Source: Lori Montgomery, Washington Post ( Free Registration )

The Senate yesterday approved a huge package of legislation aimed at stabilizing the nation’s faltering housing market, including an ambitious plan to extend a financial lifeline to hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

After weeks of delay engineered by a handful of Republicans opposed to the bill, the Senate voted 63 to 5 to approve the legislation and send it back to the House. Twenty-one Republicans voted with a united Democratic caucus in support of the measure, a compromise hammered out by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and the panel’s ranking Republican, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.).

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