Obama Citizenship

Senate GOP Raise Doubts on Current Stimulus Bill

By Phil

Could the Senate be the epicenter of a push for true bipartisanship? Here’s what Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had to say this weekend:

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the massive stimulus bill backed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could go down to defeat if it’s not stripped of unnecessary spending and focused more on housing issues and tax cuts.

The Senate version of the bill, which topped out at nearly $900 billion, is headed to the floor for debate. The House bill totaled about $819 billion and earned no Republican votes, even though it easily passed the Democratic-controlled House. At some point lawmakers will need to compromise on the competing versions.

McConnell and other Republicans suggested that the bill needed an overhaul because it doesn’t pump enough into the private sector through tax cuts and allows Democrats to go on a spending spree unlikely to jolt the economy. The Republican leader also complained that Democrats had not been as bipartisan in writing the bill as Obama had said he wanted.

“I think it may be time … for the president to kind of get a hold of these Democrats in the Senate and the House, who have rather significant majorities, and shake them a little bit and say, ‘Look, let’s do this the right way,’” McConnell said. “I can’t believe that the president isn’t embarrassed about the products that have been produced so far.”

Better get shakin’, ’cause Senate Dem #2 seems to disagree:

“We cannot delay this,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Democrats’ No. 2 leader. “We can’t engage in the old political rhetoric of saying, ‘Well, maybe it could be a little bit better here and a little bit better there.’ We’ve got to pull together.”

The New York Times is now reporting that dear ol’ Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) may be about to perform Suspend The Campaign(tm) Part 2:

Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential nominee, offered a prelude to what might be heard from the Senate floor as lawmakers begin taking up proposals that could cost upward of $900 billion. On CBS? ?The Early Show,? Mr. McCain said: ?Now?s the time to sit down and take into consideration the ideas that we have, particularly on things like tax cuts. We should have payroll tax cuts. We should be having taxes ? incentives for people to stay in their homes. There?s a lot of other proposals we have. We think they?we need to eliminate a lot of the wasteful pork-barrel spending that?s been put in and have a real, meaningful stimulus package. We realize they need the package. We need the package, America needs the package. But we?re not there yet.?

He continued by calling ?outrageous? some of the spending measures built into the package.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that some GOP Senators are vowing opposition:

A group of conservative Senate Republicans vowed Thursday to vote against an $888 billion economic stimulus package when it comes up for a vote in the Senate.

“A trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., standing with Republican colleagues who said they feel shut out of the process of crafting the stimulus despite Democratic promises of bipartisan cooperation.

All of this leaves me wondering if the “F”-bomb — meaning, “filibuster” — won’t be dropped soon. Also, where’s the Majority Leader (Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)) in all of this? We haven’t heard a word from him lately!

-Phil

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on February 02, 2009 (boomark / email).