The Big Deal

In a brief speech on the Senate floor, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said: “It’s not just going to be Wall Street. The chairman of the Federal Reserve has told us if the credit lockup continues, three million to four million Americans will lose their jobs in the next six months.”

This quote from a Sunday NY Times story signals what Americans are going to hear as a bail-out agreement is expected to be announced Sunday, and the House is expected to vote on a bill Monday, then the Senate. Administration and Congressional negotiators said that there are no major outstanding issues. But just how much CEO pay will be restricted, for example, or how much help there will be for those facing housing foreclosures, won't be known until the bill is written.

But negotiators felt it was necessary to get this done before the Asian markets open Monday. House Republicans, who stopped a deal on Thursday, are said to be on board now. Senators Obama and McCain had input and were kept informed by phone.

Still ahead however is selling the deal to individual members of Congress, and to the deeply skeptical American people.

Update: It took until Sunday night for House Republicans to sign on, but they finally did. They were careful not to call the plan a bail-out, but a working out of the problem. Just as House Speaker Pelosi described it not as a bail-out but a buy-in. Members of Congress are digesting the more than 100 pages of the final bill, while their leaders are counting votes. More will be known about that tomorrow.

2nd Update: The first of many economic analyses in the New York Times.