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Bush team, Congress haggle over $700B bailout
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-23 22:18

WASHINGTON -- Strapped homeowners could get government help renegotiating their mortgages as part of the $700 billion financial bailout legislation taking shape in Congress.


A flag hangs outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York September 22, 2008. [Agencies]

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration are haggling over details of the massive rescue plan, including Democrats' demand that executives at failing financial firms that receive the government help can't get "golden parachutes" on their way out the door.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the architects of the bailout, were expected to face tough questions at a hearing Tuesday from lawmakers in both parties about the eye-popping cost, how the rescue would work and how taxpayers would be affected.

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Paulson was in talks with Democrats about their proposal that the government be able to purchase equity in faltering companies as part of the plan, so taxpayers could benefit from future profits.

The administration is balking at another key Democratic demand: allowing judges to rewrite bankrupt homeowners' mortgages so they could avoid foreclosure.

Congressional aides said the House could act on a bill Wednesday or Thursday, with the Senate following soon thereafter.

"We have gotten closer," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the House Financial Services Committee chairman, said late Monday. "We're not there yet."

Still, lawmakers on both the right and left already were assailing the deal-in-progress.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, blasted the emerging plan as "neither workable nor comprehensive."

"In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted and may actually cause the government to revert to an inadequate strategy of ad hoc bailouts," Shelby said.

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