No Immediate Action On Bailout Bill As Lawmakers Observe Jewish Holiday

September 30, 2008 7:20 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Congress begins a two-day break on Tuesday for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, just a day after its failure to pass a $700 billion legislation bailing out Wall Street shook financial markets around the world.

A group of both Democrats and Republicans rejected a measure that had caused a presidential candidate to suspend his campaign, negotiations essentially boycotted by the House GOP, and a high-level meeting of lawmakers and President George W. Bush to end in a "shouting match"

The vote on Monday after a weekend of intense negotiations that had House Republicans finally backing a revised bill, saw only 4 of the 19 congressmen from the President's home state support the measure. Overall, only 65 Republicans voted for the bill, despite an appeal from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) for support.

Boehner went into the vote expecting at least 75 votes from his caucus, according to The Hill. He later told CBS's Katie Couric that he was looking to persuade 12 Republicans on the floor that day to vote for the bill, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) speech before the vote accusing the Bush administration's failed economic policies for the collapse of Wall Street pushed those congressmen to vote no. A total of 133 Republicans voted to kill the bill.

"You have to understand that you've got members on both sides of the aisle who are getting thousands of calls from their constituents saying don't ever vote for this," Boehner said of the vote. "Now, I believe that it's in the best interest of our country to pass this bill. And I've worked overtime over the last ten days to try to find a way to ... have this package pass."

"We had about a dozen members that we thought we could bring along on the floor... but after what I thought was a rather partisan speech given the nature of this bill and how we've worked in a bipartisan way, it really killed our chances to get any of those dozen members to actually come our way and vote for the bill," he added.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), chairman of the 100-member Republican Study Committee, also voted against the bill.

Democrats, who had 140 members from its 235-strong caucus supporting the bill, admonished Republicans for over promising enough votes.

The Dow dropped nearly 700 points as fears roiled Wall Street while lawmakers voted. World markets later fell as concerns about the U.S. economy gripped investors.

There are reportedly plans to craft a new bill, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he will continue to work with lawmakers to find a way forward. But his agency and the Federal Reserve has had to find alternatives to try to stabilize the nation's financial markets, using emergency authorities such as an additional $150 billion emergency loan to banks.