Congress, facing the prospect of an election-year recession, passed an emergency plan Thursday that rushes rebates of $600 to $1,200 to most taxpayers and $300 checks to disabled veterans, the elderly and other low-income people. President Bush indicated he would sign the measure.
House passage by a 380-34 vote came a few hours after Senate leaders ended a drawn-out stalemate over the bill.
This is essentially the plan laid out by President Bush during his State of the Union Address a couple of weeks ago. Before it was passed, however, the Democrats in the Senate attempted to load up the bill with extra spending.
But it bogged down in the closely divided Senate, where Democrats were determined to exact a political price from Republicans by forcing them into tough votes on whether to add popular items such as $14.5 billion in jobless aid for those whose unemployment benefits have run out, $1 billion in heating aid for the poor and tax breaks for energy companies, including coal producers.
Senate Democratic leaders paired those items with rebates for older Americans and disabled veterans and threatened that Republicans would have to accept them or risk being blamed for leaving those politically powerful groups out of the stimulus plan.
In the end, though, Democrats couldn't draw enough support for their $205 billion alternative to break a GOP filibuster blocking it.
Yep, the Dems wanted to take a $168 Billion plan and add another $40 Billion. Both amounts are ridiculously high amounts to be adding to the deficit (that's why 16 Republicans voted against the final total) and yet it neither would do squat to boost the economy. (Better to make tax cuts permanent and to simplify the tax code. IMHO)
The turnaround in the Senate came after Democrats on Wednesday fell just one vote short of overcoming the Republican objections and pressing ahead with their more costly plan.
They relented Thursday and allowed a vote on a more limited proposal that included the rebates for the elderly and veterans, plus language designed to prevent illegal immigrants from getting the checks.
"I could have played around with this and tried to pick up that 60th vote, but I made a commitment to get this bill done before (Feb. 15), and we did that," said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Sure, Harry. If only you hadn’t promised to get it done by the 15th. Right.
The retreat came after Pelosi sided with Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and urged the Senate to stop its infighting and pass the bill.
Thirty-three Republicans joined 46 Democrats and the Senate's two independents to pass the measure. Sixteen Republican senators voted against the plan.
The two Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, skipped the vote. The Republican front-runner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, cast his first vote of the year on the bill, voting "yes." McCain had missed the vote the evening before.
From the first sentence in that quote, I’m guessing that Harry was given an offer that ran along the lines of get the heck out of the way, or you will be removed from the path. And it may not have come from the Republicans. Harry Reid has become a non-entity. He can’t lead and he’s having a tough time following.
What’s interesting here is not that 16 Republicans voted against this stimulus package (many feel it is not needed and will serve no purpose), but that the two presidential hopefuls from the Democrat Party didn’t bother to show up and cast a vote. Now that’s leadership!
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