A small group of senators from both parties struggled behind closed doors Friday to agree on spending cuts that would win over a couple key Republican votes needed to pass President Obama’s $937 billion economic rescue.
The negotiations involved a “gang of 18” 15 Democrats and three Republicans.
It replaced a more evenly split bipartisan group that broke up late Thursday night over spending cuts too small to satisfy Republican members, including Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.
The new group is still lead by Sens. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, and Sen. Ben Nelson, Nebraska Democrat, targeting between $50 billion and $100 billion in cuts. The sticking point is what to cut.
Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said the new negotiations for spending cuts lack the bipartisan component to make it credible.
“Now it’s 15 Democrats, three Republicans. That’s not bipartisan,” Mr. McCain said on the Senate floor. “If they come up with an agreement, then it will mean that three Republicans out of 535 members of Congress have supported this unnecessary, wasteful bill that could have been so much better.”
The current negotiations involve a proposal to reduce spending by about $80 billion by eliminating funding for Head Start, education for the disadvantaged, school improvement, child nutrition, firefighters, prisons and food stamps, according to a briefing document obtained by The Washington Times.
Other items on the chopping block include programs to hire police and fight violence against women and funding for NASA, Center for Disease Control, Western Area Power Administration and the Coast Guard. Reduced spending was proposed for public transit and school construction.
Under the proposal, spending would be increased for the Defense Department, transportation projects, brownfields and State and Tribal Assistance Grants, which are used for compliance with environmental standards.
“We just received a counter offer from the Democrats and we’re taking our time to review it,” Mrs. Collins said after an afternoon meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.
She said she was feeling “not as good as I felt earlier” about finishing the bill Friday.
“We are now in the throes of trying to work something out to approve that plan,” Mr. Reid said earlier on the Senate floor. “The vast majority of the American people know something has to be done. They approve of what President Obama is doing [or] trying to do.”
Citing the higher jobless numbers announced Friday, he said, “This is a critical day for our country and this congress, faced with this grave and growing economic crisis.”
A day earlier, he said Democrats had enough votes to pass the bill but that optimism evaporated overnight. They need at least two Republican votes to pass the package.
Upon the bill’s passage in the Senate, it still would need to be reconciled with the $819 billion version approved by the House Democratic leaders want a stimulus bill on the president’s desk by Feb. 13, when Congress takes a weeklong recess.
Mr. Obama on Friday named an Economic Recovery Advisory Board to be led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to guide the recovery effort.
The president said Congress must act immediately to pass the stimulus because more job losses are coming as the economy gets worse, not better.
“Although we had a terrible year with respect to jobs last year, the problem is accelerating, not decelerating. It’s getting worse, not getting better,” Mr. Obama said.
The nearly 600,000 jobs lost in January, reported Friday morning, is the most in decades. Mr. Obama sought to use the increasingly gloomy numbers as a reason for Congress to end its debate and pass an economic stimulus spending bill.
He defended the bills Democrats passed in the House and are moving to pass in the Senate, saying while they need improvement, they are “broadly speaking … the right size, the right scope and it has the right balance.”
But Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, blamed the slow pace of legislation action on Democrats, who he said loaded up the bill with bad policies that Republicans want to strip out.
“Irrespective of this ’advisory board,’ Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, and Chairman Obey don’t appear to understand the difference between classic pork-barrel spending and sound policies that actually create jobs,” Mr. Cantor said, naming top Democratic leaders who wrote the House and Senate stimulus spending bills.
In announcing his advisory council Mr. Obama said he was trying to get opinions from outside Washington’s echo chamber, but joked he’s getting economic advice from all corners.
“These days, everybody thinks they’re economists,” he said.
The stimulus’ price tag ballooned in the Senate from about $850 billion to $937 billion as the Senate added such items as $11 billion in tax incentives for new car purchases, $6.5 billion more for the National Institutes of Health and about $18 billion for a $15,000 tax credit to homebuyers in hopes of spurring the housing industry.
• Tom LoBianco contributed to this article.
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