The Week on the Hill

by Jill Smallen and Jason Dick

Sat. Feb. 9, 2008


Stimulus Plan Nears Finish Line

After the defeat of an expanded economic stimulus package earlier in the week, Congress at press time was headed toward quick approval of a version closer to what President Bush and key leaders agreed to last month. The Senate on February 7 was expected to add rebate checks for senior citizens and disabled veterans to the House-passed $146 billion stimulus bill, which included rebate checks only for workers, limited business tax breaks, and some help for the housing sector. The House was expected to approve the Senate changes and send the legislation to Bush. The move came after the Senate on February 6 failed to pass a $158 billion stimulus package that included the additional rebate checks, plus extra business tax breaks, energy tax credits, unemployment benefits, heating-bill help for the poor, and provisions benefiting the housing and coal industries. The measure officially fell 58-41, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had switched his vote to "no" so that he could bring the bill back up later for reconsideration, meaning that proponents were actually only one vote shy of the 60 needed for passage. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., left the presidential campaign trail to return for the vote, but Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., did not. Reid and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., persuaded just eight Republicans to vote for the $158 billion version.

-- Brian Friel/National Journal

FISA Bill Debate Drags On

With a stopgap measure set to expire on February 15, Congress continued to struggle this week to pass legislation overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. After Senate Democrats and Republicans finally reached agreement to vote on the first of a dozen amendments to the FISA bill, the chamber on February 6 defeated an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., that would have sunset the legislation in four years rather than six. The vote was 49-46, short of the 60 needed for approval. The Senate bill would provide retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that assisted the administration with warrantless electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens, while a competing House-approved bill would not. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell sent top Senate leaders a letter on February 5 listing seven amendments to the Senate version that would draw a veto from President Bush, including three to alter or strike the immunity provision. Also this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that the administration was blocking him and other key Democrats from reviewing legal documents showing communications between the White House and the telecommunications companies that had been involved with surveillance. Hoyer said he needed to review the documents to decide if the companies should be given legal protections from lawsuits.

-- Chris Strohm/CongressDaily

Bush Proposes $3 Trillion Budget

Delivering his final budget proposal to Capitol Hill on February 4, President Bush called for total federal spending to top $3 trillion for the first time ever, and he projected budget deficits of $400 billion this year and next for the first time since 2004. Bush's $3.1 trillion fiscal 2009 budget forecasts a surplus in fiscal 2012, as he promised last year. But the plan makes no allowance for the cost of preventing the alternative minimum tax from hitting additional middle-class taxpayers, beyond a temporary patch for the 2008 tax year, or for costs associated with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, beyond a $70 billion installment for fiscal 2009. Democrats said that those omissions -- plus spending cuts the president proposed that they are unlikely to enact -- add up to a budget that is unrealistic and largely dead on arrival. Bush said the two principles guiding his budget were "keeping America safe and ensuring our continued prosperity." To that end, he would boost security-related funding by $44.9 billion over last year, an 8.2 percent increase. By contrast, nonsecurity discretionary spending would grow by 0.3 percent, with cuts proposed for six Cabinet departments and the Environmental Protection Agency. Bush also called on Congress to permanently extend his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. He proposed savings of about $619.4 billion in mandatory programs, with the largest reduction coming from Medicare.

-- Peter Cohn/CongressDaily

 

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