WASHINGTON — The Senate may have forged a bipartisan compromise on an $827 billion economic stimulus package, but Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said there likely will be no compromising on his part when it comes to voting on the final bill.
“People are saying Washington is so out of touch with reality,” Rep. Wamp said. “People think we’re trying to spend our way out of this problem. We should stand against it, even knowing the Democrats have the votes to pass it.”
The Senate is expected to pass its draft of the stimulus bill today, after which House and Senate negotiators will meet to iron out the differences between their versions. Democratic leaders hope to then clear the bill through both chambers by the end of the week, saying quick action is needed to help bring the country out of its recession.
“We can no longer afford to wait and see and hope for the best,” said President Barack Obama, who has made the stimulus a priority, at a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind. “We can no longer posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place — and that the American people rejected at the polls this past November.”
Both House and Senate versions of the stimulus package include significant funding for highway construction, Medicaid payments to states, various tax cuts, electricity grids and other infrastructure projects.
But the Senate version, the result of a compromise between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, is larger than the House-passed $819 billion version.
The House bill includes greater aid to states and $19.5 billion for school construction that isn’t included in the Senate version, which includes more funding for welfare and unemployment benefits, along with a $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers and another tax deduction for car buyers not included in the House version.
Senators from Tennessee and Georgia, all Republican, have indicated they plan to vote against the bill, saying it contains too much wasteful spending that’s not directly aimed at creating jobs and instead grows the size of the government.
A spokesman for Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who voted against the House version, said the congressman has not yet reviewed the Senate bill, but in public appearances this past week Rep. Deal criticized Democrats for lacking fiscal discipline.
But Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., who voted in favor of the House bill, said many Republicans critical of the level of spending in the stimulus package are the same who supported the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package last year. All four Tennessee and Georgia senators voted in favor of the Wall Street bill, as did Rep. Wamp, though Rep. Deal opposed it.
With unemployment in his Middle Tennessee district approaching 9 percent, Rep. Davis said the stimulus is urgently needed.
“Again, I ask how officials in Washington could support a $700 billion dollar bank bailout, which I opposed, but have trouble supporting infrastructure investments and benefits for the working poor and middle class?” he said.
Rep. Wamp said he is unlikely to change his “no” vote on the package when the conference bill comes back before the House.
He supported a House Republican alternative that included a greater focus on tax cuts and less programmatic spending, but that amendment was voted down, with Democrats saying it didn’t go far enough to help the economy.
“It’s not much of a compromise,” Rep. Wamp said of the Senate bill. “I see 85 percent of this bill as not helpful to the economy, and there’s no way they can fix this bill. I plan to vote against it.”
In our own community, we're looking at huge school funding deficits and layoffs in all sectors and still Wamp, Corker, et al, would cut off their nose to spite their face. My company would have an opportunity to stem the tide of staff lay offs if the $55 million for historic preservation had not been cut from the senate package. We could have hired more people if some of our long-time "on hold" jobs could have received funding. But no, I guess that's "pork" in the eyes of the Republican, for whom being "right" is more important than anything, including their constituents -- many of whom are business owners who understand that if capital flows, so do revenues.
And, what business do any Republicans have preaching fiscal responsibility after the ridiculous build up of deficit during past eight years, six of which were spent with a Republican congress serving a Republican president? It boggles the mind.
It was Bill Clinton who said give everyone a home and started this mess. It was the Democrat controlled congress who got the recession rolling. And it was the misguided public who believed there will be change for the better. Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views
It was Bill Clinton that started this mess, kind of, The Home Builders of America lobbied to get bills passed to favor everyone in America to own a home, and then when the bills passed they kept raising prices until the bottom had to fall out of the market. Greed of a few ruined a good program for the many, again. I was part of that association until I realized what their motives were. NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED
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