NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A key House committee took up in earnest Wednesday proposed solutions to the housing crisis as the White House floated an idea to expand a program to help homeowners in the hopes of warding off more stringent legislation.

The hearing of the House Financial Services Committee highlights the fault lines in the ongoing debate over how far government should go to ease the mortgage crisis.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Housing counselors are often the last and best line of defense for borrowers facing foreclosure, and the $15 billion housing rescue bill now before the Senate allocates $100 million for foreclosure prevention counseling.

More funding is certainly good news for people like Jim Carr, chief operating officer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a non-profit neighborhood advocacy group. He'll use any windfall from this bill to hire more counselors who can hammer out solutions for desperate homeowners and lenders trying to minimize their losses.

But most housing advocates agree that cash isn't the biggest obstacle to achieving this goal - lender cooperation is. "The counselors are working as hard as they can," Carr said, "but the servicers are not cooperating."

Many lenders and servicers are still reluctant to make the major modifications to loans that most at-risk borrowers would require in order to keep up with their payments according to Bruce Marks, CEO of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA).