While lawmakers and the president scrap over deficit reduction and jobs plans, they're largely overlooking one of the biggest drags on employment and a major cause of our national economic woes: the moribund housing sector.

There's a growing cry in economic circles for new steps to revive this sector, which year after year has been the subject of optimistic predictions about soon hitting a bottom that turns out to be, so far, bottomless.

New housing starts are hovering at 475,000 to 690,000 a year since the financial crisis exploded in late 2008. That's the slowest pace since record-keeping began in 1959, and a fraction of the 2.1 million homes built annually in boom times.

The number of existing homes for sale nationwide at the end of July stood at 3.65 million, according to the National Association of Realtors. That represents 9.4 months' supply at the current sales pace, an improvement from the record 4.58 million homes for sale in July 2008, but still a huge overhang of unsold homes.

On top of that, there are now about 800,000 lender-owned properties nationwide. Another 800,000 homes are in some stage of the foreclosure process, according to the foreclosure-research group RealtyTrac. There also are a staggering 3.5 million delinquent mortgages that aren't yet in the foreclosure process but are likely to wind up there.

Mortgage rates are at lows not seen in six decades, yet few Americans can take advantage of them because anywhere from a quarter to a third of the homes that have mortgages are now worth less than the notes they carry.

Housing remains a whopping problem, and it's inseparable from the high jobless rate of 9.1 percent.

Experts want additional measures from the federal government. One idea involves pressing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to convert their inventory of foreclosed homes into rental properties. The idea is to reduce the number of distressed sales that are crowding out conventional home sales and driving down prices. It also would boost property tax revenues for state and local governments.