It's Up To House After Senate Approves Bailout

Washington, DC, Oct. 2, 2008--The Senate, after adding tax breaks and other provisions to attract skeptical lawmakers, voted 74-25 last night to resurrect President Bush's $700 billion financial aid package for Wall Street.

Still, it remains to be seen whether the House will approve the larger package.

The vote came two days after the House rejected a similar bill, a move that triggered a record one-day plunge on Wall Street and upset world financial markets. Senate leaders from both parties pushed hard to craft the bill that Bush said he needed to avert an economic meltdown, hoping the incentives will change the minds of House members who voted no: fiscally conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.

"An end to the crisis is now in sight," declared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, after the vote.

"This is not a piece of legislation for lower Manhattan. It's a piece of legislation for all Americans," Reid said. US taxpayers "have a right to be frustrated with the economic crisis we face, and we share that with them. But inaction is not an option . . . It is my expectation the House of Representatives will follow suit."

But most congressional leaders, involved in their own series of intense negotiations, said it was impossible to predict what will happen Friday, when the House is expected to vote on the measure.

House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who has played a major role in negotiations about the bill, said he believed the Senate additions to the bill, including business and middle-class tax breaks, could convince some recalcitrant colleagues to vote yes. But some representatives, he said, could be swayed by their constituents' reaction to the stock market's plunge Monday, which damaged the economy and drained value from retirement accounts.

"People who are engaged in the economy are saying, `My God, you have to do this,' " he said.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, the top Republican in the House, said yesterday he was "optimistic that we will have the votes to pass this" but added after Monday's stunning defeat of the measure "I am not taking anything for granted."