The obvious answer to the problem, and one Morgenson should recognize given her extensive work covering lending abuses, is to make sure that borrowers have good legal and financial advocates available to them — to level the playing field with the likes of Bill Frey of Greenwich Financial Services, who is leading the charge against the legislation. Legal services lawyers routinely review borrowers’ mortgage paperwork, find glaring violations of the Truth in Lending Act or Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act, and pursue legal action where warranted as a first course of action – not as an afterthought to a loan modification. No borrower should enter a loan modification casually, and right now all too many do, often with the encouragment of a mortgage broker turned modification “expert.”

Congress has already increased funding for nonprofit housing counselors. Now, in addition to passing safe harbor for servicers (the House already has), it needs to amp up legal services for borrowers, too.