In our ongoing effort to provide our clients and friends of the firm with updated information and insight on developments related to legislation to support the financial markets, the Foley & Lardner LLP Financial Crisis Response Team is pleased to provide the following summary of today’s events in Washington.
Congressional leaders expect to be able to unveil the central principles of a compromise bill on the financial bail-out by Sunday night, though they stress there are several important details that still need to be worked out. We do not expect to see legislative language until Monday morning at the earliest, since at this time, negotiators are still trying to reach agreement on all the points they must then reduce to legislation. Senate Democratic leadership has told us that they have made great progress toward a compromise bill since Thursday, but some serious differences remain and they do not expect to be able to vote on a bill until early in the week.
Members of Congress and their staffs worked into the pre-dawn hours on Saturday morning, and the planned Congressional recess has been postponed indefinitely. The consensus plan, which Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) and House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank (D-MA) crafted after rejecting a plan put forth by the President last weekend, today remains largely in tact. However, negotiators continue to work on how to include the House Republican Working Group’s plan to give the Treasury Secretary the option to have banks finance an insurance plan that would rescue individual mortgages.