WASHINGTON - The twin pressures of a looming recession and an election year combined to speed a $168 billion economic rescue plan through Congress, sweeping aside lawmakers' political differences in favor of rushing $600-$1,200 checks to their constituents.
The overwhelming House and Senate votes Thursday to approve the measure and send it to President Bush reflected lawmakers' eagerness to show they could act quickly to address economic concerns, which have replaced the Iraq war as the public's top worry.
The package was the product of a rare spate of bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans teamed with the White House on a bill that fell far short of both parties' priorities but could win quick enactment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled early last month her determination to move ahead with a fiscal stimulus bill. As reports about the economy worsened, the White House and congressional Republicans embraced the effort, even as some other Republicans on Capitol Hill worried that the economic bailout would do more to bolster Democrats' sagging approval ratings than it would to help the economy.
The result was a plan that will deliver tax rebate checks starting in May to anyone earning more than $3,000, with smaller rebates for people with incomes of $75,000 — or $150,000 for a couple — and a $300-per-child bonus. Most taxpayers would get $600 rebates, or $1,200 for couples. Those who earn too little to pay taxes, including senior citizens living off of Social Security or veterans on disability checks, would get rebates of $300 for individuals and $600 for couples.
The bill includes tax breaks for businesses investing in new plants and equipment, and steps to boost the ailing housing market.
The White House said Bush would sign it sometime next week, and lawmakers in both parties were quick to claim credit for the deal.
Pelosi trumpeted Democrats' efforts to include rebates for low-income people who make too little to owe taxes, while Republicans were pleased that the centerpiece of the measure was in essence a tax cut.
Pelosi, D-Calif., who forged an early agreement on a $161 billion plan with Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, later prodded the Senate to break its stalemate and complete the bill.
Partisan politics played a bigger role in the Senate, where Democrats were determined to use the stimulus package as a chance to highlight their party's priorities — including extending unemployment benefits and providing food stamp and heating aid for the poor — and wanted Republicans to cast tough election-year votes on those items.
They paired those add-ons with rebates for 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans left out of the House plan, and threatened that GOP senators would have to accept them or risk being blamed for leaving those politically powerful groups out of the stimulus effort.
Republicans blocked the $205 billion package, and when it became clear that he was just short of the 60 votes he would have needed to advance it, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said it was time to declare victory and move on.
"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," Reid said.
Senate Democrats' campaign committee issued news releases bashing vulnerable GOP senators, like Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, for opposing the larger package.
Republican strategists, however, said they were confident that voters would forget that their senators had briefly blocked the stimulus measure once their checks arrived this spring.
"At the end of the day Republicans gave a little, Democrats gave a little, the House gave a little and the Senate gave a little, and I think that is what the American people expect of us," Boehner said.
Mostly absent in the stampede to complete the aid package was any mention of the deficit, which will swell to accommodate the stimulus measure. Some Republicans, though, did express concern that the plan was crafted with an eye toward what would be best for lawmakers facing re-election in November instead of what was best for the economy.
"It might be political stimulus," said Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., "but it is the wrong economic stimulus."
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