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Windsor Locks (WTNH) – The state’s senior senator, Chris Dodd, spent last week engineering the passage of the bailout bill in Washington. This morning, he spent some time in a hotel conference at Bradley International Airport explaining its necessity.

“When you get states and communities that can’t sell bonds, you get car dealerships and franchises that close their doors because they can’t borrow money locally, you begin to see what’s happening across the country,” Dodd said.

The problem is in credit. When you get credit, say, for a new car. That means you get a car, but it also helps the car dealer stay in business. The car maker can too, and its thousands of employees get to keep their jobs. Right now no one - you, the car dealer, those employees - no one has much chance at getting credit.

“It’s the frozen credit -the failure of capital to move - which is causing as much trouble. And if they begin to see that we’re dealing with this, the toxic paper that’s out there, the bad paper, my hope is this will start to move fairly quickly,” Dodd said.

So the government will buy and then auction off those bad loans. They’re mostly mortgages people couldn’t afford. One of the people meeting with Dodd was the president of the AFL-CIO, and he says a lot of his members were against the $700 billion bailout.

“I mean, it was a lot of anger and I think rightfully so, but what you have to do is - everybody gets angry - and what you have to do is step back and say well what are we going to do about it,” said John Olsen, AFL-CIO President.

Dodd says Congress went through those same feeling when they passed the bill Friday.

“Normally I associate passing a bill in Congress as a day of some joy. There was no joy whatsoever,” Dodd said.

But what’s to prevent the banks from going back to lending money when they shouldn’t?

“Part of the institutions that caused a lot of this no longer exist, so the likelihood that’s going to occur any time soon is out the window,” Dodd said.

Dodd says transactions from the $700 billion rescue package passed on Friday will begin moving as early as next week.