WASHINGTON —  A program President Bush is expanding to help struggling homeowners head off foreclosure has helped only 1 percent of the borrowers it originally set out to assist and is expected to reach just 100,000 more by the end of the year.

The administration claims the initiative has reached 60 times more homeowners and will help a half a million by year's end.

Rushing to counter Democratic calls for a broad housing rescue to help between 1 million and 2 million people avoid losing their homes, the Bush administration announced Wednesday it will expand a Federal Housing Administration program to allow more homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments refinance into more affordable government-insured loans.

However, that program, created in August 2007 and called FHASecure, has helped fewer than 2,500 such borrowers to date _ a tiny fraction of the 240,000 the administration first projected, and the 150,000 the White House now claims.

The numbers are important because Bush and congressional Democrats are clashing over how broad a government response is needed to address the housing crisis that may have more than 2 million Americans staring at foreclosure this year.

Both sides are coalescing around the idea of having the FHA step in to help more homeowners refinance into government-backed loans, but there remains a wide gulf over how many people should be eligible _ and how much taxpayer money should be put at risk.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the House Financial Services Committee chairman, is pushing a measure under which the FHA would insure $300 billion in restructured loans, while Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., the Senate Banking Committee chairman, wants the agency to back $400 billion. They say their plans would reach between 1 million and 2 million homeowners.

THE SPIN:

The Bush administration said last August that FHASecure would help nearly a quarter of a million homeowners refinance and keep their homes. Bush said in a March 29 radio address that it had helped 130,000 homeowners, and a White House fact sheet the next week claimed it had reached 140,000.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino used the 150,000 figure with reporters Wednesday. FHA Commissioner Brian D. Montgomery, announcing an expansion of the program, used the same number before the House Financial Services Committee.

Those figures, however, include all homeowners who have refinanced into mortgages insured by the FHA since last September, many of whom would have been eligible to do so before the program was created.

"A large number of the other people who have been helped are people who were not in trouble yet, and they sought help," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. "The point we're making is, it's a good thing they did."

THE FACTS:

The number of delinquent borrowers who benefited from the changes announced last year _ people with good credit, some equity in their homes and a history of making their mortgage payments, but who were in default because of rate hikes _ was much smaller.

Steve O'Halloran, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said the administration was attributing all FHA refinances to the program because its announcement last year boosted the number of families seeking the agency's help before their mortgage rates reset.

"A large majority of the 150,000 homeowners who have benefited since September are people who are current on their loans. We see that, obviously, as a good thing. They were coming to us before they got themselves into any kind of financial trouble," O'Halloran said.

Under new rules announced Wednesday, Montgomery said FHA would further relax its standards to open FHASecure to as many as 100,000 more troubled borrowers, including those who were late on two or three mortgage payments.

The administration's projection that the program would help 500,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure by the end of 2008, O'Halloran said, includes about 100,000 borrowers who would benefit from the economic aid package enacted in February. That bill temporarily increased the loan amount FHA could insure in areas with the highest housing costs.

Frank, who says he is disappointed in the FHA program's reach, said it is difficult to project how many homeowners will benefit from any government rescue, including his own proposal.

"We don't know how many people are going to be helped," Frank said. "You work out as good of a program as you can get. How many people it can help, nobody can tell for sure in advance. I think ours would help more."

Democrats' more ambitious plan would open the government to excessive risk, Fratto said.

"There's a huge difference between stepping into the shallow end of the pool and diving into the deep end of the pool," Fratto said. "The taxpayer is going to have a lot more exposure in the deep end of the pool, and that's where Chairman Frank is taking us."

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