Lawmaker goes home, comes back supporting bailout

For Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, it was a day to let the world know she'd changed her mind on the mammoth $700 billion measure for reeling financial firms.

One of the first to hear was a television reporter who walked into her Capitol Hill office Thursday and said she wanted to interview her about the bailout legislation.

"Bailout is from when I was against the bill," the veteran South Florida Republican jokingly corrected her. "Now it's economic rescue legislation. You gotta get the lingo."

Ros-Lehtinen's new perspective was one congressional leaders were hoping other lawmakers shared as well. After three days back home, she and other House members returned to Washington for Friday's expected showdown on the legislation, which the Senate approved after adding about $110 billion in tax cuts and other provisions.

As the House began debating the new version of the legislation Friday, the congresswoman said her constituents have strong feelings on both sides of the measure, making her "yes" vote a difficult one.

"It's not exactly like naming a post office," she said in an interview, referring to the uncontroversial bills the House often votes on. "We've had tougher votes, but this is the right thing to do."

The House rejected the bill by 23 votes on Monday, humiliating President Bush and the bipartisan congressional leaders who'd crafted it and shoving financial markets around the world into collective free falls. Ros-Lehtinen joined about two-thirds of House Republicans in opposing the legislation.

"What we had was a bailout for Wall Street firms, and not much relief for taxpayers and hard-hit families," she said Thursday in her office across the street from the Capitol, between calls to constituents and interviews with Miami-area and Spanish-language broadcast outlets. "Now we have an economic rescue package."

The 19-year House veteran flew home Monday night expecting her vote to play well at home.

"As soon as I got to the airport, I got a mixed bag of reaction," she said of her return to Florida.

Ros-Lehtinen, 56, spent most of three days in her district, which traces a slender, scimitar-like arc from Miami Beach south through the Florida Keys.

While some constituents congratulated her for opposing "that greedy bill," others told her tales of woe. She spent Tuesday traveling the length of the Keys and heard complaints from owners of T-shirt shops, dive shops and commercial fishing boats having an increasingly hard time getting credit.

"I thought folks would be saying, 'Great, you voted against the bailout bill,'" she said. "When in fact I got a lot of business owners and middle-class folks saying, 'You know, I really need that loan.' They were saying, 'Please, reconsider.'"

Back in her office Thursday, she began explaining her reversal - to lots and lots of people. She telephoned constituents who had called her on the issue and gave interviews to the Spanish-language television network Telemundo, a Miami television station and a Miami drive-time radio show.

Ros-Lehtinen said she "felt the ground shift" back home but said that was not why she changed her mind.

Instead, she credited some of the tax breaks the Senate added to the bill before passing it. Those included allowing residents of states with no income taxes - including Florida - to deduct local sales taxes from their federal tax returns, along with tax breaks for education, alternative energy and other activities.

Also added was a separate bill she and many others cosponsored requiring insurers to offer more mental health coverage.

"The sweetener for me was help for the middle-class families," she said. "I considered Monday's bill to be a bailout for Wall Street. I don't see that this bill has that focus. It's relief for middle-class families."

She said she did not get calls from House Republican leaders or fellow rank-and-file lawmakers.

She also said she heard very little from national business organizations, even as scores of business groups launched a massive lobbying blitz in Washington and wavering lawmakers' home districts.

A list the business community was using Thursday listed her among 35 lawmakers the lobbyists considered top priorities for finding "yes" votes, with a notation that she might be gettable.

"The restaurant association is meaningless to me," she said. "But the mom-and-pop restaurant means the world."

Ros-Lehtinen's office got more than 1,000 calls, e-mails, letters and faxes on the issue, said her legislative director, Sarah Gamino. In a pattern familiar to many lawmakers on Capitol Hill, opinion was heavily against the bill before Monday's House defeat of the legislation and the record Dow Jones industrial average plunge of 778 points, but has been about evenly divided since.

The congresswoman said she listened to the Senate's debate Wednesday night when it passed the latest version of the bailout package.

"I should get extra pay for that," she joked.

Minutes later, Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., called to let her know he'd voted for the legislation.

"Thanks so much for making that bill so much better," she told him.

Ros-Lehtinen said when she made up her mind Thursday morning, she called House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to let him know. Blunt's job is to count GOP votes - a pivotal task for the measure, which failed Monday after only a third of Republicans backed it.

"He was glad to hear it," she said.