Well folks, we’re almost to a done deal (certainly closer than Thursday). The Hill papers are reporting that they’re getting closer in both the Senate and the House to the needed votes to pass the new bailout bill. Roll Call gives the most frank assessment of what happened over the weekend in an article entitled “Same Bailout, New Dynamic” (subtitle: Outrage Prompts Sales Effort).

All the late-night talks, last-minute demands and dramatic pronouncements aside, the fundamental structure of a $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan that Congress spent the weekend wrangling over has not changed significantly from the outline proposed by a bipartisan group of Senators and House Members last Thursday.

“This is in essence the same,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who attended those talks.

. . .

Assuming enough House Republicans agree to vote for the package, it appeared that the House could vote as early as today, while the Senate might have to wait to take it up Wednesday after Rosh Hashana on Tuesday.

“If it doesn’t pass, we shouldn’t be in Congress,” a confident Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said on Sunday, adding that he thought the measure would pass with broad bipartisan support in both chambers.

Members and staff disagreed about why the bones of the package stayed the same but took so long to hash out.

Negotiators on Saturday added a mortgage insurance program to the proposal at the request of rebellious House Republicans, though that plan is unlikely to be used by failing companies given the Treasury’s ability to take bad debt off the books of troubled financial firms. That means the high-stakes negotiating sessions over the weekend served mainly to generate buy-in and political cover for Republicans and Democrats.

Some Democrats said the time between Thursday and Sunday was largely wasted on back-and-forth talks that yielded few changes. In addition, there was the distraction of presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) inserting himself into the mix, they said.

“They were very close to an agreement on Thursday,” one senior Senate Democratic aide said. “Then John McCain blew into town and blew things up for three days. Now, they have virtually the same agreement now that they had before, with a couple of options in it that [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson will never use.”

One Senate Democratic leadership aide echoed that notion, saying, “This is largely based on the draft we had Thursday morning. … Once we got past the McCain shenanigans, the legislative process took over and people worked very hard to work out an acceptable agreement.”

. . .

House Republicans proposed a mortgage insurance idea so Wall Street could fund its own bailout. House Democrats proposed a pay-as-you-go trigger requiring a fee on financial firms if the bailout results in losses for the Treasury.

The political goal was the same — both sides wanted to be able to tell constituents that Wall Street, not average citizens, would pay for the bailout.

But neither proposal won out — the mortgage insurance idea will largely be a side option for the Treasury secretary, and Paulson reportedly already rejected the proposal in internal Treasury talks this summer.

. . .

A senior House Democratic aide at press time estimated that Democrats could wrangle about 125 votes for the plan, meaning GOPers would need to find nearly 100 supporters in their ranks if the numbers remained unchanged.