WASHINGTON -- Banks and other lenders are still foreclosing on Americans' homes at a rate that's outpacing the Obama administration's main effort to stem the crisis.

In fact, while the Treasury Department's Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has started the mortgage modification process on almost 760,000 homeowners who are at risk of losing their homes, less than 5 percent of those workouts have become permanent, government data show.

"HAMP has made only limited progress for nine months now, and the residential foreclosure crisis continues to mount," said Richard Neiman, the superintendent of banks in New York state and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel that was formed to monitor the Treasury bank bailout funds that support the mortgage program. He was appointed to the post by the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives.

Another member of the oversight panel, U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and a critic of the bailout bill, called the mortgage program "a failure."

In a recent report, he said the administration's efforts "have assisted only a small number of homeowners while drawing billions of involuntary taxpayer dollars into a black hole." (Hensarling recently left the panel.)

The Treasury Department acknowledges that its program needs to do a better job of making hundreds of thousands of trial modifications permanent, but an official said the program is making progress and is on track to meet many of its goals.