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The House passed the economic rescue package, with some additional Republican votes but even more new Democratic votes, after Barack Obama assured these members that there were provisions in the bill that would allow him to help homeowners and give money back to taxpayers, should he become President.

On the campaign trail, Obama ended his comments on the bill with this: "And the final thing is understanding even if this rescue package works exactly as it should, it’s only the beginning, it’s not the end. Because we still have 150,000 new people who lost their jobs this month, 750,000 since the beginning of this year. We still have a healthcare system that’s broken, we’re still overly reliant on oil from the Middle East and so we’ve still got these structural problems; the fundamentals of the economy aren’t sound and we’re going to have to do a lot of work moving forward.

So if we can stop the bleeding with this package, implement it effectively, and then move forward to deal with the broader problems on Main Street, then hopefully we can get our economy back on track."