No, the Mortgage Tax Deduction is one of the reasons people actually purchse homes.
Rent is pissing away money, while owning a home builds equity. (Granted, you'll spend far more money on the mortgage itself, maintenance, upkeep, etc.. than you'll ever get back from the sale price when you sell, but the fact is some of that "equity" comes back.)
If you kill the mortgage tax deduction you'll kill what little here is left of a housing industry in this country. Homes won't sell, or they'll have to sell at greatly deflated prices in order to move.
There's also the fact that new home sales generate somewhere between 3-5 long term jobs, so by killing the mortgage interest deduction, you're driving unemployment up as well.
As for me, I don't really give a hoot what they do. My house has long been paid for, when I move I'll pay cash for my next one (downsizing.) Just saying, you eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction and you kill the housing sector and the larger economy overall. Guarantee that.
Thinking like yours is what gets people buried in student loan debt.
You have to do cost/benefit analysis based on local conditions at a given point in time.
Sometimes renting makes total sense, especially if you are only going to live in an area for a few years. Buying a house also restricts your flexibility in being able to easily move to a new area where you can earn more money should an opportunity arise.
And your idea that the purpose of owning a home is to generate jobs is dimwitted union goon thinking.
I don’t think going to a tax situation which would allow potential home owners to only have to earn the purchase price of the home in order to make that purchase is going to hurt the real estate market in any shape form or fashion! In fact, I think quite the opposite would happen!
Please see the White Paper linked to below.
http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/PromotingHomeOwnership.pdf