Handing the new administration a big win, the House Friday passed President Barack Obama’s $787 billion plan to resuscitate the economy.
The bill was passed 246-183 with no Republican help. It now goes to the Senate where a vote was possible late Friday to meet a deadline of passing the plan before a recess begins next week.
All but seven Democrats voted for the bill — a 1,071 page, 8-inch-thick measure that combines $281 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses with more than a half-trillion dollars in government spending. The money would go for infrastructure, health care and help for cash-starved state governments, among scores of programs. Seniors would get a $250 bonus Social Security check.
Obama claims the plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs, but Republicans said it won’t work because it has too little in tax cuts and spreads too much money around to everyday projects like computer upgrades for federal agencies.
The final $787 billion measure has been pared back from versions previously debated in order to attract support from three Senate GOP moderates — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Their help is essential to meeting a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. The bill originally passed the Senate by a 61-37 tally, but Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., suffering from brain cancer, is not expected to vote. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, was planning to fly in after a memorial service for his mother to cast the deciding vote.
Democrats lavished praise on the measure, which combines tax cuts for workers and businesses with more than a half-trillion dollars in government spending aimed at boosting economic demand.
The plan is the signature initiative of the fledgling Obama administration, which is betting that combining tax cuts of $400 a year for individuals and $800 for couples with an infusion of spending for unemployment assistance, $250 payments to people on Social Security, and extra money for states to help with the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled will arrest the economy’s fall.
Local school districts would receive $70 billion in additional funding for K-12 programs and special education and to prevent cutbacks and layoffs and repair crumbling schools. There’s about $50 billion for energy programs, much of which goes to efficiency programs and renewable energy.
Some $46 billion would go to transportation projects, not enough to please many lawmakers.
Negotiators insisted on including a $70 billion tax break to make sure middle- to upper-income taxpayers won’t get hit by the alternative minimum tax and forced a reduction of Obama’s signature tax break for 95 percent of workers.
“This measure is not bipartisan. It contains much that is not stimulative,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama’s rival for the White House. “And is nothing short — nothing short — of generational theft” since it burdens future generations with so much debt, he added.
(Source: WCBSTV)
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2 Responses
Regardless of whether it is “leaf raking”, trillions of dollars have been drained from the economy by the collapse of our financial services industry, and if we don’t do something the recession will get worse. A mildly effective drug is better than none at all. The collapse of banking and the world wide impact is largely unprecedented (or rather the precident was 80 years ago)
246 liberal congress people just showed us why they lost touch with the American people who are against socialism and why they MUST be voted OUT in 2010!!
The tax cuts to people are short lived 15 dollar a week cuts for the first few months and then it goes to $8 a month. Big woop! The tax plan Pelosi/Reid/Obama said no to was a “permanant” cut of much more than that!
“The Constitution and the facts of any story are Obama’s two biggest enemies. The Constitution was written by Founders who feared precisely what’s happening. They feared an expanding, never ending, growing government, with more and more power.”