Frank blames House GOP for breakdown of deal

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., left, and Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., speak to reporters after a meeting with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson on the financial crisis, on 25 September 2008; on Capitol Hill in Washington.

26 September 2008

By CHARLES BABINGTON

The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee declared Friday that an agreement on legislation to relieve a spreading financial crisis depends on House Republicans "dropping this revolt" against President Bush.

Rep. Barney Frank said leading Democrats on Capitol Hill were shocked by the level of divisiveness that surfaced at a White House meeting Thursday, not long after key congressional players of both parties declared they'd achieved the broad outlines of an agreement on a bill implementing the administration's proposed $700 billion bailout plan.

Bush planned another public statement on the situation from the White House Friday morning. He had delivered a speech to the nation Wednesday night urging support for the plan, but members of Congress say they've been hearing a lot of opposition from constituents to a public-financed bailout.

Frank said he did not think that Democrats were going to see a substantially different proposal from the plan the administration has been trying to sell to lawmakers and which had been the focal point of closed-door talks for days. He called the rival proposal being pushed by House conservative Republicans "an ambush plan."

Participants in a meeting late Thursday afternoon that Bush had at the White House with congressional leaders and presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama said it descended into arguments. The disagreements were so deep-seated that some lawmakers wondered aloud just who — and how many — would show up for the resumption of talks later Friday morning at the Capitol.

"I didn't know I was going to be the referee for an internal GOP ideological civil war," Frank, D-Mass., said on CBS's "The Early Show."

McCain headed to the Capitol Friday after Democrats put responsibility on him and Bush for getting House Republicans back into the negotiations.

Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who appeared on the same show, said many GOP lawmakers dislike the proposal that has been pushed on the administration's behalf principally by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

"Basically, I believe the Paulson proposal is badly structured," Shelby said. "It does nothing basically for the stressed mortgage payer. It does a lot for three or four or five banks . ... "

The political infighting happened even as Washington Mutual Inc., one of the country's largest banks, collapsed under the weight of its bad bets on the mortgage market. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized WaMu on Thursday, and then sold the thrift's banking assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion.

As if that wasn't enough bad news, the Commerce Department reported Friday that the spring rebound the economy enjoyed earlier wasn't as healthy as first thought. The gross domestic product, or GDP, increased at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the April-June period, not as good as the 3.3 percent growth rate first reported a month ago.

Even for a party whose president suffers dismal approval ratings, whose legislative wing lost control of Congress and whose presidential nominee trails in the polls, Thursday was a remarkably bad day for Republicans.

The White House summit meeting had been called for the purpose of sealing the deal that Bush has argued is indispensable to stabilizing frenzied markets and reassuring the nervous American public. But it quickly revealed that Bush's proposal had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and most House Democrats.

Paulson begged Democratic participants not to disclose how badly the meeting had gone, dropping to one knee in a teasing way to make his point according to witnesses.

And when Paulson hastily tried to revive talks in a nighttime meeting near the Senate chamber, the House's top Republican refused to send a negotiator.

"This is the president's own party," Frank said at the time. "I don't think a president has been repudiated so strongly by the congressional wing of his own party in a long time."

The presence of McCain and Obama at the White House session indeed lent a greater aura of urgency — and personal intensity — to the discussion.

McCain's leadership in the negotiations "is to try to stop us from yelling at each other, announcing deals that don't exist, to actually talk to the House and the Senate and get agreement and then go to the press," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on NBC's "Today" show.

What caught some by surprise, either at the White House meeting or shortly before it, was the sudden momentum behind a dramatically different plan drafted by House conservatives with Minority Leader John Boehner's blessing.

Instead of the government buying the distressed securities, the new plan would have banks, financial firms and other investors that hold such loans pay the Treasury to insure them. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a chief sponsor, said it was clear that Bush's plan "was not going to pass the House."

But Democrats said the same was true of the conservatives' plan. It calls for tax cuts and insurance provisions the majority party will not accept, they said.

At one point in the White House meeting, according to two officials, McCain voiced support for Ryan's criticisms of the administration's proposal. Frank, a gruff Massachusetts liberal, angrily demanded to know what plan McCain favored.

These officials also said that as tempers flared, Bush struggled at times to maintain control.

At one point, several minutes into the session, Obama said it was time to hear from McCain. According to a Republican who was there, "all he said was, 'I support the principles that House Republicans are fighting for.'"

Some at the table took that to mean the conservatives' alternative proposal, which stands little chance of passage.