Under the TARP legislation, the second installment, once requested by the president, could be blocked only if both houses of Congress voted to do so. Bush formally requested the release of the second $350 billion on Monday and the incoming Obama administration made its first priority rounding up sufficient votes in the Senate to defeat a Republican-led attempt to block the money.

Obama's top economic adviser, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, his incoming White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and Obama himself lobbied intensively to overcome the opposition of most Republican senators and some Democrats who were wary of defying broad popular hostility to yet another windfall for the banks.

A resolution to stop the release of the TARP funds was defeated by a vote of 52 to 42, with all but nine Democrats voting to release the money and all but six Republicans voting to block it. As with the bill to establish TARP last fall, the Democrats took the lead, in alliance with the Bush administration, in bailing out Wall Street, while the bulk of the opposition in Congress came from right-wing Republicans, who opposed it on the grounds that it was an affront to "free market" principles and who pushed instead for more sweeping tax cuts for big business.

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