Democrats may be risking a backlash at the polls in November by pushing hard to use taxpayer money to rescue homeowners who can no longer afford their mortgages in the face of stiff resistance from President Bush and many other Republicans.

The Democrats in Congress and the party's presidential candidates frame the issue as doing at least as much for beleaguered homeowners as the government is doing for Wall Street. The White house and most House Republicans counter this amounts to using taxpayer money to reward bad behavior.

The Republican protests are striking a chord with some Americans who are paying their mortgages on time or who didn't buy more house than they can afford.

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President Bush is vowing to veto a bill the House passed last week -- with the support of 39 Republicans, about a fifth of their ranks -- that would, among other things, allow certain homeowners to refinance loans through a government agency if their lenders agree to take less than the full amount borrowed.

The Senate is expected to take up the issue this week. Although Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, advocates government-backed mortgages for some homeowners, he laces his campaign rhetoric with a "no bailouts" mantra.

The public is split. "If you're the Secretary of Bailouts, and people come in and show you that they're worthy of being helped out, everybody will have a story," says Robert Krance, 64 years old, a Houston physician and McCain backer. "I don't know how you can create a reasonable, enforceable method for deciding who should be helped."

A hands-off approach by the government is "the right thing to do," agrees Jeff Cohu, a 40-year-old professor attending a McCain rally last week. "The market will readjust faster and better than the government could."

A Gallup Poll in late March found that 56% of Americans favor government intervention to prevent people from losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages, while 42% oppose it. The partisan divide was sharp: 58% of Republicans opposed intervention; 71% of Democrats and 55% of independents supported the idea.

Even some voters who support a government rescue are uneasy about haste. "I don't think we can just stay hands-off," says Walt King, a mechanical engineer from Downers Grove, Ill. "The people who got sucked into this are not capable of making calculations about whether they could afford this." But Mr. King, 62, who says he is likely to vote for Sen. Barack Obama, is wary of a rushed political response. "I don't know what the answer is," he said. "The election year is not a year to pray for objectivity."

Democrats are tapping into the widespread belief that the banks are being treated better than ordinary Americans. Lucy Anguino-Perez, 76, interviewed at a rally at which Sen. Hillary Clinton reiterated her call to suspend foreclosures for a time, says, "Give the people a break." The Griffith, Ind., retiree adds, "We're the ones that are paying the taxes, and all these guys who are sitting up there on the first floor, the top floor, they're the ones who are getting the benefit."

At least some McCain supporters agree. Says Scott Downing, 39, a McCain supporter from Michigan: "If you can bail out banks for billons of dollars, you can set up a program on a family-by-family basis."

But some Republican strategists say Democrats may misread the public. "There will be massive public opinion on the side of helping the single mom who got swindled," says Republican consultant Todd Harris. "But at the same time, there will be massive voter retribution against any plan that is perceived to bail out greedy and unscrupulous speculators and mortgage companies."

Keith Hennessey, a top economic-policy adviser to President Bush, says "gut-level public opinion" backs the White House. The reaction of people who are making mortgage payments on time, he says, is: "Hey, wait a second, why are you helping him when I'm making hard choices every single month to stay current on my mortgage?"

The line was drawn sharply in last week's House debate. Rep. Tom Feeney (R., Fla.) said less than 1% of homeowners would get help while the rest "will pay the price of this bill."

Rep Feeney said, "This bill is a bailout -- from American taxpayers -- of speculators and imprudent borrowers." Among the winners, he said, are lenders who would otherwise lose the entire value of a loan and people who put no money down to get a home.

Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), who wrote the legislation, and other Democratic lawmakers insisted the bill nicks both sides. Said Rep. Jim Marshall (D., Ga.), "The deals that the borrowers get are not particularly good. The deals that the lenders get are not particularly good.... In my view, it's a bailout for the entire economy and all of these people that have been dragged into it."

Austan Goolsbee, one of Sen. Obama's economic advisers, says the campaign weighed the downsides of rewarding bad behavior against the economic harm risked by inaction. "That's not a political calculation, that's very much the economically valid thing to do," he says. The issue, he added, is the threat that dropping home prices pose to the entire economy. Framed that way, Mr. Goolsbee said, voters are "much more amenable" to government intervention to "prevent something that's outside of people's control."

Nearly all pending proposals purport to aid the deserving -- usually defined as families who own their own homes and have a shot at paying a reduced mortgage -- and shun speculators and those who lied on their loan applications. Sen. McCain made "a very conscious decision not to throw money at Wall Street or people flipping second homes," said his economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "You don't want to reward bad behavior."

Goldman Sachs's Alec Phillips wrote in a note to clients: "Politicians may feel it is better to be safe than sorry. While many Republicans feel there is more political benefit to voting against a 'bailout,' there is a clear danger in blocking legislation that aims to stabilize the housing and mortgage markets when it seems clear that prices will continue to decline."

--Matt Phillips and Nick Timiraos contributed to this article.

Write to Sudeep Reddy at sudeep.reddy@wsj.com and Elizabeth Holmes at elizabeth.holmes@wsj.com

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