Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON -- The Senate today cleared one of the last obstacles to voting on a landmark housing bill intended to alleviate the mortgage crash, fix regulatory problems that helped to cause it and -- in a provision engineered in part by Sen. Jack Reed -- create a permanent source of rental housing that poor people can afford.

The action was an 84-to-12 vote, with Reed and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in the majority, to limit debate on the bill. That appeared to clear the way for a final vote to send the measure to the House for negotiations to reconcile differences between the Senate and House versions of the legislation.

In the House, Reps. Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin both supported a bill that was drafted by the House Financial Services Committee under the chairmanship of Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and passed the full House several weeks ago.

This morning's Senate vote was a sign of the increasing bipartisan support for sending the president a bill that would address one of the worst housing crises since the Great Depression. It has attracted Republican support in large part because it is financed by fees on the mortgage industry giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rather than by direct taxation that could be seen as a taxpayer bailout of predatory mortgage businesses or of ill-advised borrowing. The fund created by the fees would at first be devoted heavily to refinancing bad mortgages but in later years it would become the source of affordable housing aid for the poor.

-- John E. Mulligan, Journal Washington Bureau

 Tags  housing bill mortgage crisis Mulligan Sen. Jack Reed U.S. House U.S. Senate

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