One down, one to go. But last night’s vote in the upper house of the US congress was the easy part. The Senate was always going to back the financial rescue plan and sure enough it passed easily, as solid majorities of both Democrats and Republicans supported it, giving it a 74-25 victory.

Such a strong show of support for the banking bailout is useful but is not by itself likely to make much of a difference to members of the House of Representatives, who pick up the bill again on Thursday for another stab at it after Monday’s stunning rejection. The House certainly doesn’t think it needs any help from the Senate on how to vote. What really matters now is whether the greatly revised and expanded version of the bill passed by the Senate will win over enough House members who voted No on Monday, without losing some of those who voted Yes.

The new bill is a much broader economic support package that goes well beyond the Treasury’s acquisition of Wall Street’s toxic assets. In an effort to win over a critical mass of Republicans in the House – who voted heavily against the first bill - It includes extensions of tax cuts for businesses that were set to expire in the next year, as well as some extra tax relief for middle-income earning individuals who would have paid a big increase in their tax burden.

But in classic Washington style it has also been loaded up with all kinds of extra fiscal sweeteners for doubtful constituents out in the country. These include everything from support for research into the woollen industry to an excise tax exemption for children’s toy wooden arrows.

The changes place the bill in a delicate equilibrium as it heads to the House for an expected vote on Friday. The rescue plan failed the first time by just 228-205 votes, and the new tax measures – together with an increase in the limit on deposits that are guaranteed in the event of a bank failure and changes to the way banks are required to value the bad assets on their books – should be enough to bring over sufficient Republicans to close the gap. But many of those same new measures – especially the business tax breaks - might alienate some Democrats who had previously voted for the rescue.

Perhaps the biggest change since Monday has not been in the legislation at all. One of the reasons the initial bill went down in the House was that members had been frightened by calls from constituents angry at what they saw as a bailout for rich bankers. But yesterday a number of members reported that since that vote they had been deluged by calls from other voters, expressing outrage that their representatives’ opposition to the rescue plan might be leading the country into another Great Depression.

The betting in Washington on Wednesday night was that the House would finally agree to the bill in the next 48 hours. But after the extraordinary events of the last week, when the bailout failed twice - once in a tempestuous White House meeting, once in an escalating blur of chaos in the House of Representatives - no-one was willing to stake too much on that wager.

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