A painful financial crisis was fresh on Congressman Joel Hefley's mind when he cast a renegade "no" vote in 1999.

Back then, near the tail end of President Clinton's second term, Congress was being asked to approve a sweeping "modernization" of the financial services sector, lifting Depression-era restrictions on the kinds of business that commercial banks could engage in.

The change was billed as good for consumers and good for business because it would allow big institutions to get even bigger, all the better to compete in an increasingly competitive international marketplace.

But Hefley, then the Republican congressman from Colorado Springs, was skittish, thinking back to congressional tinkering with regulations and real estate tax laws that set the stage for a disastrous collapse of the savings and loan industry in the early 1990s.

Disastrous outcome

That debacle, including the collapse of hundreds of S&Ls, left taxpayers on the hook for a $124 billion bailout. And, Hefley recalled, it caused some good business people, once pillars of his local community, to go broke, pack their things in U-Haul trailers and leave town *? ruined.

So when it came time to vote on the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, Hefley was the only Colorado lawmaker *? and one of only five Republicans in the House - to vote no.

"What I saw was a step toward doing this with other institutions, and we could have a disastrous outcome like we had with S&Ls," said Hefley, now retired from Colorado politics and raising horses on a ranch in Oklahoma.

Hefley wasn't alone. A handful of other lawmakers sounded an alarm, saying massive consolidation in the financial services industry could make some firms "too big to fail."

Nine years later, some are pointing to that 1999 legislation, combined with Congress' reluctance to crack down on questionable lending and investment practices in federally-chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as setting the stage for a crisis that has the world economy reeling.

If so, Democrats and Republicans both share the blame, and now it will take a bipartisan autopsy of sorts to figure out what killed the old financial order.

"Hindsight can be 2 0/20. There may have been some things in (the 1999 legislation) that were positive in terms of economic stimulation," said Sean Conway, chief of staff to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland. "What's prudent is for us to go back and look at all of the legislation that we've enacted or engaged in and see the good, the bad and the ugly."

Allard, a retiring member of the Senate Banking Committee, played a major role in the writing of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as "Gramm-Leach- Bliley" for its lead sponsors.

Eliminates barriers

It was landmark legislation, backed by the Democratic White House and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin *? now a backer of Sen. Barack Obama *? and championed by Sen.