RALEIGH — Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole voted against a revised $700 billion bailout of the nation's financial industry, but her colleagues passed the measure by a lopsided margin.

Senators loaded the economic rescue bill with tax breaks and other sweeteners before passing it 74-25, a month before the presidential and congressional elections.

Despite the alterations, Dole was unswayed. Before the vote, she called the proposal “a government takeover of our economy with no protection for taxpayers.” While she said the relief package was an improvement over the Bush administration's original plan, Dole said it does nothing to fix the housing crisis largely blamed for triggering the meltdown of the nation's credit markets.

“Now is the time for careful, deliberate actions — not hasty, knee-jerk reactions,” Dole said in a release before the vote took place. “I will stand up for the taxpayers and vote no.”

Brian Nick, Dole's chief of staff, said the senator would have no further comment on the vote.

Democratic state Sen. Kay Hagan, locked in a tight race for Dole's seat, said Wednesday she wanted to see the final measure before taking a position. After the vote, she said that like Dole, she would have voted against the bailout package.

“It's a fix for Wall Street, not Main Street, and this isn't a situation where we can afford to only address half the problem,” Hagan said in a statement. “I've said that any new bailout legislation must add real accountability, oversight and protections for Main Street to ensure we never find ourselves in this position again.”

North Carolina's other senator, Republican Richard Burr, voted in favor of the measure.

“As a fiscal conservative, I consider this vote a sad day in our nation's history,” he said. “But as a public servant, and as an elected representative of North Carolina, I do not believe I can sit by and let this country fall into the worst economic state that it has ever faced.”

The revised proposal includes sweeteners designed to appease House lawmakers, including energy tax breaks and an increase in the limit on federal bank deposit insurance. Dole said the added provisions had boosted the cost of plan to more than $800 billion.

Dole serves on the Senate's banking committee, whose leaders brokered the negotiations between lawmakers and the White House. And she represents a state that's home to banks reshaped by the crisis: Citigroup Inc. is in the process of buying much of Charlotte-based Wachovia Corp. in a deal orchestrated by the government. Charlotte's Bank of America Inc. is still standing and buying Merrill Lynch & Co.

Rather than the plan before the Senate, which would spend billions to buy deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities at the center of the crisis, Dole said she would like to see a significant and immediate tax credit for purchasing a home, a suspension of “mark-to-market” accounting, and a program for securing or guaranteeing loans to banks.

The government's plan, pushed by the Bush administration and top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, would allow the government to spend billions to buy bad assets, removing them from the books of financial institutions hit by a freeze in credit. Leaders of the push hope it will ease the concerns of banking firms, giving them more piece of mind as they return to lending to businesses and individuals.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said the measure will benefit both companies and individuals who could be damaged by ongoing turmoil.

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