So, What's Next?

With the leadership on both sides of the House aisle stinging and slinging mud at each other, what comes next? Tuesday will be committed to the Jewish holiday so there won't be any business in either house of Congress, though I wouldn't be surprised to hear that non-Jewish members of leadership will be meeting and planning.

Some are suggesting that the Democrats, angry at GOP Republicans for failing to support the bill at the levels the Democrats needed to pass it, will come back with a bill filled with all the ACORN and other crap that the GOP negotiated out of it. Larry Kudlow has some thoughts on that:

A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House.

As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson’s advice and sign that kind of legislation.

Two-thirds of the House GOP just shot San Fran Nan the bird before the current bill was defeated. If a bill like the one described above were to be offered, you could increase the bird quotient to about 90%. She would have to get nearly every Dem to pass that bill.

So, what if that happened? Jim Geraghty thinks there could be some benefits:

If House Democrats want to pass a left-wing, ACORN-heavy, union-proxies, salary-setting bill, fine. Let Senate Democrats pass that one, too. Let Barack Obama go on record in favor of it.

At the heart, the rescue plan is a phenomenally unpopular proposal that is necessary to avert disaster that, for some reason, the public doesn't quite think is real yet.

Let the Democrats pass the bill and let the unpopular Bush sign it. The Republicans running for House and Senate — and McCain, for that matter — can denounce it until their throats are hoarse every day from now until Election Day. Every voter will no that at a moment when most Americans were struggling, the Democrats voted along party lines to "bail out Wall Street."

The bailout might save Wall Street, and ensure a Republican tsunami on Election Day to strip out the worst parts of the bill in 2009...

This bill and subsequent vote has left some very bitter feelings on both sides. I'm not sure there's a compromise possible that is capable of generating a true bipartisan vote. All of the Dems facing a tough reelection in November voted against this bill, so how will Pelosi get them to sign on without losing more Republicans?

Good luck with all that.

There is one other possibility. If the markets stabilize over the next couple of days the urgency to pass a huge expensive piece of legislation may abate. I don't think that's real likely, but I've been surprised before as this whole thing has developed.