At 7:30PM Wednesday, the Senate will hold roll call votes on six amendments and pieces of legislation. Those items are as follows:

1. Motion to concur on the House message, HR 2095, Rail Safety
2. Dorgan amendment relating to HR 7081, the US-India Nuclear agreement
3. Bingaman amendment relating to HR 7081, the US-India Nuclear agreement
4. Passage of HR 7081, the US-India Nuclear agreement
5. Dodd amendment to HR 1424, relating to the bailout (“Emergency Economic Stabilization”) package (This amendment, which must be agreed upon by both the majority and minority leader, will call up a previously passed House Resolution and add the Senate bailout language which hasn’t yet been seen. More on this below the fold.)
6. Passage of HR 1424

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) is allowing socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to offer an amendment to the legislation that would add a 10% surtax on those Americans whose incomes are $500,000 or more to help pay for the bailout.

In an attempt to rope more House Republicans into voting for the Stabilization bill this time around, Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) are tacking a tax cut already passed 93-2 by the Senate onto the bailout legislation.

According to the Associated Press:

The tax plan passed the Senate last week, on a 93-2 vote. It included [Alternative Minimum Tax] relief, $8 billion in tax relief for those hit by natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana, and some $78 billion in renewable energy incentives and extensions of expiring tax breaks.

In a compromise worked out with Republicans, the bill does not pay for the AMT and disaster provisions but does have revenue offsets for part of the energy and extension measures. That wasn’t enough for the House, which insisted that there be complete offsets for the energy and extension part of the package.

The Senate move seems aimed at jamming the House into accepting the deficit-financed tax cuts. Conservative Democrats won’t like the idea, but some Congress-watchers suspect most Democrats might be willing to go along.

If a mere dozen of the 132 House Republicans who voted against the bill Monday morning change their minds, whether prompted to do so by the opportunity to pass this tax cut or not, and all other members keep their votes the same, then the bailout should pass, and be signed into law shortly thereafter.

Then again, had the dozen members of Barney Frank’s (D-MA) committee, which was responsible for putting the failed original bill together, who didn’t vote for the legislation done so — or had Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi lifted a finger or a phone to actually persuade their own side of the aisle to support their bill (95 Democrats voted against), them this would already largely be over.

Incidentally, HR 1424, the resolution McConnell and Reid are calling up and amending with the Senate’s bailout language (via the Dodd amendment mentioned above) and with the aforementioned tax breaks, is an entirely unrelated piece of legislation known as the “Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.”

This resolution was passed March 5 of this year in the House and sent to the Senate for action. Thanks to Dodd, Reid, and McConnell, it’s finally seeing that action — and it may well be sent right back to the House this week to be passed again (albeit this time with a few hundred billion more in expenditures included in the text).

The Wellstone memorial bill is hugely popular with Democrats; further, tax breaks are, of course, very popular with Republicans. As a Capitol Hill contact emailed me a few minutes ago:

So take the most unpopular bill in years, wrap it in two popular bills from the left and right and dare anyone to vote no. That’s Congress these days.

Weren’t the presidential candidates and Hill leaders just warning a few days ago that the bailout shouldn’t be used as a Christmas tree for unrelated programs?

Sure they were. But apparently no price is too high when you’re trying to get $700 billion more in taxpayer-funded expenditures approved.

[Update-9/30@2140CDT] Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator blog calls the tying of a tax cut to the bailout plan an “absolutely disgusting tactic.” He continues:

When you are talking about the single most significant growth of government power EVER, you should let it sink or swim on its own.

You don’t attach it to a goodie basket and dare the other chamber to vote against it. To do so is a cheap, despicable tactic. It is the tactic of people without the courage of their convictions — the tactic of cowards. Yes, cowards.

I am utterly disgusted with McConnell and the entire Senate leadership. This is not the way to handle legislations[sic] as serious as this is.

If the House GOP had any guts, then if the Senate sends the House the bill in this form — thus also making a mockery, via legerdemain, of the requirement that such financial bills should start in the House — MORE of the House GOP than before should vote against it, in protest against this sort of hardball pressure.

With regard to Quin’s closing paragraph, the Senate is (as I mentioned above) working around the requirement that revenue-generating legislation must originate in the House by calling up a Resolution already passed in the House and submitted to the Senate, then adding the Senate’s bailout language to that Resolution before voting on the bill and, if it passes, sending it back down to the House for another vote.