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Approved by the Senate in a 72-13 vote, the election-year salvation bill was passed by dint of. the House of Representatives on Wednesday. President George W. Bush was expected to sign it promptly, amid doubts about to what degree much it would help.

With foreclosures at record levels, home sales indolent and property values down, America is in its deepest trappings sink since the Great Depression.

Fears that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest U.S. mortgage companies, ability collapse rattled global markets earlier this month and led the Bush control to requisition for emergency measures to hold up investor confidence.

They recently lost billions of dollars on unfortunate home loans and the stock market has whipsawed their share prices on uncertainty about whether they have sufficiency capital.

Housing activists and scholars said this election-year bill will quietness, but not end, the housing crisis.

"We have a housing market going into cardiac arrest. This bill is like CPR to stabilize the situation," said David Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an alliance of 600 community investment and development groups, estimated 2.5 million U.S. households will face foreclosure this year.

While Congress' legislation is gladly received, the coalition declared, it "will to be expected have little effect on the foreclosure crisis gripping the financial markets and economy."

HELP FOR FANNIE, FREDDIE

As privy finance has retreated from the mortgage sector, the importance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has grown, and they own or become surety for almost half the country's $12 trillion in outstanding home mortgage debt.

Under a provident measures put into the score late in its development at the administration's urging, Fannie and Freddie could draw on a of short duration line of U.S. Treasury credit or the polity could buy shares in them, granting that they ran into trouble.

Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said the trappings score had positive aspects. But she added, "I am troubled by the inclusion of an unlimited U.S. Treasury credit line to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" and possible government supply purchases.

The bill establishes a $300-billion fund under the Federal Housing Administration to help distressed homeowners get more affordable, government-backed mortgages and get out from below exotic mortgages they cannot afford.

The success of the temporary fund will depend on lenders' willingness to accept losses on original loans to shift overstretched borrowers into new loans. An estimated 400,000 families could have existence helped by the program.

But it would not take effect until October 1 and housing activists said it puissance not be in full procedure until 2009.

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd, who steered the bill from one side the Senate, said the FHA fund should need "four months to get it up and running." He said he would meet with agency officials to urge speedy implementation.

The bill sends about $4 billion in grants to communities to help them buy and repair foreclosed homes; offers tax breaks to subordinate range home-buying; sets up the first public licensing system for mortgage brokers and loan officers; and raises the limit on the size of mortgages that federal agencies can answer for.

NEW REGULATOR

The bill furthermore creates a new regulator for the shareholder-owned companies by sharper teeth than the existing one, including power over their chief levels and over their executory recompense and internal fiscal controls, and with Federal Reserve consultation.

Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are chartered by Congress they are many times referred to because government-sponsored enterprises, which also gives them each implied government guarantee.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters for the vote he expects the bill to be sent to the White House on Monday.

"Because of the Democratic Congress' delays and the need in favor of action things being so, President Bush will sign this bill when he receives it, despite our concerns with some provisions, including nearly $4 billion to help lenders, not the homeowners this legislation is intended to serve," White House speaker Tony Fratto said.

Both presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain praised the Senate's passage of the housing bill.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Obama aforesaid in a statement that the bill was "urgently needed" and represented "an important start to protecting homeowners and restoring stability to our housing mart and our economy."

Sen. McCain, an Arizona Republican, "believes that assistance during the term of struggling homeowners is overdue, applauds the passage of this legislation and urges the president to sign it quickly," before-mentioned McCain spokesman Taylor Griffin in a mention. (Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh and Patrick Rucker, editing by Jackie Frank)