If Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chair and Ranking Member, Sens. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), respectively, can hammer out a compromise by tomorrow morning, the Senate may vote as early as tomorrow afternoon on a housing stimulus package that purports to address the alarming increase in the number of foreclosures in the U.S. "[F]oreclosures of this magnitude are on par with the severity of foreclosures during the Great Depression," said Dodd in a Senate floor statement today. "Every day that goes by without action means more families are losing their homes," Dodd said of the housing crisis, before detailing the legislation designed to keep families from losing their homes:

• Foreclosure prevention counselling. Amount of funding: $200 million. What's the expression, a dollar short and a day late?
• Allowing state housing finance agencies to use proceeds from mortgage revenue bonds to help extend mortgage credit to people now trapped in predatory loans as well as to new homeowners. All new homeowners? Including wealthy ones who would have bought the home even without this new tax incentive?
• Community Development Block Grant funding. Four billion dollars. Dodd: "...a modest sum compared to the need, and compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars that has been made available to Wall Street in the form of discounted loans, special credit facilities, and guarantees."
• A bankruptcy provision to help more than 600,000 homeowners by allowing them to modify their mortgages in bankruptcy. Even liberal Democrats in Congress have actually concluded that the constitutional issues involved in govament (I'll explain later)-mandated contract term modification make this one a non-starter for them.
• Modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Hasn't this been in the works since long before the mortgage crisis emerged? Is it responsive to the crisis?

There are some other provisions Dodd didn't see fit to mention:

• Raising GSE loan limits by almost 40 percent to $730,000. The price of the average American home is under $200,000. And falling. So, who benefits from this provision?
• A "net operating loss carryback" that would refund some of the taxes paid by formerly profitable companies who have lost money in the past three years. Revenue Cost: $14.8 billion in 2008. Relevance to homeowners facing foreclosure?

Meanwhile, there is a serious proposal on the table over in the House. The FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008" is quite a mouthful, of dubious audibility in the mouth of author Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). But it doesn't monkey around with irrelevant tax breaks, raise any quasi-constitutional issues, bail out any bankers or borrowers, or cost much money. And it's going to be fully vetted in a House Financial Services Committee hearing next week. The Senate finds it imperative to vote on the Dodd bill described above this week, or even by tomorrow? For ten points: which is the world's most deliberative body, again?