White House turns up heat on stimulus bill
February 10, 2009
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
OBAMA Administration officials have intensified pressure on Congress to pass a huge stimulus package, warning of the consequences of delay.
The White House asked the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, to focus on winning congressional support for the bill instead of detailing an initiative to aid financial firms, consumer credit markets and struggling homeowners. The announcement of that rescue plan was moved to today.
The Senate was due to hold a procedural vote yesterday on the stimulus package to determine whether a compromise reached at the weekend, which removed about $US100 billion in spending from the bill, would persuade enough Republicans to support it.
Even if senators approve the bill, which carries an $827 billion price tag, they face the daunting task of negotiating a final bill with the House, which passed its own version last week with far more spending proposals and fewer tax cuts. Democratic aides said it could be difficult to get the stimulus to President Barack Obama’s desk by Congress’s self-imposed deadline of Friday.
Mr Obama will fly to Elkhart, Indiana, where unemployment has soared to 15.3 per cent – about twice the national average – before holding a news conference to urge congressional leaders to quickly reconcile the two versions of the bill.
The Administration’s top economic officials said that as negotiations progress, Mr Obama is interested in restoring support for education and for state and local governments – measures stripped out in the Senate version of the plan.
To persuade enough moderate Republicans to vote for it, leaders also added tax credits for home and vehicle purchases.
The administration played down differences between the House and Senate measures, saying it was critical that Congress act swiftly. “The most important thing is to get this done for the sake of an economy that lost 600,000 jobs in one month,” Lawrence Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, said on Sunday.
Many Republicans have called the plan unfocused and wasteful, and complain that they have been locked out of the bill-writing process, despite Mr Obama’s public efforts to reach out to Republicans.
The Republican senator John McCain of Arizona said:
“I know we’re in trouble. I know America needs a stimulus. We need tax cuts. We need to spend money on infrastructure and on other programs that will immediately put people to work. But this is not it.”
Fantastic beat ! I would like to apprentice while you amend your web site, how can i subscribe for a blog website? The account helped me a acceptable deal. I had been a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast offered bright clear idea