November 16, 2007 (LPAC)--Yesterday, the House voted 291 to 127 to pass a bill sponsored by House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) to reform and provide accountability for mortgage practices and to provide minimum standards for consumer mortgage loans, among other things. The large, bipartisan vote demonstrates the fear that the foreclosure crisis has inspired in both parties, but the bill includes nothing resembling the kind of firewall protection for homeowners and banks that has been proffered by Lyndon LaRouche with his Homeowners and Bank Protection Act.
That the bill was not intended to help those homeowners who are in trouble now was stated at the outset of the debate by Frank, himself, when he told the House that "What we have today is a bill that cannot undo what happened but makes it much less likely that it will happen in the future." The amendments offered during the debate by both Republicans and Democrats also did little to address the current crisis, being mostly aimed at tweaking the provisions in the bill. The White House has not threatened to veto the bill, but it did complain that the bill "unduly restricts" access to credit.
Earlier in the day, Senate Republicans blocked action on a bill modernizing the Federal Housing Administration even though the Senate banking Committee passed the bill on a 20 to 1 vote. Senate majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters afterwards that "We have a crisis out there," then proceeded to list a series of measures that the Democrats are proposing that, like the House bill, will not really help most of the people caught in the crisis. The most substantial proposal is a provision for $200 million in the fiscal 2008 appropriations bill for the Departments of Transportation and Treasury that will go to non-profit organizations to provide foreclosure counseling. The non-profits, said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) "are being inundated with these families who are trying to figure out how to deal with the personal impacts of this."
