Some of House GOP to Grudgingly Go Along

A 110-page bailout bill, negotiated by Congress under the glare of global investors and an election-year spotlight, will come up for a vote in the House Monday. A week into wrestling over how to save the financial sector from a meltdown while simultaneously shielding themselves from the political fallout of an unpopular bill, negotiators settled on plan they claim includes increased oversight, limited CEO pay for participating companies, an insurance option as an alternative to buying toxic assets, and less pork than previously considered versions.

Democrats patted themselves and each other on the backs generously Sunday as they announced the accord in a press conference about as charismatic and crowd-pleasing as open-mic night at the morgue. It's leadership like this that leads a party to nominate the junior senator from Illinois for President.

At least some House Republicans, particularly conservatives, who had been the hold-outs on a deal until Sunday, sounded poised to cast their votes for the bill.

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly called the bill a "crap sandwich" twice during a final meeting of House Republicans on the subject, but said he'd vote for it on the floor.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a prominent opponent of the bill made a similar argument in the same meeting:

"It sucks," he said before saying it has to be passed to stave off collapse of the financial system.

Other former opponents said to be backing the new version of the bill are Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Rep. Eric Cantor, (R-Va.) The former negotiated on behalf of the House GOP and the latter was a lead proponent of the insurance option central to the GOP's alternative plan, which was eventually included in the final bill language.

The GOP's press release on the final version of the bill says this about the insurance option included: "Treasury is mandated (Section 102) to establish an insurance program and set risk-based premiums. This will protect taxpayers by requiring the beneficiaries of the insurance program to pay risk-based premiums."

But the bill language seems only to require the establishment of the insurance program, which Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and participating companies would then have the option to employ or not. Though on the surface it seems a good development that the House GOP's insurance option was included, it's unclear to me why Paulson would choose to use it when he's publicly expressed doubts about its efficacy or why companies would opt into it instead of just getting bought out by Paulson. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm no expert on the insurance plan or the bill language, but that's what I gathered from my read-through.)

Other members expressed less antipathy and more urgency:

"If we don't pass it, we shouldn't be in Congress," snapped Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the lead negotiator for Senate Republicans.

John McCain and Barack Obama are still undecided about whether they'll be back in the Capitol to vote for the bill when it comes to the Senate on Wednesday, but urged the bill's passage by the House. Obama somewhat mischaracterized the conflict as one between Congress and the White House (about a week past that, Barry!), no doubt in an effort to meet his personal goal of fitting either the word "administration" or "Bush" into every single campaign statement of the year:

"The breakthrough between Congress and the administration is the culmination of a sorry period in our history, in which reckless speculation and greed on Wall Street and lax oversight from Washington led to a meltdown of our financial markets," Obama said. "But regardless of how we got here, a failure to deal with the current crisis would have devastating consequences for our economy, costing millions of Americans their jobs and retirement security."