Bipartisan support appeared to be emerging Sunday among American lawmakers to give quick approval to a vast bailout of financial institutions.
The Bush administration has proposed granting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms as part of a program that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said “has to work.”
“I hate the fact that we have to do it, but it’s better than the alternative,” Mr. Paulson said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is a humbling, humbling time for the United States of America.”
The proposal, presented on Saturday, would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion and would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress while allowing the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.
With some estimates that the program could involve the purchase of as much as $1 trillion in assets from private firms, Mr. Paulson emphasized that the true cost would be “determined by how quickly the economy recovers and how quickly housing prices stabilize.”