Let's do the numbers on the House re-vote

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON -

An overwhelming Senate vote Wednesday night to pass the financial sector rescue bill set the stage for likely House passage of the measure on Friday.

"We need 100 Republican votes to pass this,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters at a Wednesday afternoon briefing. Tax cut and other provisions added to the rescue bill are likely to gain more House Republican support for it.

The Senate voted, 74-25, to pass the $700 billion bill, with both presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, on the Senate floor to cast “yes” votes.

Of the senators in competitive re-election races, only three voted “no.”

One of the “yes” votes, Sen. Gordon Smith, R- Ore., said as he walked on to the Senate floor shortly before the vote that he’d support the bill “not with a smile, but because our country needs this right now. I just got off the phone with our state treasurer, a Democrat, who was telling me what havoc it’s wreaking on many Oregon projects.”

The state was having increasing difficulty selling bonds for its construction projects, Smith said.

He added, “I’m hearing from small business, I’m hearing from retirees, and views on this are changing. Businesses in Oregon are being notified that their loans will not be renewed — and these are creditworthy businesses. And if we stand by and watch the obliteration of our financial system, shame on us.”

Smith said that his Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Jeff Merkely, “has been running ads against me for it,” but “I just think this is one of those moments when politics has to take a back seat to the needs of our country.”

He added, “Whether people recognize the emergency or not, they will soon, if we don’t act.”

'Politics be damned'
“This bill is not perfect, but this bill is what’s possible. This bill is something we have to do and the politics be damned,” the Oregon Republican said.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R- Ga., in a re-election battle with Democrat Jim Martin, was asked after his “yes” vote whether the bailout bill had become an issue in his campaign.

“I certainly hope so, because it's absolutely the right thing to do. We’ve got Georgia banks who are crimped from a credit standpoint and aren’t even able to make automobile loans today," Chambliss said. "We have major employers who are having their lines of credit cut or in some cases cancelled. And it's going to start costing us jobs.”

He added, “If my opponent wants to make an issue of it, we’ll look forward to it.”

He said people in his state “don’t have the full understanding” of the looming credit crisis, “but we’re going to be educating them.”

Another GOP senator in a competitive race, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman said after his “yes” vote, “It was the right thing to do. I think people put the interests of the American people above party politics. The calls were 100 to one against this. But it is the right thing.”

Coleman is running for a second term against Democrat Al Franken.

Coleman said the signs in Minnesota are worrisome. “The head of the state private college system in Minnesota was told today they may not be able to make payroll because they had their money in a money market fund that has been impacted by the Lehman Brothers situation. I talked to some small business people that are beginning to express concerns.”

Timeline Economy in turmoil A look at the events leading up to the mess on Wall Street.

He added, “my concern was that failure to act would have a series of repercussions internationally but all ultimately on people back on Paine Avenue in St. Paul. This is all about folks back home. They’re the ones who are going to be impacted by the inability to get credit.”

'I don't think the sky is falling'
But Sen. Roger Wicker, R- Miss., in a toss-up race with Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, said he voted ‘no” because “I don’t think the sky is falling.”

He asked reporters, “What was the rush? Why didn’t we have hearings? Why didn’t we use regular order? We were told two weeks ago that unless we acted immediately, within hours the sky was going to fall. Well, the sky didn’t fall. Even so, we have rushed this through. $700 billion, potentially, in liabilities to the taxpayer without hearings, without the opportunity for amendments in committee… on something of this magnitude, I think, is ill-advised.”

When the House votes again on the rescue plan Friday, it may be an anti-climax. Congressional leaders need just 12 more votes than they had at the beginning of the week for passage.

The first version of the bailout bill was rejected Monday on a 228-205 House vote. Sixty percent of the "no" votes came from Republicans.

Republican conservatives were strong enough to defeat Monday’s bill only because they had enough left-of-center, anti-Wall Street Democrats vote with them.

The House Republicans who voted “no” are a majority of their own caucus (133 out of 199 total) but aren’t numerous enough to defeat, or pass, anything by themselves.

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