U.S. Army Captain Michael Kelvington, commander of the Battle company, 1-508 Parachute Infantry battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, bows next to remains of Gulam Dostager, a member of Afghan Local Police who was killed in the blast of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) during the joint Tor Janda (Black Flag in Pashtu) operation, in Zahri district of Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan May 25, 2012.  REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov  (AFGHANISTAN - Tags: MILITARY CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Reuters Photojournalism

Our day's top images, in-depth photo essays and offbeat slices of life. See the best of Reuters photography.  See more | Photo caption 

Members of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels fly over the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan as part of the 25th annual Fleet Week celebration in New York, May 23, 2012.  REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz (UNITED STATES - Tags: MILITARY ANNIVERSARY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Fleet Week

The U.S. Navy takes Manhattan for a week.  Slideshow 

Photo

The SpaceX mission

A privately owned unmanned rocket blasts off on a mission to be the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.  Slideshow 

Republican Blunt aims to minimize economic damage

WASHINGTON | Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:20pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Republican leaders conceded on Monday they underestimated unhappiness among their members before a vote that defeated a proposed bailout for U.S. financial firms but said Democrats were more to blame.

"We did think we had a dozen more votes going to the floor than we had," said Rep Roy Blunt of Missouri who was lead negotiator for the House Republicans. But he blamed a "partisan" floor speech by the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for rousing enough opposition to kill the bill.

He pledged to reach out to Democrats to try to avert widespread economic fallout from the defeat of the bill.

"We're going to reach back out to them, we're certainly going to reach back out to our members," Blunt said. ""We're going to see how we can come together to reverse whatever negative there may be on the economy over the next few days because Congress has failed to act."

(Reporting by Glenn Somerville; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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