The Week of September 29

Congress had plans to head off for the campaign trail last Friday - but it'll stick around a couple days this week to try to greenlight what is - by all accounts - the nation's largest bailout in history. While it's in DC, Congress may also okay $150 billion in tax cut extensions.

The financial rescue plan: After a roller-coaster week of negotiations and political theater, congressional leaders posted a 110 page bailout bill (pdf) (as well as a handier one page summary) that the House hopes to pass Monday with the Senate following on Wednesday. The rescue plan would let the Fed buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-backed securities (the bum assets that've been sinking financial giants and putting the the market on edge) in an effort to keep Wall Street from dipping into a credit deep-freeze. As part of the compromise, the deal would give Congress oversight of the rescue operation, in part by dividing up the bailout into three installments, with the final one needing lawmakers' tacit consent. Other compromises would give tax payers some stock in the companies they help out, limit the size of CEO paychecks and golden parachutes in those companies and help more families avoid defaulting on the mortgages that got us into this mess in the first place.

Tax cut extensions: The House and Senate may reach the end of their game of chicken over $150 billion worth of popular tax cuts - including a middle-class cover from the Alternative Minimum Tax as well as R&D and alternative energy tax incentives for business. The two chambers both want to keep the tax perks alive; they disagree, however, on how to pay for them with the House more eager to offset the cost of tax cuts elsewhere in the budget. The two sides are nudging closer on deal, which they could pull off this week.

While they're at it: While the Senate gets laid up in DC this week it may also okay an Amtrak and transportation safety bill as well as approve a nuclear energy deal with India.