Levin told the audience at Monday's debate that the $25 billion loan package was vital to keeping the domestic car companies in business, and said he was considering an attempt to double the size of the package, something Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has proposed. The debate, the second of two scheduled in the race, showed the wide ideological gulf between Hoogendyk, a Kalamazoo-area Republican and one of the most conservative members of the state Legislature, and Levin, a solid liberal during his five Senate terms. Hoogendyk argued the auto industry's problems were better solved by cutting the companies' taxes -- though they pay no taxes when they lose money, as they have regularly in recent years -- and regulations; that the Wall Street rescue package was unwise and that the United States is heading for the same sort of socialist economic policy and 'moral decline' that prompted his parents to leave the Netherlands after World War II. Levin said the Wall Street bailout was necessary not to save financial firms, but to protect jobs and pensions; that the federal government has a duty to act to prevent the auto companies from folding; and that the real culprits in the crisis were Republican policies on taxes and regulation.