Rep. Maxine Waters’ housing finance reform legislation may go nowhere in the House, but parts of it could be taken up by members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee who so far have not signed on with the bipartisan reform bill that’s to be marked up at the end of April. The California Democrat’s bill differs from the Senate bill in two key ways: it requires that the private market take a smaller first-loss position in a future government-insured program for mortgage-backed securities, and it sets up a lender-owned cooperative as the sole issuer of the new MBS. The bill pushed by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, would require...