“Probably I would have voted yes,” Mr. Gingrich said of the bailout, “just because if you have the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve chairman saying to you, ‘Vote yes or we’re all going to go off a cliff.'”

“Well the fact is, we’re all going to go off a cliff. That’s what’s happening. This is a much more profound problem than people think,” said Mr. Gingrich, a Republican from Georgia, during a breakfast with reporters and columnists organized by the Christian Science Monitor.