CONGRESS IS expected to give final approval today to a $789 billion (€614 billion) stimulus package, giving President Barack Obama his first major legislative victory since taking office.
Congressional leaders believe the bill’s passage is almost certain, despite the opposition of almost all Republicans and some Democrats.
Mr Obama, who claims the stimulus plan will create or save between three and four million jobs, plans to sign the bill into law next Monday, perhaps in a ceremony televised during prime time.
No Republicans supported the bill in the House of Representatives and just three Republican senators backed it – enough to ensure passage by a wafer-thin margin.
Tax cuts account for about 35 per cent of the final bill, with spending projects accounting for the rest. Some Democrats complain that the president’s attempt to reach out to Republicans resulted in too many compromises.
“I am not happy with it,” said Iowa senator Tom Harkin.
“You are not looking at a happy camper. I mean they took a lot of stuff out of education. They took it out of health, school construction and they put it more into tax issues.”
Republicans complained that some of the tax cuts included in the more conservative Senate version of the bill had been removed and that some spending projects favoured by House Democrats had been restored.
“It appears that Democrats have made a bad bill worse by reducing the tax relief for working families in order to pay for more wasteful government spending,” said House minority leader John Boehner.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is airing radio adverts targeting 30 House Democrats in marginal districts for supporting the bill, which Republicans characterise as full of wasteful spending.
“Many of these very same Democrats who ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility now have the obligation to explain why they’re willing to pile even more mountains of debt on to our grandchildren without regard for how middle-class families’ hard-earned tax dollars will be spent,” said committee spokesman Ken Spain.
Despite their misgivings about elements of the stimulus package, Democrats are celebrating a crucial early victory for the new president, who has been making the case for the bill at town hall meetings across the country this week.
Mr Obama was in Peoria, Illinois, yesterday to visit a Caterpillar heavy machinery plant and he will travel to Denver and Phoenix next week.
The White House acknowledged that it had been less successful this week in unveiling treasury secretary Timothy Geithner’s plan to bail out troubled financial institutions and to help homeowners behind on mortgage payments to stay in their homes.
“I think it was a bumpy rollout because Wall Street was hoping for a complete answer to some really complex and expensive problems,” said White House senior adviser David Axelrod, “and what secretary Geithner laid out didn’t meet those expectations, but he laid out a strategy that we think is going to work.
“In the coming weeks, he’ll lay out tactics to support that strategy and people will know exactly what’s expected of them and what our role will be as a government,” Mr Axelrod added