The Congressional Oversight Panel, set up to police the U.S. $700 billion bailout of financial markets, said in a report last week that the federal government isn’t doing enough to help homeowners who face foreclosure. A majority of the panel’s members signed on to the Oct. 9 report, titled “An Assessment of Foreclosure Mitigation Efforts after Six Months.” The panel’s two Republican members distanced themselves from the findings. The report expressed doubts that the “scale, scope, and permanence” of the Treasury Department’s Making Home Affordable Modification Program would adequately protect U.S. homeowners. The Treasury had previously said HAMP would help prevent as many as 4 million foreclosures with loan modifications through approved servicers and lenders. “Rising unemployment, weak home prices, and impending mortgage rate resets still threaten to cast millions of Americans out of their homes, with devastating effects on families, local communities, and the broader economy,” the report said, noting that one in eight U.S. mortgages was currently in foreclosure or default, ultimately producing “10 to 12 million foreclosures.” But panel member Jeb Hensarling — a Republican Texas Congressman who calls himself a “lifelong conservative” on the COP Web site — disagreed with the report. “Instead of focusing its attention on taxpayer protection and oversight,” he wrote in his dissent, “the panel’s majority report implies that the administration should commit additional taxpayer funds in hopes of helping distressed homeowners — both deserving and undeserving — with a taxpayer subsidized rescue.” The report was the latest in a series of monthly opinions issued by the panel, which is charged with finding ways to improve the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Its blistering critique came this week on the heels of an Oct. 6 announcement by officials from the Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development that HAMP had resulted in 500,000 trial modifications for home loans, a month ahead of its self-imposed target date. As DS News previously reported, the Treasury took that milestone moment as an opportunity to argue for HAMP’s effectiveness, noting that the pace of loan modifications was now greater that the pace of new foreclosures. But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner still acknowledged “a large number of families” were still at risk of foreclosure.