More Government Bailouts May Be on Way

Budget hawks can only cringe at the raft of possible bailouts and expensive new federal programs that may be coming down the pike.

Controversy still swirls around some earlier big bailouts.

In the 1980s and 1990s, more than 1,000 savings and loan institutions failed, leading to a federal bailout totaling roughly $125 billion.

The 1998 collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, amid the Asian financial crisis, rocked Wall Street and prompted the Federal Reserve to help arrange a $3.6 billion private bailout.

In 1975, President Ford first ignored pleas from a struggling New York City for help but later relented with a $7 billion loan package. President Clinton came to Mexico's aid in 1995 after a sharp devaluation of the peso, persuading countries and banks to lend the country $50 billion.

Congress bailed out what was then known as Lockheed Aircraft in 1971 and Chrysler in 1979 with loan guarantees. In 1984, the failing bank Continental Illinois was effectively taken over by the federal government.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Congress quickly authorized $5 billion in cash to help shore up the airline industry and followed up with $10 billion in loan guarantees. It set up a compensation fund for victims of the attacks.

While complaints of unfairness can always be raised, government bailouts can generally be defended when the government's failure to act could have dire consequences on society or the nation's financial system, said William Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Clinton and now a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution.

"Sometimes, you have to act in a very broad way, a way that's not very sensitive to the distinction between the innocent and the guilty, in order to bring about a broader public good. And then you sort it out later if you can," Galston said.

Even President Bush seems torn between not interfering with market forces and wanting to keep the financial crisis from deepening.