The New York Times' lead editorial today, "Foreclosure Politics," opens with some important points about the expensive, irrelevant, and counterproductive tax breaks riddling the Senate's inaptly named "Foreclosure Prevention Act." But from there, the editorial swerves off course and confuses readers about the House bill aimed at preventing foreclosures and minimizing economic pain. The editorial says that, under the plan by House Financial Services chair Barney Frank (D-MA) to provide $300 billion in refinanced mortgage guarantees, loans could be modified en masse. But the plan also has flaws. One is political: taxpayers could be on the hook if F.H.A. borrowers defaulted. Congress cannot ask taxpayers to step up without doing all it can to solve the problem without shifting the risk to taxpayers. The way to do that is to allow bankruptcy courts to modify mortgages for troubled homeowners. Taxpayers could be on the hook if the House adopts a plan that the House leadership, the administration, a broad range of regulators and policymakers, and all three presidential candidates have indicated that their support in principle. But taxpayers also might not be on the hook for a penny -- and, in fact, the federal government might ultimately make a pretty penny in the process under the plan. This is not to say that bankruptcy reform doesn't have a role in making the Frank plan more effective. But talk about political difficulty! The ink is still not dry on the last major bankruptcy reform, which passed in Congress overwhelmingly in 2005. Members' votes on the bankruptcy issue are not likely to change so soon, certainly not enough to allow an override of a certain Bush veto. Speculations about whether taxpayers would be on the "hook" under the Frank plan are just that until CBO scores the plan. Better to heed the initial indications CBO itself offered last Friday in a paper bound to be influential on the outcome of the debate, "Policy Options for the Housing and Financial Markets": Direct federal provision or guaranteeing of credit to mortgage markets could help avoid foreclosures and ease the downward pressure on house prices, helping the market to adjust in an orderly manner, [would] involve modest federal subsidies and would probably affect several hundred thousand homeowners. The Times editorial itself notes that "with foreclosures running at about 20,000 per week, at least 100,000 more families are likely to lose their homes before Congress passes a relief bill." If we count pennies and wait until we have a president who will sign bankruptcy reform, that number could easily exceed a million.