I would try government sites like the federal reserve site or the mint or at least the news feeds from those sites since they have more internal reporting. Sites like that. You may always just want to call the library of congress – they are SUPER helpful about everything. Make some calls, don’t just rely on internet searches. A person on the phone will always have more valuable information for you and it looks better in the paper too that you actually talked to someone about it rather than just pulled the info from a book/site.
I would personally avoid 3rd party news sources as much as you can since they will always be biased in some way.
Writing FOR the bailout is hard…or rather an additional bailout since they already blew through their cash in the 1st quarter. The only reason the government is trying to help keep the companies from going under is so unemployment doesn’t go through the roof and torpedo us into a recession. They’re hoping that they can fight the inflation they’ll bring on from printing money better than unemployment.
Best of luck though. : ]
Hopefully my answer was before you had to finish the paper :p And I’d be interested in reading that essay if you were inclined to share it.