Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s meeting with lawmakers at 8pm Eastern tonight to try and bail out his trillion-dollar bailout.

The cable networks are reporting that Capitol Hill will pull an all-nighter.

I would urge all those Beltway staffers again to review Paulson’s abysmal record of misjudgments and pronouncements before signing onto anything in a rush to nail something down before tomorrow’s market open.

And fiscal conservatives in Washington: Keep an eye on the lard-up for us, please. God knows what the bailout architects will try to stuff into the package in the middle of the night.

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Update: Negotiations break down. The Democrats have banded together…to turn on their old Maverick friend, John McCain.

What did you expect, my friend?

Top Democrats angrily accused Republican White House contender John McCain of sabotaging an astronomically expensive deal to bail out Wall Street and shore up the US economy.

The 700-billion-dollar package stalled at talks convened by President George W. Bush with top lawmakers and both the men vying to succeed him — McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke were joining a new round of late-night discussions Thursday in a bid to get the deal back on track.

“John McCain did nothing to help, he only hurt the process,” the senior Democrat said at a joint news conference with Senate banking committee chairman Christopher Dodd.

Barney Frank, the Democratic chair of the House of Representatives financial services committee, said: “I think this was a campaign ploy for Senator McCain.

“I think they then had the problem that there might not have been enough of a deadlock for him to resolve,” he said, after Dodd had earlier announced an in-principle agreement with some senior Republicans on the bailout package.

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