Not only was no summary of the plan available, but, anecdotally, Senate negotiators — those in the room supposedly crunching the numbers — couldn’t pin down the specifics of the bill. Reporters yesterday afternoon scrambled for scraps of detail, mostly to find silence or shrugs from congressional offices. At 9 p.m., the Senate Finance Committee sent a release revealing the reason:

Updated scores on many elements of the bill remain pending, and policy staff for the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Senate Finance Committee, and the House Ways & Means Committee are drafting final bill language tonight.

On top of that, Senate Democrats seemed to have riled their House counterparts in the process. Reid took pains to emphasize that the House was very much a part of the negotiations, yet no House members appeared during the announcement. The New York Times lends a part of the reason:

House Democrats, angry over some cuts, particularly for school construction, initially balked at the deal and delayed a final meeting on Wednesday between House and Senate negotiators.

Democratic officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi felt that Mr. Reid went too far by announcing a deal before it was vetted by her office and discussed by House members in an emergency caucus meeting, setting off the last-minute flare-up.

Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference that the delay helped House Democrats win some final concessions, including an agreement to let states use some money in a fiscal stabilization fund for school renovations. “There is no question that one of our overriding priorities in the House was a very strong commitment to school construction,” she said. “That’s still in the bill.”

To avoid detracting from a major legislative victory for President Barack Obama, Democratic leaders will downplay the significance of the intra-party tiff. Yet, there’s no denying: In the name of reaching across the aisle for Republican votes, Obama and Senate Democrats not only failed to get many votes (remember that the House proposal attracted zero Republican supporters, and the Senate version found just three), and also alienated liberal Democrats, but, substantially, the final stimulus bill is much smaller than the package many economists say is necessary to be effective. As columnist E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post wrote today:

The Senate’s compromise bill was the essence of preferring the illusion of moderation over substance. By stripping out of the House bill significant amounts of fiscal help to the states, school construction money and other forms of spending, those so-called moderate senators who provided the key votes made the proposal far less stimulative. [Snip]

There is nothing wrong with a sensible centrism that tries to balance competing goods. But Washington has become too concerned with appearances and with calculating the distance from some arbitrary midpoint in any given debate. The sensible center should be defined by what works, even if that means discovering that the true middle ground isn’t where we thought it was.

General Motors assembly line (by habfam flickr)

In a blizzard of partisan rhetoric, congressional leaders sparred Friday over whether America’s struggling auto makers should be the next benefactor in the lengthening series of federal bailouts.

Key Democrats have pushed furiously for an additional $25-billion infusion to help the sinking industry. Earlier this year, Congress approved $25 billion in low-interest loans to help the Big Three retool their factories to produce smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Those funds, however, have been held up because of red tape. The Bush administration announced last month that it could take between six and 18 months for the money to reach the companies.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) vowed Friday to bring the proposal to give General Motors, Ford and Chrylser more money to a vote in next week’s lame-duck session. The $25 billion would come from the already approved $700-billion financial rescue package.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

But the plan has hit a GOP wall of opposition. Many Republicans, who begrudgingly signed on to a bailout of the financial system, seem to have drawn the line at rescuing Detroit.

“I’m afraid it will be sending money down what we call a rat hole,” Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said in an interview on MSNBC Friday. “It might be a temporary fix … but until some fundamental things are changed about their [auto makers'] model, it’s not going to work.”

Democratic leaders, including President-elect Barack Obama, have called repeatedly on Congress to pass legislation this month that would spend billions of dollars to buttress state Medicaid programs, extend unemployment benefits, make loans to auto makers and build roads and sewers. Obama has said his support for the Big Three hinges on their willingness to use the cash infusion to retool factories to produce more a fuel-efficient fleet.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Reid said that, at the very least, he intends to proceed Monday with two of the items — extension of unemployment benefits and more money for Detroit.

“These two provisions,” the Nevada senator wrote, “both address especially urgent needs and seem most likely to win your support and the support of your caucus.”

Reid shouldn’t hold his breath for passage. The administration opposes any new stimulus measures, contending that its $700-billion bailout strategy is enough to repair the economy — if it’s given the time to work. Officials in the Treasury Dept. also have rejected using any of that money to help Detroit. They have argued that the money would be more effective if it targets the finance industry.

GOP congressional leaders, already disgusted by federal interventions in the private sector, seem ready to let Detroit go under.

“There is a better way to get the economy moving,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), head of the Republican Study Committee, told CNBC Friday. “And it’s not helping out these [auto makers] who are the slave to the big labor unions and are making products that people don’t want to buy.”

Reid’s office said Friday that details of the Democrats’ plan are still being worked out.

McConnell issued a noncommittal statement questioning how anyone could endorse a proposal that has yet to be introduced.

“Taxpayers deserve to know if this bailout [of Detroit] would increase the national debt and raise their taxes,” McConnell said. “Perhaps when a bill is actually written, and its costs are known, both Republicans and Democrats can take a position on the legislation. But it sure would be helpful to actually see the bill before commenting on it.”

McConnell is hedging his bets on an Detroit bailout for another reason: The industry has a big presence in his home state of Kentucky. In 2005, roughly 20 percent of the state’s manufacturing workforce was employed by car manufacturers and related businesses, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The auto and related industries accounted for $5.4 billion of the state’s gross domestic product. In 2006, Kentucky ranked third in the nation, behind Michigan and Ohio, in total light-vehicle production,

Kenneth Troske, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky, said McConnell might not be a favorite of the auto unions but the industry’s prominence in Kentucky puts him in a bind. “He’s obviously in a difficult position,” Troske said.

Still, Troske added, an auto maker bailout would do more harm than good over the long run because it would set a precedent that some companies are too big to fail. The better alternative for the Big Three would be a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, Troske contended. Stockholders and pensioners would be hurt, but the companies would keep operating.

“They’ll continue to produce cars; they’ll continue to sell cars,” Troske said. “The executives would get fired, but they’ve already proven that they don’t know how to run a company.”

Auto industry representatives blame their predicament on external factors. Stephen J. Collins, president of the Automotive Trade Policy Council, which represents Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, pointed to high gas prices, less consumer spending and the credit freeze.

Still, U.S. auto makers are hardly blameless for their troubles. For years, the industry kept making gas-gulping SUVs while fighting tougher fuel-efficiency standards that would have made them more competitive when gas prices skyrocketed this summer.

But the question some lawmakers are asking is not who’s to blame, but what would be the economic consequences if one or more of the Big Three is allowed to fail.

In an interview with CNBC Friday, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said the effects any company declaring bankruptcy would be dire. She argued that the debate is not merely about the Big Three but about “whether or not we’re going to make things in this country — whether or not we’re going to manufacture anymore. … This is a bottom-line question of jobs and the future of the economy in America.”

Detroit’s woes should be a cautionary tale for the protectors of the industry. Many lawmakers, led by Michigan’s powerful Democrats, defended the auto makers’ opposition to new fuel-efficiency standards. Blind defenders of labor, which created a costly pension and health-benefits system that has made the Big Three increasingly less competitive in the global economy, also contributed to the problem. For example, the cost of health benefits owed by GM to employees and retirees over the next 80 years is estimated to be $55 billion, The New York Times reported last year.

Complicating Detroit’s plight, the Detroit Free Press reported Friday that Chrysler is paying its top executives $30 million in retention bonuses, even as the company is hemorrhaging cash and employees. Company leaders, who are scheduled to appear before Congress next week, will no doubt hear an earful from lawmakers over their priorities.

Such news will likely not sit well with Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to Democratic leaders Friday urging that any legislation to help Detroit should “include restrictions on executive salaries, compensation packages and excessive internal spending.”

Maybe Congress has learned something from the finance bailout after all.

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. (WDCpix)

They came together quickly in February to pass a short-term stimulus bill. They united again this month around a plan to bail out Wall Street. But as Democrats and Republicans begin deliberations over long-term reforms for the financial-services industry, both sides seem to be prepping for what will likely be a heated partisan debate.

In a House Financial Services Committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers seemed to agree that the federal rules governing banks should be altered after the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. But they are far from reaching a consensus on what form those changes should take. Members instead sparred over the causes of the global financial crisis, the government’s role in free markets and what is the essence of American-style capitalism.

If these are the deliberations that will prevent the next economic collapse, the country might be in trouble.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

At the heart of the debate is a thorny question: Do markets work best when left unhindered, or when regulations add protections to the financial system? While many Republicans bucked their conservative instincts to approve an enormous government intervention in the U.S. financial system in response to Wall Street’s meltdown, there is evidence they won’t be so supportive when the time comes to reform the finance industry more permanently.

For the most part, the disagreements at Tuesday’s hearing followed the traditional arc of partisan ideology. From many Democrats came this message: The nation’s big banks and investment firms, left to their own devices, had gone on a greed-fueled spree with other people’s money. They demanded stricter regulations in the future.

Some Republicans blamed Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s poor lending decisions, as well as the workings of the Community Reinvestment Act, which encourages banks to lend to low-income communities. GOP members said Democrats were responsible for both.

Alice M. Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the congressional fight over government regulation is sure to be difficult.

“Getting financial-market regulation right is a difficult and painstaking job,” Rivlin said. “It’s not a job for the lazy, the faint-hearted or the ideologically rigid. Applicants for this job should check their slogans at the door.”

Lawmakers on Tuesday didn’t immediately take Rivlin’s advice.

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), for example, after calling for bipartisan cooperation on regulation, spent the next few minutes accusing Democrats of failing to rein in Freddie and Fannie earlier in the decade. “It was this lack of regulation that played a large part in getting us to where we are today,” Garrett said.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, quickly returned the fire, reminding Garrett that the Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress at the time.

“The number of occasions on which either Newt Gingrich or Tom DeLay consulted me about the specifics of legislation,” Frank said, referring to former House GOP leaders, “are far fewer than the gentleman from New Jersey seems to think.”

There were other, more ideological differences. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) decried the extent to which Washington has intervened in the economy, pointing to the $700-billion financial-services bailout and the administration’s decision to use some of that cash to recapitalize banks in exchange for owning shares in them.

“These actions are, in their totality, I fear, an assault on American principles and on capitalism itself,” Price said. “It’s a marked turn toward a nefarious ideal that problems can be solved by centralized decision-making here in Washington.”

Price’s views seem to predict that Republicans have no intention of backing down when the debate over finance-industry regulations begins in full next year.

The ideological jousting occurs at a time when lawmakers juggle the dual responsibilities of treating the financial meltdown in the short term and considering new rules to govern the industry over the long haul. Witnesses testifying at Tuesday’s hearing — the first step toward new regulations — offered plenty of potential reforms.

Rivlin recommended tighter restrictions on mortgage lenders — including mandatory down-payment rules and proof that the borrower can pay the loan. Joel Seligman, an expert on securities law and president of the University of Rochester, suggested that a congressional committee to oversee the new regulations be created. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor at Columbia University, urged the creation of a new financial products safety commission.

All witnesses agreed that no sweeping changes will be possible without bipartisan cooperation. “Too many attempts to rethink regulation of financial markets in recent years have been derailed by ideologues shouting that regulation is always bad or, alternatively, that we just need more of it,” Rivlin said. “This less-vs.-more argument is not helpful. We don’t need more or less regulation. We need smarter regulation.”

Committee chairman Frank was under no illusion that the coming reform efforts will be easy. “We’re here talking about some of the most important basic principles of government,” he said, “about how in a free-enterprise economy you do or don’t regulate … It is as important a set of economic decisions I think this country will be making since the Depression.”

Some experts testifying pointed out that laws matter little if regulators don’t enforce them. One whipping boy at Tuesday’s hearing was Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and famous for his faith in free markets. “We had regulators who didn’t believe in regulations,” said Stiglitz.

Ben Bernanke, Greenspan’s successor, has done a better job reining in subprime lenders, Stiglitz added, “but it was like closing the barn door after the horse was out.”

Tuesday’s hearing came at a tough time for the economy. Low consumer confidence has led to the longest retail-sales decline in 17 years. Foreclosure rates in many communities continue to rise, while home prices continue to fall. At least 15 states face budget shortfalls and are likely to cut spending on social services to balance their books. And despite passage of the $700-billion bailout package, investors remain wary of stock markets. After rising over the past few days, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 232 points Tuesday.

Amid the gloom, Frank, known more for his pragmatism than optimism, found at least one reason to be hopeful about the coming regulatory deliberations: The economic slowdown, he said, means that Congress can take its time to craft its reforms. “Nobody,” Frank said, “is doing any good things or bad things right now, so that the notion that we have to rush, I think, has been alleviated by the fact that not much is happening. And that gives us time to do this right.”

For the legislative branch, that’s probably a blessing in disguise. As Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) dryly noted, “One thing we know about Congress is we don’t necessarily do our best work in a crisis environment.”