U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said today he expects Congress will approve some type of financial rescue package by the end of the week.

“I believe we will go back Thursday and by Friday night we will get a bill,” he said.

Rep. Wamp, who joined with 227 other members of the House of Representatives on Monday to defeat a proposed $700 billion rescue plan proposed by the U.S. Treasury Department, said the initial proposal “was more of a money transfer than any needed reform” to solve the credit crisis.

“We can’t just borrow your way out of debt and spend your way to prosperity,” Rep. Wamp said. “There’s no guarantee that this program was going to work.”

One part of the defeated bailout, raising the federal debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion — twice the level that it was before Sept. 11, 2001 — “is very hard to swallow,” he said.

Rep. Wamp told a small business gathering today that he hopes a compromise can be reached that will temporarily relax some of the accounting rules for valuing assets, raise the FDIC insurance on bank deposits above $100,000 and shift more of the rescue plan from loan purchases to loan insurance.

“It’s very painful to watch what happened on Wall Street Monday, but in the end I think we’ll end up with a better plan,” he said.

For complete details, see tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press

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