Homeowners, you're not getting a bailout.

Banks are the target of this debate.

Not foreclosures, distressed borrowers, would-be homeowners or the under-water mortgage industry.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson isn't aiming for the housing market. He's working to restore credit. Which, eventually, will help the housing market.

But the bailout plan is not specifically designed to buy mortgages. It could end up buying home loans, but that's not the target. Treasury Secretary Paulson is aiming for mortgage-backed securities. These are bundles of mortgages of any kind, not necessarily home mortgages. It's possible that securities backed by commercial loans get bought first.

Paulson has made no promise to snap up home mortgages.

And to be sure, when this bailout plan buys a mortgage-backed security, the terms of the underlying mortgage would not be changed.

There is fierce resistance on Capitol Hill to the idea of anyone telling the banks that they have to start working with borrowers and altering the terms of distressed loans.

The housing bill that passed this summer is an example. Its provisions for renegotiating loans, they're all voluntary. If lenders want to, they can cut down a mortgage amount or change the interest rate. They don't need a new law to do so.

But they don't want to. Just as banks don't want to write down the value of these mortgage-backed securities. Or to sell them at current prices.

They don't want to take the loss, to cut down their own capital. Because that would weaken them.

Several organizations -- AARP, Center for Responsible Lending, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Acorn -- are calling on the House and Senate to insert relief for homeowners into the bailout. They want to allow judges in bankruptcy cases to alter the terms of a loan.
But so far, that's not part of the plan that's being debated in Congress.

Paulson was asked about the impact of this plan on the foreclosure problem during his testimony in the Senate. "I would say regrettably not every homeowner is going to save their home, as you well know," he replied.

And then he went on to say what was more important was making financing available so that lenders could keep on lending.