I'm an Engineer at heart.  I have a degree in Computer Engineering from MSOE.  I tend to think mathematically, and I tend to see mathematical relationships everywhere.  Newton had his laws that described the physical world, and I have my laws which describe Washinton (though I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with these).

Schweitzer's 1st Law of Washinton:

The amount of time taken to debate a bill is inversely proportional to the square of the amount of money being spent.

Just like gravity falls off as a sqare of the distance you are from a body in the physical world, so does time in relation to money spent in the political world.  It took years for this problem to develop, so naturally that means that we have to solve it in as little time as possible.  And because we're spending so little time to solve that problem, we better throw a whole lot of money at it.  We could spend less, but then we'd have to actually think about it.  Hell, even "thoughtful" John McCain thinks it's important to have this all decided before the markets open on Monday.  So much for fiscally responsible.

Schweitzer's 2nd Law of Washington:

The length of a bill is inversely proportional to the square of the power being granted in the bill.

Inverse square relationships are everywhere in the physical world... not just gravity.  Maxwell's equations describe the relationships in the electromagnetic world, many of which follow this same pattern.  It took hundreds of poorly conceived regulations acting together to create this storm.  In the world of Washington, that means that you must create one single bill consiting of very little language... all of it directing its power to Paulson.  After all, democracies love having a single person wield uncontrolled power over our lives.

Schweitzer's 3rd Law of Washington:

The cost of a program increases proportinally to the amount of doubt in the original figure.

When it doubt (which is always), just make up a big number and go with it:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

In other words, $700 billion is the bare minimum cost.  It will be more.  There are more laws, but those are the biggies.