Housing bill clears last procedural hurdle in Senate

The Senate on Thursday cleared the last procedural hurdle before sending a housing bill back to the lower chamber, but procedural moves by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) may delay passage until next week.

The Senate voted 84-12 to proceed to the last of three votes on the legislation, which were sent to the upper chamber as a House message. But DeMint is forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to allow for a full 30 hours of debate before the Senate sends the legislation back to the House.

{mosads}The South Carolina Republican is protesting Reid’s decision to bar amendments to a bipartisan deal on the legislation, a broad housing rescue package that would allow the refinancing of up to $300 billion in troubled mortgages into more stable loans backed by the government.

“Sen. DeMint opposes this bill and believes it should be debated as long as possible,” a spokesman for DeMint, Wesley Denton, said.

“If Sen. Reid wanted to pass this bill sooner, he would have allowed amendments to improve it. Instead, he is trying to ram it through the Senate and shove it down America's throat,” Denton said.

The legislation would also tighten the oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that have seen their stock prices plunge this week, stoking fears that the government will be called upon to bail them out.

Democrats and some Republicans, however, said they thought DeMint might end his opposition and allow the Senate to complete work on the bill on Thursday. Reid said Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman and ranking member of the Banking Committee, told him the Senate would likely finish work on the legislation on Thursday.

Though it has bipartisan support, the housing legislation has run into obstacles in the Senate, where Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) slowed the bill by attempting to attach a measure renewing popular renewable energy tax breaks. The tax breaks, which cost $8.3 billion, are set to expire at year’s end.

The measure was included in housing legislation the Senate passed in April but was stripped out by the House because Blue Dogs objected to its not being offset.

Even though he supports them, Reid balked at reattaching the tax breaks to the housing legislation, and Ensign on Thursday withdrew his objections.

“Unfortunately, I have been blocked out and we have missed a unique opportunity to send these incentives to the president’s desk,” he said. “If we continue to drag our feet, we could find ourselves looking back on a renewable energy potential that was never met.”

Manu Raju contributed to this report.