Senate passes sweetened $700B market bailout

After one spectacular failure, the $700 billion financial industry bailout found a second life Wednesday, winning lopsided passage in the Senate and gaining ground in the House, where Republicans opposition softened.

Senators loaded the economic rescue bill with tax breaks and other sweeteners before passing it by a wide margin, 74-25, a month before the presidential and congressional elections.

In the House, leaders were working feverishly to convert enough opponents of the bill to push it through by Friday, just days after lawmakers there stunningly rejected an earlier version and sent markets plunging around the globe.

Both of Minnesota's senators, Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Amy Klobuchar, voted for the bailout, arguing that Congress has no choice but to act.

Coleman, who is locked in a tough re-election campaign, says the bill is about making sure that capital is available. Without it, he said, loans for college, cars and homes would become nearly impossible to obtain.

And Coleman said that the bill protects taxpayers and holds Wall Street accountable, with tough oversight protections.

Coleman's DFL challenger, Al Franken, said the bill must include steps to guarantee transparency and oversight in the marketplace. Franken did not say how he would vote on the bill.

Klobuchar said she supported the bailout "with many reservations."

"I do not support it to rescue Wall Street," Klobuchar said. "I support it to protect Main Street by averting an economic catastrophe that would otherwise force millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings."

The measure didn't cause the same uproar in the Senate, where both parties' presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, made rare appearances to cast "aye" votes.

In the final vote, 40 Democrats, 33 Republicans and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted "yes." Nine Democrats, 15 Republicans and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont voted "no."

The rescue package lets the government spend billions of dollars to buy bad mortgage-related securities and other devalued assets held by troubled financial institutions. If successful, advocates say, that would allow frozen credit to begin flowing again and prevent a deep recession.

Even as the Senate voted, House leaders were hunting for the 12 votes they would need to turn around Monday's 228-205 defeat. They were especially targeting the 133 Republicans who voted "no."

Their opposition appeared to be easing after the Senate added $110 billion in tax breaks for businesses and the middle class, plus a provision to raise, from $100,000 to $250,000, the cap on federal deposit insurance.

They were also cheering a decision Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission to ease rules that force companies to devalue assets on their balance sheets to reflect the price they can get on the market.

There were worries, though, that the tax breaks would cause some conservative-leaning Democrats who voted for the rescue Monday to abandon it because it would swell the federal deficit.

"I'm concerned about that," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the majority leader.

As revised by the Senate, the package extends several tax breaks popular with businesses. It would keep the alternative minimum tax from hitting 20 million middle-income Americans and provide $8 billion in tax relief for those hit by natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana.

It doesn't designate a way to pay for many of the tax cuts, though, angering the House's band of conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats.

Leaders in both parties, as well as private economic chiefs everywhere, said Congress must quickly approve some version of the bailout measure to start loans flowing and stave off a potential national economic disaster.

"This is what we need to do right now to prevent the possibility of a crisis turning into a catastrophe," Obama said on the Senate floor. In Missouri, before flying to Washington to vote, McCain said, "If we fail to act, the gears of our economy will grind to a halt."

Critics on the right and left assailed the rescue plan, which has been panned by their constituents as a giveaway for Wall Street, and has little obvious direct benefit for ordinary Americans.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., a leading conservative, said the step was "leading us into the pit of socialism."

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who's a self-described socialist, said the rescue was fundamentally unfair.

"The masters of the universe, those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse," Sanders said, and are demanding that the middle class "pick up the pieces that they broke."

Still, proponents argued that the financial sector's woes were already being felt by ordinary people in the form of unaffordable credit and underperforming retirement savings and without the bailout would soon translate into even more economic pain for working Americans, including more job losses.

"There will be no balloons or bunting or parades," when the rescue becomes law, said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman. But lawmakers will have "the knowledge that at one of our nation's moments of maximum economic peril, we acted - not for the benefit of a particular few, but for all Americans."

The Senate specializes in high-stakes legislating by enticement, and the long list of sweeteners it added was designed to attract votes from various constituencies.

Tax cuts new and old are favorites for most House Republicans, the main target of intense lobbying to gain support for the measure. Help for rural schools was aimed mainly at lawmakers in the West, while disaster aid was a top priority for lawmakers from across the Midwest and South.

Another addition, to extend the deductibility of state and local taxes for people in states without income taxes, helps Florida and Texas, among others.

Increasing the deposit insurance cap was a bid to reassure individuals and small businesses that their money would be safe in the event their banks collapsed. It was particularly geared toward small banks that fear customers will pull their money and park it in larger institutions seen as less likely to fold.

The FDIC would be allowed to borrow unlimited money from the Treasury Department through the end of next year as a way to cover the increased insurance limit. If used, it would be the first time the agency has tapped Treasury for a loan since the early 1990s.

Raising the limit - along with the SEC's decision to ease accounting rules on valuing assets - helped House Republicans claim credit for some substantive changes.

And with constituent feedback changing dramatically since Monday's shocking House defeat and the corresponding market plunge, lawmakers' comfort level with the package increased markedly.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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