Unless you live under a rock or have zero connection to the social media world, both of which could be very likely scenarios, you probably have heard by now that President Barack Obama took the stage yesterday for the State of the Union address.

President Obama touched on a lot of important issues that our nation has faced in the previous year, and what we are facing in the future.

I have conveniently simplified the portions of his address that reference the housing market or mortgages.

The commentary on this speech is solely my own and does not reflect the opinion of Quicken Loans, our company, or my mother.

That’s why I’m sending this Congress a plan that gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low interest rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks. A small fee on the largest financial institutions will ensure that it won’t add to the deficit, and will give banks that were rescued by taxpayers a chance to repay a deficit of trust.

So this is great news. President Obama is sending a plan to Congress that will help homeowners save money on their loans. View this as potentially HARP 3.0, before HARP 2.0 even goes into full effect.  We all know that rates are at historic lows right now, so sending a bill to Congress to help homeowners take advantage of unprecedented rates is a step in the right direction.  Let’s just see if it gets through Congress or gets caught up in the process.

Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a Government and a financial system that do the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.

Let’s level this playing field of ours, why don’t we?

We’ve all paid the price for lenders who sold mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and buyers who knew they couldn’t afford them. That’s why we need smart regulations to prevent irresponsible behavior. Rules to prevent financial fraud, or toxic dumping, or faulty medical devices, don’t destroy the free market.  They make the free market work better.

Clearly, the keyword in this statement is “irresponsible,” and President Obama uses it in a way that places the blame of  irresponsibility on the lenders and the buyers. 

There is no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly. In fact, I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his. I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense. We’ve already announced over 500 reforms, and just a fraction of them will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years. We got rid of one rule from 40 years ago that could have forced some dairy farmers to spend $10,000 a year proving that they could contain a spill – because milk was somehow classified as an oil. With a rule like that, I guess it was worth crying over spilled milk.

Fantastic cliché usage!  It truly was a knee-slapper, but the point he brings up is that reform is necessary. It’s sort of like the law in Massachusetts that declares goatees illegal unless you first pay a special license for the “privilege” of wearing one in public. We just don’t need it anymore. Maybe we should start a motion to get that law repealed. 

I’m confident a farmer can contain a milk spill without a federal agency looking over his shoulder. But I will not back down from making sure an oil company can contain the kind of oil spill we saw in the Gulf two years ago. I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury pollution, or making sure that our food is safe and our water is clean. I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny you coverage, or charge women differently from men.

And then the entire audience started singing “Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  On a more serious note though, the big picture here is that President Obama wants to make sure that big agencies, such as health insurance companies and mortgage lenders, are in check and work in a manner that is regulated by the government.

And I will not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules. The new rules we passed restore what should be any financial system’s core purpose: Getting funding to entrepreneurs with the best ideas, and getting loans to responsible families who want to buy a home, start a business, or send a kid to college.

So clearly another step in the right direction.  Families who want to buy a home should be able to qualify, and if a kid wants to get a college education, there should be a way to fund it.  It all seems fine and dandy and fair, but at the end of the day, we have to ask the question, “Is it even feasible?”  That is yet to be seen.

So if you’re a big bank or financial institution, you are no longer allowed to make risky bets with your customers’ deposits. You’re required to write out a “living will” that details exactly how you’ll pay the bills if you fail – because the rest of us aren’t bailing you out ever again. And if you’re a mortgage lender or a payday lender or a credit card company, the days of signing people up for products they can’t afford with confusing forms and deceptive practices are over. Today, American consumers finally have a watchdog in Richard Cordray with one job: To look out for them.

Think of Richard Cordray as a client advocate for the entire country.  Well, he won’t personally be looking out for you, but I guarantee you that his people will.  He is the new Director of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and has quite the resume including an appearance on Jeopardy! in 1987.  Another fun fact about our friend Richard is that he graduated from the James Madison College at Michigan State University, just like yours truly.  More or less, his job is to promote fairness and transparency, so no grey areas for mortgages, credit cards, or other consumer financial products and services.

We will also establish a Financial Crimes Unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing. So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count.

I view “we WILL also establish…” as “We want to establish a Financial Crimes Unit, but we have to run it through Congress and standard procedure first.”  People who don’t do the right thing should be penalized and will be penalized even more harshly for being repeat offenders if this unit is established.

And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.

This one is sticky. Until the details come out, we really won’t know how the mortgage lenders will be sanctioned. Are lenders who packed “risky mortgages” in the past going to be tried for previous lending, or is this a law that will only be used going forward? 

The fact of the matter is that the State of the Union was chock-full of promises, and promises that can really change lending practices going forward.  Unfortunately, bills like these can be caught up in Congress and we could never hear about them again.  I sure hope that these do get passed, and going forward, this great country of ours will be even greater.