I have tried to look at the Santorum situation with as objective an eye as possible.

However, looking at the news stories on Sen. Santorum’s two residences what came to my mind was how the heck did he get a mortgage on a house that cost close to $700,000 when he bought it. Santorum served in the US House from 1990-1994 and in the senate from 1994 to the present. When he joined the senate the salary was $133,600 and is now $158,100. Mr. Jane and I have gone through the mortgage process twice and it was my understanding that banks didn’t like to offer a mortgage for more than about two or three year’s salary, unless you were getting an unusual mortgage, one with a balloon payment or an interest only mortgage. My household brings in about $125,000 a year and I’m pretty sure that our bank would not be willing to sign off on anything more than a $300,000 mortgage if that.

So how does the Santorum household have a $700,000 house in Virginia and a $80,000 house in Pennsylvania? Did either of the Santorum’s inherit a lot of money to be used as a large down payment? Santorum himself didn’t practice law that long before running for office and many people who have gone to graduate school carry student loans that need to be paid off.

Mrs. Santorum has written two books and has worked as a consultant for Brabender Cox although the amount she earned there is difficult to determine exactly. (read more). She also won a malpractice suit against a chiropractor in 1999. The original award was $500,000, reduced to $150,000 and then settled out of court (read more). So it is possible that some of this money could have been used towards the down payment. What is interesting about this case, other than Sen. Santorum’s belief in a cap on malpractice suits, is that the senator testified in the trial that his wife’s injuries prevented her from accompanying him on the campaign trail. (read more) Yet, his reasoning for having his children in the cyberschool was that the family could accompany him when he campaigned or traveled in Pennsylvania.

I also wonder how the family travels with him as he visits all of Pennsylvania’s counties. I have a minivan that seats 7 and to get larger than that you would need a pretty good sized vehicle. For the Santorum family (2 adults, 6 children) to all be in the same car they would have to have a very large van or a specially designed vehicle of some kind. And where do they all stay? In hotels? You’re going to be either pretty spread out or pretty cramped. I’m not sure when he visited my county. If there were announcements or a public meeting of any kind I missed it entirely.

Logically it is fairly clear that if he purchased a 2 bedroom home in Pennsylvania in the mid or late 1990’s it was to be used primarily as a residence on paper only. At that time the family had 3 children and were expecting another. The 4th child died shortly after birth and is the subject of Mrs. Santorum’s second book. Putting 2 adults and 3 or 4 children in a 2 bedroom house is usually not done by choice, especially considering that the family had the money for the larger home in Virginia. Currently the family has 6 surviving children and I have to wonder how often they actually all stay at that house at the same time. Since another family also claims the address as a residence there are at least 1 or 2 others to squeeze in, too.

A number of senatorial families live apart during the workweek while the legislature is in session. Both Joe Biden and Arlen Spector ride Amtrak to and from Washington. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy fly back and forth frequently. In his autobiography Tip O’Neil wrote about the separation from his family during the legislative session. Joe Hoeffel’s children went to school in or around Philadelphia and he traveled back and forth. A lot of families do this. And let’s face it, Congress isn’t in session all that long. Don’t they have a lengthy summer recess, time off over the holidays and other extensive gaps in the calendar?

Several families on my street have made difficult decisions regarding career and family. One family has been separated for over a year as the husband has been serving in Iraq and the wife is left home with 3 and 6 year old children. Two other families adopt a split shift where one parent works nights or weekends and the other days so someone can be home with the kids. Some choose to live on one income so a parent can be home full time, although this usually several impacts the size of house they can afford. When the Senate was considering expanded funding for daycare Sen. Santorum, opposing the funding, said “making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing.” (source) Well, the senator chose to keep a paper residence in Pennsylvania that another family besides himself claims as a residence, and keep his children close to him, while using Pennsylvania taxpayer’s money to pay for a cyber school. I think he was letting others struggle, or at least foot the bill, for his family’s choices.

Jane