The subprime mortgage crisis, along with the related foreclosure fallout, made news on several fronts this week.

Congress is busy trying to craft a compromise plan to stem foreclosures and allow some struggling borrowers to remain in their homes with modified loans. Critics contend that Congress is mostly motivated by election-year pressure to do something to ease the widespread pain brought about by the steep decline of the housing market in some areas of the country.

And many critics of the pending legislation in Congress believe that the mortgage, banking and investment industries are behind elements of the plan that amount to a bailout of some of the lenders who were key players in creating the current mortgage crisis.

There is evidence to support critics' claims that Congress' goal is to bail out big-business interests in the mortgage lending and investment industries, while trying to characterize the plan as help aimed at presumably innocent homeowners caught up in the sudden housing and economic downturn.

If Congress is mostly putting together a bailout for big financial companies that puts $300 billion of taxpayers' funds at risk, then taxpayers' interests are not being served.

The broader interests of taxpayers will, however, be served if those people responsible for creating the housing speculation bubble are prosecuted.

Last week, news reports revealed that two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers were charged with lying to investors. Prosecutors say they have e-mail evidence that one Bear Stearns manager pulled $2 million of his own money out of a hedge fund while at the same time urging other investors to remain in the fund.

On the same day that the Bear Stearns executives were being charged, the Justice Department in Washington announced that 400 people had been indicted as a result of a federal probe into the subprime mortgage scandal. Sixty of those arrests took place last week and they ranged from mortgage brokers to investment managers.

This week, the Illinois attorney general announced that the state's investigation into the business practices of Countrywide Financial Corp., the lead player in subprime lending, has led to a civil suit. The company's chief executive officer, Angelo Mozilo, also will be charged.

Illinois will allege that Countrywide engaged in "unfair and deceptive practices" in the sale of mortgage loans.

California's attorney general also filed suit against Countrywide this week, charging the company targeted people with poor credit and sold them expensive and risky adjustable-rate mortgages.

Countrywide also is the target of federal investigators looking into possible securities fraud. And the federal Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the timing of Mozilo's trades of the company's stock.

Countrywide also is the target of lawsuits by some former employees and shareholders as well as some individual homeowners.

With the extensive legal and federal investigatory pressures mounting on Countrywide, other mortgage lenders and investment bankers, there can be growing confidence that justice will be done — and the guilty will pay.

There is plenty of evidence that greed drove many people, from individual mortgage brokers and mortgage company executives to WallStreet investment bankers, to sell mortgages to people who lacked the ability to repay, and on properties that were vastly overvalued. Tales of loan documentation containing outright lies, or loans simply missing critical documentation, are widespread. Clearly, many brokers were motivated by their bonus opportunities rather than doing right by the potential borrower and seeking to minimize risk for borrows and lenders alike. And bankers higher up the food chain saw securitized mortgages as just another creative way to make bigger profits by selling them to investors.

The giant house of cards that was the real estate gold rush has come crashing down, and it is important that those who were enriched by fraud, and those who engaged in illegal and dishonest business practices, pay the price — by being forced to return their tainted financial gains and by paying hefty penalties. Many of them also should spend time in jail.

But while justice might be coming for some brokers, bankers and investment managers, some of their corporate employers appear to be getting help from Congress in the form of a federal housing bailout package.

Granted, arguments can be made that many innocent people are being harmed by the collapsing housing market in some areas of the country. But despite a number of restrictions included in the bills being considered in Congress this week, there remains much speculation that companies like Countrywide had a hand in crafting the legislation now under consideration in Congress.

Taxpayers, whose money will fund a bailout and support for the riskiest mortgages, should put pressure on Congress to strip away as much of the bailout component as possible before the housing legislation is passed.