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Moderates Seek Stimulus Deal

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The Associated Press

Published: February 6, 2009

WASHINGTON - In an uncertain reach across party lines, Senate moderates struggled for a compromise on economic stimulus legislation Thursday as the government spit out grim new jobless figures and President Barack Obama warned of more bad news ahead.

With partisan tensions rising, several Republican attempts to remake the bill - with higher tax cuts, lower spending and fresh relief for homeowners - failed on party-line votes.

"This is the moment for leadership that matches the great test of our time," Obama said Thursday night. Earlier he declared, "The time for talk is over. The time for action is now."

The president added he would "love to see additional improvements" in the bill, a gesture to the moderates from both parties who were at work trying to trim the bill with a newly recalculated, $937 billion price tag.

After fitful, secretive talks lasting well into the evening, the would-be compromisers remained shy of agreement, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced they could have another day to work at it.

Increasingly, the events that mattered most were not the long roll calls on the Senate floor, but the private conversations in which the White House and Democratic leaders sought - either with the support of a large group of centrist lawmakers or without them - to clear the bill.

Either approach remained a possibility for the Democratic leadership. One path could lead to passage with as few as 60 votes, the minimum needed, while the other presented the opportunity for a larger bipartisan success for the young administration.

"As I have explained to people in that group, they cannot hold the president of the United States hostage," said Reid, D-Nev. "If they think they're going to rewrite this bill and Barack Obama is going to walk away from what he is trying to do for the American people, they've got another thought coming."

Republicans countered that neither the president nor Democratic congressional leaders have been willing to seek common ground on the first major bill of the new administration.

"We're not having meaningful negotiations. ... It's a bad way to start," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's opponent in the presidential campaign.

McCain's penchant for working across party lines has irritated fellow Republicans in the past, but he was not taking part in bipartisan talks on trimming the stimulus bill.

Instead, he advanced an alternative that highlighted the differences between the two political parties.

It carried a price tag of $421 billion, less than half the White House-backed measure. The majority of that was in the form of a one-year cut in the payroll tax, which would help all wage-earners, as well as reductions in the two lowest income tax brackets that would benefit only those who earn enough to pay income taxes.

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