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During floor debate in the House of Representatives today, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who was allotting time for fellow members to speak, took a moment to pledge that serious reforms to the U.S. financial system will be put before the House next year.

"This is not all that needs to be done," Frank said, urging skeptical members to support the Wall Street assistance package up for a vote early this afternoon. "We will be back next year to do some serious surgery on the financial structure."

Some members have called for further reforms, as well has further measures to assist struggling homeowners, saying the package focuses too narrowly on bailing out collapsing Wall Street firms while ignoring the middle class and failing to punish Wall Street greed.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) said that voting for the bailout bill would prevent a "decline into socialism," contrary to what the bill's opponents have suggested would happen.

"I'm not willing to risk capitalism and a decline into socialism," said Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee.

Earlier, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said he opposed the bill because it risked putting the country on the "slippery slope to socialism."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), one of the most vocal opponent of the bill, blasted backers of the bailout whom she feels has rammed the measure through Congress.

"Will you stand up to them?" she asked her colleagues in her floor speech. "This approach, their approach, will not work."

She added that it won't solve the credit crunch or help Main Street and will only serve to benefit Wall Street.

She also voiced concern over the exclusion of House committees from the bill-making process.

"Only one committee was involved... This bill is just an end run around the American people three weeks before the election while this Congress is skittish."

She added: "Pray for our Republic. She's being placed in uncaring and very greedy hands. "

Rep. David Obey (R-Wis.) said that the bailout that he supports won't prevent a recession. But it will buy Americans time to make necessary changes, he said.

"This package will not prevent a severe recession," said Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. "We will see that. But it buys us time to make some changes" that could improve economy.

The Hill's Kris Kitto just ran into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as she walked from her office toward the House floor.

When asked if she had the votes for the bailout, Pelosi said, "We've always had our votes."

The White House said this morning pressed the House of Represenatives to pass a Wall Street assistance package in light of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' September jobs report, which today showed the U.S. economy losing 159,000 jobs.

The employment numbers prove that the subprime mortage crisis has spread throughout the U.S. financial system to cause a widespread financial crisis, the White House said, pressing the House to pass the Wall Street package currently under consideration to address the crisis.

"The House of Representatives must pass the Senate financial rescue package immediately," the White House said in a press release this morning. "We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis--the financial system is clogged, and credit is not available to many families and business owners who need it."

"Problems that originated in the credit markets--and first showed up in the area of subprime mortgages--have spread throughout our financial system and are threatening Main Street.

One question of bailout skeptics has been how the credit crisis affected everyday Americans. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) just tried to answer that.

California is having problems raising the $7 billion it needs to pay state employees this month because of the tight credit, Lofgren noted. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) on Friday brought up the prospect of asking the federal government for an emergency loan.

Lofgren suggested that passing the bailout could help California.

"The state of California, the eighth-largest economy in the world, will not be able to meet payroll unless we take action to unfreeze these credit markets," Lofgren said

The Bush administration is expected to notify Congress today that it wants approval to sell a major arms package to Taiwan, according to a congressional staffer. The package is expected to include seven weapons systems but not advanced F-16s.

The notification from the Pentagon and State Department would lift on on ban on the sale of the weapons imposed by the Bush administration before the summer Olympics in China.

The Bush Administration had initially approved arms sales to Taiwan in 2001, but had put off formally notifying Congress of the sale before August's politically sensitive Olympic games. The State Department announced a freeze in congressional notifications for arms sales in June, in hopes it would ease negotiations between Taiwan and Beijing on military maters.

Indications about whether or not a sale would be approved were unclear as late as July, when Admiral Timothy Keating, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said there is "no compelling need for at this moment arms sales to Taiwan of the systems that we're talking about," according to Reuters.

-Roxana Tiron, Michael O'Brien

Democratic leaders are having a pre-vote news conference at 11:30 a.m. along with a number of Democrats who voted against the financial recovery bill on Monday, but who are presumably going to change their votes to yes today.

On Thursday, a number of Democrats came out to announce that they

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) cited the prospect of new leadership in Washington as a reason for switching his vote to yes on the bailout bill.

"In a few months, we will have a new president and a new congress. We must hold companies' feet to the fire. It is with this assurance that I will vote yes," said Lewis, who voted against the bill Monday.

Lewis told his Democratic colleagues earlier that he had spoken with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a supporter of the bailout, and that he too would back the bill.

"I've decided that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of doing something," Lewis said on the House floor Friday.