Bush Vows to Veto Housing-Relief Bill in House

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By David Stout

Washington - As the House prepared to vote on a housing-relief bill offered by Democratic leaders, President Bush on Wednesday told the lawmakers, in effect, not to bother.

"I will veto the bill that's moving through the House today if it makes it to my desk," the president said at the White House, after meeting with Republican House leaders. "I urge members on both sides of the aisle to focus on a good piece of legislation that is being sponsored by Republican members."

The president's remarks were not surprising, given that the administration issued a statement on Tuesday evening declaring its opposition and saying that White House advisers would urge the president to veto it.

But Mr. Bush's personal pledge to veto the measure championed by Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Financial Services Committee, made it less likely that a bipartisan housing deal will be achieved soon, especially in this election year.

The House is expected to vote on the Frank bill, which would expand access to federally insured mortgages to help troubled homeowners refinance their loans, on Wednesday or Thursday. Under the bill, lenders would be required to reduce the principal balances for borrowers at risk of default. The troubled loans, typically with high, adjustable interest rates, would then be refinanced into more affordable 30-year fix-rate loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. The new loans would be limited to 90 percent of a property's value, based on an updated appraisal, and the government would retain a stake in any future sale of the property.

The Bush administration prefers a more limited expansion of federally insured mortgages and has argued that housing relief can be accomplished by the Federal Housing Administration without new legislation.

The president on Wednesday repeated his opposition to a bill "that will reward speculators and lenders" who have suffered because of their own foolishness. More modest measures are pushed by Republicans leaders, and Mr. Bush said those steps "will do the right thing for the American people."

Mr. Frank, anticipating a veto pledge, said on Tuesday evening that a veto would signal that the president was abandoning efforts to help homeowners and would mean that "he's stopped trying to govern." Moreover, Mr. Frank and other Democrats said Republicans in the Senate would read the president's remarks as a signal that they should stand fast against the Frank-backed bill if it reaches their chamber.

Though Democrats enjoy a considerable advantage over Republicans in the House (235 to 199, with 1 vacancy), and some Republicans have been gravitating toward the Frank bill, the political math would appear to be in the president's favor. Even if Mr. Frank's bill sailed through the House with the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, the odds of the Senate passing it with the necessary two-thirds majority would be much slimmer, since the Democrats control the Senate by only 51 to 49.

With six months to go until his successor is chosen, Mr. Bush is sometimes referred to as a lame duck. But as he spoke on Wednesday on the north portico of the house he will soon vacate, he showed his unwillingness to surrender power before he has to.

He called on Congress to pass a $108 billion war-supplemental bill "without any strings," meaning anything that smacks of a withdrawal timetable for Iraq; to give his Colombia free-trade agreement "an up-or-down vote" instead of letting it stall in the House; to make his "temporary" tax cuts permanent, and to allow "environmentally friendly domestic exploration" for oil.

The reference to oil exploration sounded like an allusion to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which the president has long said can be explored in a way that would do no damage while enhancing energy independence. The House has endorsed the idea a dozen or more times in recent years, but it has always stalled in the Senate.