Last week, I noted that 75 percent of metro areas have seen an increase in foreclosures, but that lawmakers have been reduced to pleading with banks to perform mortgage modifications, as the Obama administration’s signature modification program has been a big flop. The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has had more homeowners drop out of it than successfully receive a permanent mortgage modification.

As the Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasiripour and Arthur Delaney laid out, HAMP “has fallen short of its goals — rather than significantly and permanently reducing home foreclosures, it is only delaying them.” Today, the administration is trying to do something about the problem:

As many as 50,000 struggling homeowners in five U.S. states with high unemployment may receive help from a special $600 million federal fund intended to head off foreclosures. State housing agencies in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon and Rhode Island can use money from the Treasury Department’s “Hardest Hit Fund” for foreclosure mitigation that was announced in March.

According to Reuters, “some of the programs that states proposed will help unemployed or under-employed people keep up with their mortgage payments. Others will try to assist homeowners who are facing negative equity by reducing the principal of loans that they owe or will be used to finance short sales of homes to avoid foreclosure.”

These ideas — particularly reducing loan principal — are good ones, but I have to wonder why the amount of money dedicated to them is so small and why this response is limited to states with the worst unemployment. After all, as David Dayen pointed out, just $250 million of the $75 billion promised to HAMP has been spent. There’s quite a bit of money to facilitate more intensive foreclosure prevention efforts across the country.

“We’ve got a huge amount of people who are under water that aren’t going to be made whole,” said economist Dean Baker. “If you can’t persuade the banks to do a write-down that will allow them to stay in their homes, then you haven’t done that person a favor.” And while Treasury has talked a good game on eventually getting around to principal reductions, up to this point “as few as 0.1 percent of mortgage modifications initiated under HAMP involve reductions of principal.”

Foreclosures remain one of the key problems undermining the economy, yet the policy response has been incredibly lackluster. These small ball initiatives are certainly going to help some individual homeowners, but they aren’t on a grand enough scale to address the wider issue.

Today, the Senate (finally) invoked cloture on a bill that provides states with $26 billion in funding for Medicaid and to prevent mass layoffs of teachers. These two streams of funding have been added to — and subsequently cut from — bill after bill, as conservatives objected to their cost, just as they’ve objected to every spending measure that has been suggested to help alleviate some of the pain of the Great Recession for the lower- and middle-class.

Initially, the bill that was voted on today added $5 billion to the deficit. But it was tweaked to include larger spending offsets, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, it now decreases the deficit by $1.3 billion over ten years through cuts to food stamps and closing corporate tax loopholes that allow multinationals to claim domestic tax credits.

As Steve Benen put it, “for Republicans who claim to want to improve the economy, but not at the expense of the deficit, there were no excuses — Dems offered a modest, sensible bill, which would save jobs, help struggling states, all without adding to the deficit.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) yesterday said “this amendment meets every test Republicans claim to be concerned about.”

And two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — did indeed vote to invoke cloture and end the ongoing filibuster. The rest of the Republican caucus, however, voted no. That’s 38 Republican senators who voted against a deficit reducing jobs bill. (Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) didn’t vote.)

As David Dayen pointed out, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) authored a fully paid for state aid bill that was “substantially similar to this,” yet he still voted no. At this point, everyone should stop taking at face value the notion that Republicans really want small spending measure to pass, but only if they’re “paid for.” This vote clearly puts the lie to that assertion.

Now, the cuts made to the food stamp program in order to pay for the bill are unfortunate. And in the larger sense, there is simply no reason to be offsetting measures to boost the economy, spur job creation, or bolster the social safety net now, as they have little effect on the long-term structural deficit but can make a huge difference in combating the effects of the Great Recession. But the fact remains that 38 Republicans senators voted today to filibuster a jobs bill that also reduces the deficit (which was also a vote to preserve corporate tax loopholes).

Recently, a spate of faux deficit hawks have put forth the notion that, while any steps to alleviate the effects of the Great Recession for the lower- and middle-class must be paid for, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should simply be added to the deficit. “You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). “Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn’t a cost,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) agreed. “That’s where we are today. That’s the baseline. It doesn’t score anything to continue them.”

Today, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who has previously said “I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset,” explicitly dismissed the notion that extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich should be paid for. “I just don’t subscribe to that view,” he said:

I don’t subscribe to the view that when you cut taxes, when you maintain a tax situation like we have today — what we’re actually taking about is whether the Obama administration is going to increase taxes — that you basically have to pay for keeping taxes at their present levels. I just don’t subscribe to that view.

Watch it:

Coburn and Gregg are conveniently forgetting that President Bush and Republicans in Congress purposely designed the Bush tax cuts to sunset in ten years, to reduce their long-term cost. The baseline assumes a full expiration, so an extension most certainly does count as a cost against it.

Furthermore, Gregg is one of the loudest self-styled deficit hawks in Congress, continually warning that the U.S. is going to become a “banana republic.” Earlier this year, he refused to support an extension of unemployment benefits unless it was fully paid-for, saying that those who wanted to extend the benefits “basically keep spending money like drunken sailors.”

But when it comes to $830 billion — all of which will be spent on the richest two percent of Americans — Gregg’s concern about spending and the deficit suddenly evaporates. As Michael Linden pointed out, “$830 billion is enough to pay for all veterans’ hospitals, doctors, and the rest of the Veteran’s Affairs health system, plus the United States Coast Guard, plus the Food and Drug Administration, plus the operation and maintenance of every single national park for the entire 10-year period — with more than $100 billion left over.” So who, again, has more disregard for the deficit?