Liberals lobbying for stimulus plan

A broad coalition of liberal, environmental and labor groups Thursday announced plans to spend up to $5 million to lobby Congress on a massive new economic stimulus plan that would be ready for President-elect Barack Obama to sign the day he takes office Jan. 20.

More than 20 groups, including the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the People for the American Way Foundation and unions representing teachers, government employees and service industry workers have signed on to the effort.

“This is the most unprecedented campaign that progressives have launched in recent history,” said Alan Charney, program director of USAction, a liberal, District-based, grass-roots organizing group.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has talked of a $600 billion government spending program to jump-start the country’s economy, wracked by a global credit crunch, a collapsed housing bubble and rising layoffs.

Capitol Hill Democrats have staff working over the holiday recess to draft a stimulus bill for a vote when Congress returns next month.

The bill will likely spend more than half the money on building or repairing roads, bridges and schools. The rest of the cash will go to increased federal funding of Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment insurance, as well as middle-class tax cuts.

With the economic numbers getting worse by the week, Mr. Obama’s advisers are now floating even higher numbers, as high as $1 trillion.

Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change and a lead organizer of the group, said the effort was designed to pass a stimulus bill quickly and with a large margin, allowing the new president to move on to other goals.

“The idea is to pass this as soon as possible and with the biggest majority possible so that the Obama administration does not need to spend any more political capital than necessary,” Mr. Woodhouse said in a conference call with reporters.

The group plans to raise an estimated $4.5 million to $5 million on national and local advertising, as well as on organizing rallies, events and individual lobbying visits, he said.

But the prospect of massive new federal deficits could prove a tough sell for fiscal conservatives in Congress, including an enlarged caucus of conservative Democratic “Blue Dogs” in the incoming House. Republicans remain leery of the plan, saying it will produce a spending frenzy that ultimately will do little to bolster the economy.

Lawmakers are already being lobbied hard by interest groups wanting a piece of the stimulus pie, especially governors and local officials eager to see infrastructure projects bankrolled in their jurisdictions.

Mr. Woodhouse said one objective of the new lobbying effort will be to run up a big enough majority in the House to speed the bill’s passage in the Senate, where the minority Republicans have enough votes to filibuster the bill if they unite against it.

“Obviously the main goal of the campaign is to avoid a Senate filibuster,” he said.

Signs already point to some Republican moderates in the Senate being ready to back the politically popular stimulus package.

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