I'm willing to consider reforms... I'm willing to consider arguments that the traditional way of doing things is too costly, too slow, and that there's a better way.  I'm open to changes that help banks save time and money.  But the would-be mortgage records reformers need to put in the work and actually design a system in some detail.  They need to be able to show how the new system would work.  That's not done here... there are numerous basic questions left unanswered.  I don't see how anybody could support this bill as written... you're buying a pig in a poke.

MERS has become a legal quagmire because the full range of consequences was not adequately considered when it was formulated.. and there was a lot more work put into MERS than was seemingly put into this one paragraph directive in this legislation.  This is why I didn't think Marcy Kaptur's bill last year to study a federal land title system was such a bad idea.  There was nothing in that bill that requred that a full federal takeover of the land title system be the end product of the study process.  They could have been working on a solution to the MERS issue.  They could have come up with a proposal for a federal mortgage registry with enough detail that we could have had an informed debate on the issue.  I think that would have been useful and worthwhile.

I'll suppose I should Corker credit for at least touching the MERS issue, when few others are proposing anything at all, but at best, the MERS provision in this bill is a placeholder for real MERS reform.  It needs to be amended and expanded upon to merit any serious consideration.