They have no qualms whatsoever about holding the public interest hostage in order to serve their political agenda. God, I’m gonna miss them:

WASHINGTON - Emergency legislation intended to help as many as 500,000 homeowners on the brink of foreclosure to renegotiate their mortgages, which congressional leaders had predicted they would approve by Independence Day, has been delayed and may now be weeks away from passage, lawmakers said.

The sweeping housing bill has been slowed by an unexpected veto threat from the White House, legislative maneuvering in the Senate, and differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

In addition, some House Republicans have demanded that the legislation be delayed so lawmakers can investigate a loan by a major subprime lender to one of the mortgage bill’s authors, Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. The lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., would be a big beneficiary of the bill.

Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, received below-market-rate mortgages from Countrywide. In Dodd’s case, the 2003 loans allowed him to save up to $75,000 in mortgage payments on two homes. The Senate Ethics Committee has begun a preliminary inquiry into the loans, but backers say Congress should not wait for its outcome to approve the housing legislation.

Calls for delaying the bill were “the stupidest act of partisanship I’ve ever heard,” said House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who accused Republicans of using Dodd’s loans as a pretext to try to block the bill. Frank introduced the key amendment creating the emergency foreclosure program in the House in April, and Dodd introduced a similar measure in the Senate the same month. The House approved the legislation in May.