Back in 2004, I moved to Washington, D.C.’s suburbs. It was a crazy time for the market, with people offering 20 or 30 thousand dollars above asking prices for homes. Since we were moving to a new place, my wife and I decided the prudent thing to do would be to rent our home for a year to decide if we liked living where we did.

Well, a year went by and we decided that yes, in fact, we really did like our neighborhood in northern Virginia. The problem was, after a year the home prices had skyrocketed to a point that we didn’t feel comfortable buying. So we continued to rent with the expectation that one day the bubble would burst and the prices would come down.

Lo and behold, that day has come. Homes in our neighborhood are now selling for $100,000 less than they were a year ago in some cases (though still about $120,000 more than when we moved here), and if the prices keep going down, we may well decide to buy a home in the near future. In the meantime, we’ve continued saving our money, have pared down our credit card debt, and have even started a vacation fund to save money for family trips. In short, we have not lived beyond our means.

But now I read that Barack Obama thinks it’s heartless to not help those who, unlike me, got in over their heads. People like Mauricio, recently featured in a WaPo story about illegal aliens fleeing Prince William County, Virginia.

The man, whose name is Mauricio and who is Salvadoran, zipped his jacket against the wind whipping across the dark, vacant parking lot as he walked out of the store toward a borrowed car.

That morning, his electricity had been cut off. The next day, he and 11-year-old Erica would be moving into the basement of a neighbor’s house. On this night, they would make do with candles.

It was the latest blow in a year of calamities: In April, the interest rate on Mauricio’s ill-advised mortgage suddenly spiked, more than doubling his monthly payments. In May, he lost his job as a house painter. In June, he had to sell his van. In July, his third child was born, and with no insurance, he started skipping mortgage payments to cover the hospital bills. In October, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In November, he sent his wife and two U.S.-born children to El Salvador.

December brought the worst setback yet: Mauricio bounced a $460 check he had sent the Department of Homeland Security to renew his temporary legal status, transforming him from legal to illegal immigrant.

In January, he received notice to vacate his house. Two weeks ago, the water was cut off. A week ago, his Virginia driver’s license expired, and without legal status, he can no longer renew it.

Mauricio and Erica turned onto a side street pocked with darkened, empty houses and pulled up to a brick house with mustard shutters. A plastic barrel stood under the gutter spout. Mauricio had been using it to collect rainwater to heat so Erica could take baths.

Inside, it was cold and pitch black. Mauricio lit a candle and handed it to Erica. She dripped the wax onto the kitchen table to make a candle holder.

Next, they went into Erica’s bedroom. She hugged a stuffed dog to her chest as she watched her father stand a candle on her dresser.

Finally, they walked into Mauricio’s bedroom. As he lit his candle, it illuminated a large, framed photograph of him and his wife embracing the children. Mauricio stood for a moment, looking up at their grinning faces, before walking out of the room.

We’re supposed to feel sorry for Mauricio. I feel badly for his daughter, having to live in such conditions because Mom and Dad thought they could easily finance the American Dream, even if they didn’t make enough money to pull it off.

It used to be that we wanted our kids to have a better life than we did. I’ve heard the stories of my grandparents immigrating to the United States. My grandfather worked his rear off to be able to send my dad to an exclusive prep school in Massachusetts (albeit as a “townie”). My own father worked multiple blue collar jobs while attending Brown University on the G.I. Bill after WWII, all to make sure that he could provide for his wife and daughter. He didn’t try to buy the McMansion at age 25. He didn’t drive the 1950 equivalent of a BMW. He didn’t require immediate gratification.

It’s as if we as Americans are chanting, “What do we want? The American Dream! When do we want it? Now!!!” and no one is explaining that we’re entitled to the pursuit of happiness… not happiness itself. We’re not guaranteed a McMansion or an expensive foreign car. We have to work for these things. Some of us may make choices that make it more difficult to buy those nice things (having five kids comes to mind). But we are not entitled to government provided happiness. Nor is the government supposed to make sure we never fail. If that’s the case, then why did I waste my time doing the prudent thing? Shouldn’t I have just gone ahead and purchased a home above my means in the hope that the government would make it all okay if I got in over my head?

When I do the right thing, I do not want my tax dollars going to subsidize somebody else’s bad decisions. Besides the affront to individual responsibility, perhaps someone smarter than I am can tell me what this will do to housing prices? Will they be artificially propped up because of government intervention? Will this in fact prevent the prices from dropping to a point that responsible people like me could take advantage of the market? What a blow that would be… government intervention impeding my right to pursue happiness at the expense of helping provide happiness to those who just didn’t want to wait.

Jim: I’m amazed at how the political class is treating this issue as who can do the most for the Mauricios — or worse, the house-flippers and no-money-down crowd of the world. Anything that gives off a whiff of a bailout will be the welfare issue for this decade, but instead of able-bodied urban poor who collect government checks when they should be working, the target of taxpayer resentment will be gambling house-flippers who priced the responsible buyers out of the market.