House Republicans dragged the chamber to a standstill yesterday with procedural moves to protest Democrats’ attempt to ram through passage of foreclosure-crisis and war-funding bills, as President Bush threatened to veto both legislative packages and urged Congress to take up a compromise agenda.
Republican lawmakers, who called more than a dozen time-consuming votes to adjourn, said Democratic leaders used backroom maneuvers to cut the minority out of the legislative process.
They accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, of breaking her pledge to run the “most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”
“Our voices have been silenced — sad day,” Rep. Judy Biggert, Illinois Republican, said on the House floor.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said he missed the point of the Republicans protests.
“This is a crowd that has put the country deeply in a hole from a deficit standpoint, from an international policy standpoint and is very unpopular,” the Maryland Democrat said. “For lack of substantive policy being offered, they are offering motions to adjourn.”
The partisan gridlock on the House floor foreshadowed the standoff brewing between the White House and the Democrat-led Congress over the housing crisis, troop funding and energy policy in the final year of the Bush presidency.
The protest stalled consideration of Democrats’ bills to stanch the home-foreclosure crisis with measures that include $300 billion worth of government-backed mortgage refinancing and $15 million in federal grants and loans for states to buy derelict homes.
It also threatened to delay a vote scheduled for today on a $184 billion war-funding bill that Mr. Bush said he will veto if Democrats carry out plans to load it with election-year domestic spending and attach conditions to alter war policy.
The only part of the Democratic housing plan embraced by the Bush administration are proposals to expand the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and to revamp government lending institutions such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, measures called for by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address in January.
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, said the housing debate has turned into a “one-sided Democratic monologue” about how to reward real-estate speculators, bail out irresponsible lenders and force honest taxpayers to underwrite the reckless actions of others.
“The federal government is already the worst landlord in America, thanks to Democrats,” he said. “It’ll have a chance [now] to be the worst mortgage broker in America as well.”
Democrats said the bill is tailored narrowly to help families save their primary residences and bars speculators, investment properties and second or third homes from refinancing assistance.
It also protects taxpayers by requiring homeowners in the program to pay a higher insurance fee than with normal loans and pay the FHA a share of profit upon sale of the home, they said.
Mr. Bush, after meeting with House Republican leaders, said he will veto the Democrats’ housing bill, which the administration says bails out lenders with federal dollars to buy foreclosed properties.
“We are committed to a good housing bill that will help folks stay in their house, as opposed to a housing bill that will reward speculators and lenders,” the president said. “I urge members on both sides of the aisle to focus on a good piece of legislation that is being sponsored by Republican members.”
House Republicans introduced legislation that would give home buyers a one-time tax credit for 10 percent of the home’s purchase price, expand access to discounted loans through FHA and tighten regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The president said Congress should consider Republican proposals to tap more domestic energy reserves, pass a bill stalled in the House that would update laws authorizing electronic eavesdropping on foreign terrorism suspects and stop blocking a free-trade deal with Colombia.
“It’s a positive agenda,” Mr. Bush told reporters. “It’s an agenda that speaks to the economic interests of the people. It’s an agenda that speaks to the national security interests of the people. And it’s an agenda that recognizes that we can find the wisdom of the American people in their souls, in their hearts. We listen carefully to what they think, and we respond in a way that meets their needs.”
Mrs. Pelosi responded by calling on the White House to work with the majority in Congress.
“American families confronting foreclosure deserve better from the president than a veto threat,” she said. “They deserve the House’s bipartisan housing plan that will protect the American Dream of homeownership.”
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