Two Washington insiders, speaking during the National Association of Realtors midyear conference last week, said the debate over changes to the mortgage interest deduction is largely for show, and that major changes are unlikely.

The mortgage interest deduction is a “sacred cow that has been under attack for years,” but support for housing and the MID remains strong on Capitol Hill, said Paul Equale of Equale & Associates.

NAR strongly opposes any changes to the mortgage interest deduction, saying such changes could  further depress home prices by up to 15 percent.”Controversial issues have a tendency to get teed up in election years,” the political consultant and former Democratic Party official said, and sometimes issues are put into play “for purely political purposes.”

But support for changing the MID is mostly confined to the far right and far left, Equale said, with those in the center wary of the claimed benefits of scaling it back.