Congressman Tim Walz voted against the $700 billion plan that the Bush administration said was urgently needed to prevent a potentially disastrous shortage of credit for an ailing economy.

Walz, in a statement released after the vote, said the bill negotiated by congressional leaders made improvements to the administration’s original proposal but fell short of what’s needed to shield average Americans.

“My job is to protect the American taxpayer and this plan doesn’t go far enough in looking out for the middle class,” the freshman Mankato Democrat stated. “It doesn’t go far enough to hold Wall Street accountable.”

Walz’s Republican opponent agreed with the vote, but placed most of the blame for the financial crisis on government — including actions by the Clinton administration to promote low-income home ownership — rather than Wall Street.

“I’m pleased to see the bailout was rejected,” said Brian Davis, R-Rochester, not faulting Walz’s vote. “I imagine he and I propose a different solution to all this.”

Davis said large amounts of taxpayer money should not be risked on a bailout plan until underlying causes of the subprime mortgage mess are identified and fixed.

Davis focused first on the Community Reinvestment Act, originally passed in 1977 to prohibit lenders from avoiding offering loans in low-income areas. The administration of President Bill Clinton became aggressive in enforcing the act, pressuring banks to offer mortgages to risky applicants, Davis said.

“That’s what started it,” he said.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, came under criticism last week when she also placed blame on the Community Reinvestment Act. Bachmann said during a congressional hearing that the Clinton administration pushed the issuance of home loans “on the basis of race and little else,” according to the newspaper Roll Call.

The comment prompted the Congressional Black Caucus to write a letter to House Minority Leader John Boehner rejecting the “assertion that ‘minorities’ caused the current financial crisis.”

Davis said he doesn’t oppose the idea of promoting responsible lending to low-income groups but believes the Clinton administration was too aggressive in pushing the idea.

“The goals of the program are laudable,” he said.

Davis said government regulators also forced some investment banks to drastically undervalue some bundled mortgages on their books, putting unnecessary financial strain on the banks.

“Before Congress, the president and the secretary of the treasury come to the people of the United States and say we’re going to increase the federal debt by hundreds of billions of dollars, we should fix some of those problems,” Davis said.

Walz aimed his criticism primarily at financial firms, many of which would be aided by the rescue plan.

“Wall Street got us into this mess and I hope the congressional leadership will go back to the drawing board and write a bill that holds Wall Street accountable,” Walz said in his statement, “both through sensible regulation and oversight and by restricting the excessive golden parachutes for CEOs who got themselves in trouble.”

It was far from unanimous that Congress has time to work out a better bill. Republican Rep. John Kline, whose district includes Le Sueur County, voted for the bill because of concern that the financial crisis “was extending beyond Wall Street and threatening the jobs, homes and retirement security” of average Americans.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman indicated before the House vote that he was likely to support the plan if it made it to the Senate.

“The consequences of doing nothing, or sliding into a partisan quagmire, are too great for us not to act ...,” Coleman said in a statement after the proposal was finalized over the weekend.

Al Franken, Coleman’s Democratic opponent, wouldn’t say whether he would have voted for the bill.

“Whether you support or oppose this plan, it’s really a sad day in America when taxpayers are asked to foot the bill for a mess they didn’t make,” Franken said.