I Can Haz $700 Billion?

Via Gawker, a demonstrator protests behind the backs of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke. Headline stolen from a Gawker commenter. And what do you know, the bailout is turning out to be a hard sell.

“What they have sent us is not acceptable,” the committee chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, told The Associated Press. The panel’s ranking Republican agreed. “We have to look at some alternatives,” Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama told The A.P.

One after another throughout the session, senators from both parties said that, while they were prepared to move fast, they were far from ready to give the administration everything it wanted in its proposed $700 billion plan to buy up and hopefully resell troubled mortgage-backed securities.

On the House side of the Capitol, the mood was apparently similar after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Republican members. “Hardly anyone in that room has decided yet how they’re going to vote on this,” Representative Phil Gingrey, Republican of Georgia, told Bloomberg News.

Senator Dodd called the Treasury proposal “stunning and unprecedented in its scope and lack of detail.”