By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff

Senate leaders initially kept their House counterparts in the dark as they began drafting their own version of a sweeping financial markets bailout bill that appears increasingly likely to be enacted into law.

The House, after all, had gone first on Sept. 29 and failed to pass a bicameral plan (HR 3997) that was intended to calm the stock market and improve the availability of credit.

Aides in both chambers say talks about a revised bill were well under way between Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans before the House leaders were brought into the loop on Tuesday. And they were brought in as passengers, not participants.

None of the four top leaders in the House — Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif.; Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md.; Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio; Minority Whip Roy Blunt , R-Mo. — were in on the negotiations that led to the current version of the package.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., called Pelosi and Hoyer while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., called Boehner and Blunt to tell them of the Senate’s decision to move ahead on its own package (HR 1424), according to Democratic and Republican aides.

“He told her this is the best he could do. She said OK,” one House aide said in describing the Sept. 30 conversation between Reid and Pelosi.

Democratic aides described Pelosi as peeved that the Senate had moved ahead without consulting the House leadership. Hoyer was said to be angrier because of his intense work on offsetting the cost of a package of tax break extensions that was to be included without offsets in the Senate bill.

“It was presented to us as a fait accompli,” Hoyer said Wednesday.

Still, he said he swallowed his disagreement because speedy passage of the bailout was such an urgent priority.

Aides to Boehner reported no similar angst before he “gave a green light” to McConnell.

“There was a decision made that they could get 15 to 20 House Republicans with the deal cut in the Senate. They figured they would only lose a few ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats,” said a lobbyist familiar with discussions, referring to the fiscally conservative coalition of House Democrats.

Efforts to Bring House Members on Board

Though the Senate wasn’t scheduled to vote until late in the evening, House leaders spent Wednesday on the phone trying to reach — and influence — colleagues as they returned from the Rosh Hashana break.