U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes said Friday afternoon that "in 12 years of Congress I haven't had a normal year yet."

Still, even by the sometimes chaotic standards of lawmaking in the midst of emergency, the last week has been extraordinary.

Speaking to NPT between floor votes on unrelated bills and a caucus meeting to explain the latest in negotiations on the financial bailout plan under consideration by Congress as the U.S. financial system purportedly is on the edge of collapse, Reyes said that he heard the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, the lead Democratic negotiator, were hoping for an agreement Sunday.

Minutes later, the Associated Press reported the news conference with the headline, Rep. Barney Frank predicts bailout deal by Sunday.

"It's been an incredible week here," said Reyes.

Thursday, at a White House meeting in which it was widely thought an agreement would be reached, House Republicans proferred their own plan, and said they would not support the plan agreed upon by the White House, the Senate, and House Democrats.

"People have been all over the place on this issue all week but we were led to believe there was at least an agreement," Reyes said.

That put everything back into negotiation mode, most recently leading to the announcement Friday afternoon by Pelosi and Frank.

Meanwhile, with presidential politics at stake, candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, both senators, prepared for the debate tonight that McCain initially backed out of, saying he wanted to deal with the crisis at hand.

At the White House, accounts vary, with some blaming McCain for urging the meeting, then sitting by and saying little when the deal fell apart. Others defended his position, saying he helped instigate the process under way now that will lead to a better outcome.

The process is complicated because the idea of a bailout for firms with which most U.S. citizens are not directly connected is unpopular. While most lawmakers have said they want to transcend politics and find a solution quickly, before the financial system collapses, a strong bloc of conservative Republicans who no longer owe an allegiance to the White House conceivably could continue to hold out.

"It's incredibly hectic because there are a lot of moving parts here," Reyes said.

Reyes was quoted yesterday as saying that Democrats want at least 100 Republicans to join them.

"I don’t think it's changed," he said Friday. "I think everybody realizes that whatever package is decided on, whatever the agreement is, it has to be something that will be supported by both presidential candidates because the next administration will be inheriting this mess."

Reyes said years of Republican deregulation were to blame for the mess.

"When they were in charge they rubberstamped everything the administration put forth, including deregulation," he said. "They got to pony up and make sure this is a bipartisan effort."

The main points publicized nationally also were the areas Reyes mentioned: Limiting executive salaries for companies benefiting from the bailout and ensuring oversight of the bailout, among them.

He said while many places in the country, including El Paso, have not felt the full weight of the crisis bearing down -- although the city got a taste earlier this week when Hunt Communities pulled out of a $131 million land deal with the Public Service Board -- "We're not exempt from what the rest of the country is feeling.

"The money has considerably tightened up. People still have to get financing … there's all this atmosphere of uncertainty about the day-to-day aspects of being able to finance cars and homes," he said. "El Paso is not exempt from that."

Reyes said that the major federal project in El Paso, the expansion of Fort Bliss, would not be affected for the current year.

"But if there is a serious downturn in the economy, if there are cutbacks, we start working on the 2010 budget in March. The '09 budget is already protected, we already passed that."

He said he wasn't sure where he'd watch the debate tonight.

"I haven’t even thought that far. I'm going to the caucus see what the latest is … then we come back and take another round of votes, then we recess for the debate. We may watch at the Democratic National Committee or here in the cloakroom, depending on what's going on."