Republicans Block Consideration of Housing Relief Package in Senate
Senate Republicans yesterday blocked consideration of a bill designed to prop up the struggling housing industry, declaring that the Democratic-backed provisions would harm mortgage lenders and inflame the housing crisis.</br></br>With a 48 to 46 vote, the Senate did not gain the 60 votes needed to halt a threatened filibuster on the housing package. The vote capped a week of parliamentary gridlock in the Senate, which spent nearly three days mired in an Iraq war debate without casting a substantive vote on the underlying bill mandating troop withdrawal.</br></br>Democrats, stymied in their effort to curb President Bush's Iraq policies, had hoped to begin debate on the housing bill to address the public's anxiety over the economy, which has supplanted the war in recent polls as the issue of greatest concern.</br></br>The housing proposal includes billions of dollars for local communities to buy up subprime mortgages and a controversial rewrite of bankruptcy laws to allow judges to slash interest rates for low-income homeowners. The mortgage industry has waged a stiff lobbying campaign against the bankruptcy provision.</br></br>Democrats mocked Bush's statements at yesterday's news conference, where he urged giving the $168 billion stimulus package approved this month a "chance to kick in first." "That, to me, is straight out of the Herbert Hoover playbook," Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters, adding that his bankruptcy measure would save family homes. "Right now, there will be a question on the floor of the Senate as to whether the mortgage bankers are going to win or the American families facing foreclosure are going to win."