No consensus in GOP over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

But House and Senate Republicans pushing bills to phase out both federally run companies are learning how fear, politics, and old-fashioned lobbying can trump ideology.

Even in the GOP-run House, leading proponents of doing away with Fannie and Freddie are not predicting victory. As a precaution, they are advancing eight bills taking bite-sized swipes at the issue. In the Democrat-led Senate, a sister measure by 2008 presidential candidate Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, faces long odds, and the Banking Committee’s top Democrat and Republican are wary of quickly reshaping the market for financing home purchases.

“There’s no consensus on it,’’ House Financial Services Committee chairman Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama, conceded in an interview this month about a sweeping overhaul bill by Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas. “I can’t promise we will build consensus.’’

Fannie and Freddie do not issue mortgages but buy them from the original lenders, thus providing cash for more loans. They then package many mortgages into securities that they resell to investors, using a government guarantee that lets them pay a lower yield than their few competitors.

Bachus calls Hensarling’s bill “the gold standard’’ for Republicans. It would halt government backing of Fannie and Freddie and end or dramatically reduce their role in mortgage financing within five years. The goal is to turn the mortgage market over to banks and other private lenders, who have shied away during the relentless real estate bust of the past few years.

With housing still staggering from foreclosures and low prices, some Republicans worry that erasing the federal role in the mortgage market could rattle the housing industry and perhaps the entire economy. Without the government guarantee of mortgage products that Fannie and Freddie enjoy, the cost of mortgages would likely rise, making homes less affordable.

“You can’t do that,’’ Representative Gary Miller, Republican of California, a solid conservative and real estate developer from just east of Los Angeles, says of proposals to end the federal role in financing mortgages. “It would devastate the housing market.’’

Average home prices in the Los Angeles area have dropped 33 percent in five years, three times the national average, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Feeding lawmakers’ concerns are realtors, mortgage bankers, and home builders, powerful constituencies and campaign contributors. The bankers and builders brought throngs of members to the Capitol last month to visit legislators, and the realtors are coming in May.

“Every member of Congress has hundreds of them in their district, and they are very active,’’ Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, another conservative who wants to maintain a federal role in financing homes, said of realtors.

Though Democrats, including President Obama, agree that Fannie and Freddie should be eased aside to get private lenders back in the market, Republicans generally want to move faster and further.

For many in the GOP, Fannie and Freddie epitomize government waste run amok. Under President George W. Bush, the government took them over in September 2008 as they teetered near collapse as the housing market crumbled. Taxpayers have since shoveled $154 billion at the two companies to keep them alive — which resonates at a time when efforts to trim record budget deficits are a premier national issue.

“The two largest, most influence-exerting, regulation-avoiding, bailed out institutions,’’ Hensarling, a member of the GOP leadership, called them when he introduced his legislation last month.

In a brief interview, he said that once Fannie and Freddie are gone, he “absolutely, positively, unequivocally’’ wants to end the government’s role in the mortgage market.

Many Republicans endorse that view, and many lobbyists and congressional aides expect Hensarling’s bill to ultimately move through Bachus’s Financial Services Committee and the full House. But there are GOP pockets of resistance, chiefly from lawmakers worried about the practical impact of such a move, particularly in districts with high home prices and where the housing market remains especially weak.

Campbell, whose district abuts Miller’s and like him is on the Financial Services panel, says the housing market is too crucial to risk destabilizing it.

Asked whether his stance was consistent with his party’s philosophy of smaller government, Campbell said, “We’re for smaller government and smarter government. We’re not for no government and we’re not for dumb government.’’

Working against the changes are the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, and the Mortgage Bankers Association. While all are major Washington players, the realtors are especially potent: The $3.8 million they donated to more than 500 congressional candidates in the 2010 election was tops among all political action committees, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The Obama administration has offered three options for phasing out Fannie and Freddie, with varying degrees of continued federal involvement, but left subsequent decisions to Congress.