Anchorage Daily News

Before voting against the $700 billion economic bailout plan Friday, Alaska Rep. Don Young said he fielded 3,500 calls and e-mails about the lightning-rod proposal.

Roughly nine-in-10 people urged him to reject the bill -- pitched by the Bush administration to ward off an economic meltdown -- he said.

"I listened to my phone calls."

Young's campaign opponent in the Nov. 4 election, former Anchorage Rep. Ethan Berkowitz, said he would have begrudgingly voted for the proposal.

"The choices are between something bad and something worse, and I would like to have seen a changed bill," he said.

Young voted against the plan on Monday the first time it came up in the House, when it failed 228-205, which sparked a plunge in the stock market.

Friday, the bill passed. This time it included a stack of un-related tax breaks or "sweeteners" to attract votes -- including at least two that mean more money for Alaska.

One addition benefits fishermen and other plaintiffs harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Another re-authorizes a program that will send $67 million over four years to certain Alaska schools.

"That was very tempting," Young said of the school money. He later added that the sweeteners don't make up for other aspects of the bill, which he called a "slippery slope to socialism" in a written statement.

Berkowitz said Friday he was angry over the bill and that Congress could have built a better plan for less money.

But doing nothing would have been the worst move, so he would have been "an extremely reluctant supporter," he said.

"Folks have been throwing the term 'socialism' around," he said. "I don't really think they're calling George Bush, or Ted Stevens or Lisa Murkowski socialists, because that doesn't really advance the discussion."

Stevens and Murkowski, Alaska's Republican senators, voted for the bill.

For many politicians, the plan presented a no-win scenario. A Rasmussen Reports poll reported 63 percent of U.S. voters think Wall Street will get a better deal from the rescue than the average taxpayer, according to a Thursday phone survey.

Supporters of the plan -- including presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain -- say the measure would prevent an even worse economic crisis.

The bill is loaded with tax breaks.

It revives a program that gives money to rural schools in areas that have lost timber revenue under tightened federal logging regulations. The program delivered $9.5 million to Alaska schools in 2007 but ended that year, according to Murkowski's office.

Under the bill passed Friday, that figure will jump to $19.4 million for Alaska schools, with the state getting slightly less in each of the following three years.

Wrangell Schools Superintendent Woody Wilson learned the money had been approved at a school administrators meeting in Sitka.

Wilson's district used to get about $600,000 a year under the program -- enough to pay eight teachers, he said. Under the new bill, the district's funding could increase to $800,000 a year.

Young has supported the rural schools measure and tax benefits for Exxon Valdez plaintiffs.

Berkowitz said he supports those measures too, but that tacking that funding to the bailout bill wasn't right.

"When they added all these adornments, they changed the debate. And it highlights to me what's wrong with the institutions of Congress right now," he said.

In a phone interview with Alaska reporters explaining his vote, Young said the bailout plan put too much unchecked power in the hands of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

"It would be the first time we ever transferred that type of power to one person without any type of true oversight," he said.

Find Kyle Hopkins' political blog online at adn.com/alaskapolitics or call him at 257-4334.

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