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That's why you need to be more sneaky about it.

In Denmark you used to be able to deduct interest 100% as far as I'm aware. According to

http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentefradrag

it's then been gradually decreased from 73% in 1987 to 32% in 2001. And there's a plan to decrease it further, although it is, as you point it, a really hot topic every time it comes up - "driving people from their homes" and similar headlines.

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I should perhaps add that in Denmark there's an academic economic elite of researchers (with titles as "wise men", no kidding) that get a lot of attention from the press, and since the set of people elected to the parliament in many cases have a Master's degree in economic or state science where these people teach, their advice is taken really seriously.

For instance, the current government which is nominally social-democratic did some pretty serious cuts to various tax-funded welfare programmes, on the advice of the wise men, to the dismay of their voters.

We don't have group like that in the US. I'm not sure it would matter even if we did.

Oh, but the funded think-tanks?

Nobody cares what they think, really. They get quoted because the media has to have something to write about.

I suspect property values would drop if they removed the exemption, which would make a whole lot of people very unhappy.

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