The no vote was a big blow to George Bush, Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman. They gave dire warnings of the consequences of an unchecked crisis, in hopes of persuading Congress to approve an unusually aggressive and early fiscal intervention. (It took many more years for a systemic response to widespread failures of American savings and loan banks in the 1980s). But because the intervention is relatively early, voters have yet to see much impact from the crisis on their lives. “On Monday morning…the sun came up and a lot of people went to work, and [they] couldn’t understand what this panic was in Washington,” Paul Kanjorski, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, told Mr Paulson last week. It was far easier for voters to relate to $700 billion of their taxes being spent on a mess in Wall Street.

对乔治•布什，财长汉克•保尔森，联储出席本•伯南克而言，否决票是一大打击。他 们曾对不遏制危机的后果给出警告，寄希望于说服国会通过此项非比一般地积极地也是早期地财政干预。（上世纪80年代，对美国储蓄和贷款银行普遍破产的一个 系统化处理耗费了许多年）。但是因为此次干预相对要早，选民们没有意识到这场危机对他们的生活的重大影响。宾夕法尼亚州民主党人保罗·坎乔斯基（Paul Kanjorski）上周对保尔森说道：“周一清晨“““太阳升起，人们赶去上班，他们无法理解华盛顿在恐慌什么。”对选民们来说，认同这7000亿美元——他们纳的税被浪费在华尔街的废物上倒是更为轻而易举的事情。

Party leaders largely agreed with the diagnosis, as did the presidential candidates of both parties. But polls showed that voters were split; constituent phone calls and e-mails ran heavily against the bill. Administration officials and party leaders are back at work trying to find a way to get at least 12 members to switch their vote; the betting both on Wall Street and in Washington, DC, is they will succeed. (Passage in the Senate is considered less problematic.) But it should not be taken for granted. Without amendments, anyone who changes his vote will face fierce criticism when he seeks re-election. Any amendments to appease Republicans could cost Democratic support, and vice-versa.

政党领袖们很大程度上同意对此次金融危机的诊断，连两党的总统候选人也赞同。但是民调显示了选民立场的分裂：反对救市方案的游说电话和邮件纷沓至来。执政官员和政党领袖重新回到此项工作上来，试图使至少12个反对成员改弦易辙；华盛顿和华尔街都预计他们能够办到。（在参议院通过问题不大）但这不应当被看作是他们就欣然接受。倘若对该方案未加修订，任何人改变自己原先立场都会在其再次面临选举时（寻求连任时）受到严苛的批评。另一方面，任何迎合共和党的修订都会损耗民主党的支持，反之亦然。

“You can’t let one day’s trading dictate public policymaking,” argues Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican and member of the Republican Study Committee, a block of conservative members who led opposition to the bill. “The market’s going to be a factor, but we’re looking at the larger picture.” Recalcitrant Republicans would rather see a programme to sell insurance to banks against mortgage defaults, rather than buying assets from them. The Treasury strongly opposes this approach. But there may be other grounds for compromise, such as relaxing mark-to-market accounting or extending the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s guarantee of a bank’s liabilities to more than just the first $100,000 of each customer’s deposits. Other proposals include giving banks more time to deduct mortgage-related operating losses from future taxable profits, letting companies repatriate foreign profits tax-free and improving the tax treatment of losses sustained by banks on their holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock.

“你不能让单日交易量来指示公共政策制定,” 科特•盖瑞特（Scott Garrett）主张，他是新泽西州共和党人，也是共和党研究委员会的成员，这个委员会由一批领导反对此项救市方案的保守人士组成。“市场将是一个主要问 题，但是我们着眼于全局。”执拗的共和党人宁愿看到一个对银行出售保险以抵御抵押违约损失的计划，也不愿意从银行手里收购资产。财政部强烈反对这种方法。 但是或许有其他妥协的余地，比如放松按市价调整的会计或者提高美国联邦存款保险公司对银行债务的担保，突破原先的每个客户存款担保10万美元的上限。其他建议包括给银行更长的时间从未来的应税收入中扣除目前抵押贷款业务的相关损失；让公司得以免税把在国外所得利润存回美国；并且改善在持有房地美和房利美的股票方面，银行所蒙受的损失的税收待遇。

For their part, more Democrats might back the proposal if the administration also agreed to more fiscal stimulus, in particular public-works spending, or taking any profits on the TARP to low-income housing. A deal may be possible, but time is short: legislators are itching to return to their districts to campaign, and investors’ appetite for risk is ebbing fast. The House is not expected to reconvene before Thursday, to accommodate the Jewish new year.

从民主党这边来看，如果执政当局还同意更多的财政刺激，特别是公共项目开销或是从 问题资产救援计划（TARP）中提取任何利润给低收入住房的话，或许会有更多民主党成员支持这项救市提议。协议达成或许可能，但时间紧迫：立法者（议员 们）急于返回其选区参加竞选，同时投资者的风险胃口迅速萎缩。周二之前众议院不可能重新召集议事，因为这期间包括了犹太新年日。（译者注：很多议员要赶回 去过节）

The House vote also represented a stinging rejection of John McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr McCain suspended his campaign last week for two days, citing the financial crisis, and flew to Washington, DC, to help craft a solution to it. His main task was to persuade reluctant House Republicans to back their own president. In the event they voted against the deal made by their own leadership by two to one. The humiliation meted out to Mr McCain is intense.

众议院的选票也代表了一种对共和党候选人约翰•麦凯恩的无情拒绝。麦凯恩先生上周 称是为金融危机而暂停了两天的竞选，并且亲自飞往华盛顿，来帮助达成一个针对救市计划的解决方案。他的主要任务是说服执拗的共和党人来支持他们共和党自己 的总统。结果，他们以2比1投票反对他们自己的领导阶层制定的计划。麦凯恩先生蒙受的羞辱是相当强烈的。

Amid the efforts to put the deal back together, some small hope remains that not all is lost. What is unlikely to help is the atmosphere of bitterness and recrimination that is pervading Capitol Hill. With some justification, the Democrats are aggrieved to find that they supported Mr Bush’s bill while his own party did not. But the Republicans blame the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for making a stupidly partisan speech shortly before the vote in which she poured scorn on the Republicans she is trying to court. A lot of bridges will have to be built in a short span of time.

使这项救市方案达成还存一线希望。讥讽的氛围和遍布国会的互相指责是于是无补的。情有可原，民主党会愤愤不平，因为他们发现自己支持布什的救市方案而布什自己的共和党却反对。但是共和党人谴责身为民主党的众议院议长南希-佩罗西，指责她在投票开始前几分钟发表了一个愚蠢的从党派立场出发的讲话，在讲话中她讥讽她要试图拉拢说服的共和党人。短时间内，各方间必须要建立大量沟通。