US House leaders vow to try again on bailout

29 September 2008 21:18  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--US House Republican and Democrat leaders blamed each other on Monday for defeat of the $700bn (€476bn) financial bailout plan but vowed to work together to try to find a proposal that will get congressional approval.

 

The bailout package that was hammered together over the weekend and backed by President George Bush and top leaders of both parties in Congress was nonetheless defeated in a 228-205 vote in the House on Monday.

 

Congressman John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader in the House, said that “We will recommit to find a rescue measure that the House can support”.

 

“I have concerns about what this means for the US economy and for jobs,” Boehner said of the defeated rescue plan.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) said that “the bill has been defeated, and the crisis is still with us”.

 

“We know how serious this is for the American middle class and for our country as a whole,” she said.

 

While she blamed Republicans in the House for the bailout plan’s defeat, she said Democrats would again “extend a hand to the White House to work anew on a solution”.

 

“We must work in a bipartisan manner in order to have another bite at the apple” and come up with a better rescue plan, she said.

 

Pelosi accused Republicans in the House of failing to deliver half of their members’ votes for the package, noting that 60% of House Democrats voted for the bailout plan.

 

Among Democrats, 140 voted in support of the massive rescue plan while 95 voted against it.

 

A majority of Republicans - 133 to 65 - voted against the measure. One Republican member did not cast a vote.

 

But Boehner cast blame on Pelosi, charging that a last-minute speech by the speaker on the House floor was unnecessarily partisan and caused several Republican members to abandon the bill.

 

Despite the cross-party accusations, Boehner and Congressman Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking Republican in the House, also promised to work with their Democrat counterparts to come up with a new rescue bill.

 

Blunt said that Congress “will have to see how we can come together in the next few days to see if we can come to a bill that will get the support of the House and avoid a financial collapse in this country”.

 

But as Wall Street markets plummeted in the wake of the bailout plan’s defeat, Boehner said: “I’m not sure we know the path forward at this point.”

 

($1 = €.68)

 

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By: Joe Kamalick
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