By fits and starts, Congress is moving toward a legislative response to the housing sector crisis — the biggest sectoral crisis to afflict the U.S. economy since the technology stock bubble burst earlier this decade. In what might turn out to be a case of the tortoise and the hare, the Senate has jumped out front with a housing bill that enjoys little if any support in the House or the Bush administration, while the House has embarked on a schedule of hearings and mark-ups of a much-praised bill of a wholly different nature. There is a widely shared consensus that, with elections approaching, Congress must and will act to address the crisis, but thus far, the two houses are proceeding along on separate, if not perpendicular, tracks.