Tentative Senate Deal on Stimulus

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Senate Democrats reached agreement tonight with at least two Republican moderates on significant cuts to a massive economic stimulus bill in an effort to push the package toward final approval. Announcing the compromise on the Senate floor after a day of wrangling,  Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said a bipartisan group of negotiators agreed on a $780 billion package, cutting roughly $110 billion from the massive stimulus plan that had been under debate on the Senate floor. Joining the Democrats on the deal were Republican  Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and  Arlen Specter (Pa.) and independent  Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who announced their support in speeches on the Senate floor. If the package gets all 58 votes from Senate Democrats and the two independents who usually vote with them, the two GOP senators would bring those in favor to 60, a filibuster-proof majority that would guarantee passage.

The piece goes on:

[Collins] said the package now includes $45.5 billion for infrastructure projects, $6 billion for special education, $4.4 billion to improve electricity transmission and $87 billion in "targeted temporary increases" in the federal Medicaid matching rate to help states avoid deep cutbacks in health care coverage. Among the expenditures that the negotiators deleted was $870 million for pandemic flu preparedness, which Collins said was an example of a needed program but one that "doesn't belong in a stimulus package."

See, that's one of the things I don't get about GOP objections -- if things are needed, why don't they belong in the stimulus? Why trim out things that you later expect to pass anyway? It's not like the senate gets paid by the hour.

It's all been a rationalization for obstructionism. A cheap political stunt to score points with the wingnut crowd.