Senators pressure Pelosi on stimulus

Senators are pressuring Speaker Nancy Pelosi to embrace most of the stimulus bill they hope to pass early next week, claiming that adopting too many House provisions will doom the measure in the upper chamber.

After two years of showdowns with then President Bush on the budget and the Iraq war during the last Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Pelosi (D-Calif.) will engage in a policy battle over the next week on President Obama’s top priority. Obama and his senior White House aides will play a large and delicate role in the hopes of striking a deal that attracts the support of Reid, Pelosi and at least a few centrist Republicans.

{mosads}The House and Senate bills have similar price tags, but they are significantly different.

In the wake of a bipartisan deal on Friday night, senators on both sides of the aisle stressed that if the bill undergoes major changes in conference negotiations with the House, the massive measure will not pass.

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), one of three Republicans to embrace the Senate bill, made clear during a Friday night press conference that she has made no commitment on backing the bill that comes out of conference. Sen. Olympia Snowe, Collins’s GOP colleague from Maine, has also endorsed the new Senate package.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), another backer of the measure, echoed Collins’s remarks, saying, “We’re going to be needed [in order for the final bill to pass].”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who retained his Homeland Security committee gavel despite endorsing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president, said, “We need 60 votes to take up the conference committee report so the conference committee can’t stray too far [from the Senate bill]…. I hope and believe it won’t be changed much in conference.”

Lieberman also endorsed Collins in her reelection race last year.

Senate Democrats are confident they have the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture on Monday, but it doesn’t appear that they’ll have much more than 60. But having just the backing of a few GOP senators will allow Reid and his deputies to make the case in conference that their coalition is fragile and the final legislative product should closely resemble the Senate bill.

Pelosi has been adamant that there will be a conference though the Democrats’ self-imposed deadline of sending the stimulus to Obama’s desk by Presidents Day gives the Senate an upper hand in the negotiations.

Assuming a successful cloture vote on Monday, the Senate is expected to vote on final passage the following day. That gives Senate and House leaders less than a week to hammer out a deal on one of the largest bills in recent memory. While lawmakers have indicated they have already engaged in pre-conference discussions, the heavy lifting will occur this week.

Reid indicated on Friday that the Senate will conference with the House but added, “Remember, we have to have this on the president’s desk before the Presidents Day recess.”

Lieberman noted that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel helped iron out the Senate compromise, saying, “He spoke very strongly in favor of it.”

Emanuel, a former House leadership member, appears to have been more of a factor  in crafting the Senate bill than the House-passed legislation. Before the House vote, Emanuel invited a group of centrist House Republicans to the White House, but his pitch for the bill fell short.

Since the election, Pelosi has sent signals to Emanuel to respect the boundaries between the executive and legislative branches.

Raising some eyebrows on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) last week said on Liberadio that he “got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I’m doing. They know it’s a messy bill and they wanted a clean bill.” Cooper, who voted against the House bill, later backtracked, saying no one on Obama’s staff encouraged him to vote against the stimulus.

House Democrats expressed frustration with the Senate throughout the 110th Congress, bowing to the Senate’s version of bills on a range of issues, including the Alternative Minimum Tax patch and the $700-billion financial rescue package.

Pelosi has spent some political capital moving the stimulus bill quickly through the House, which triggered complaints from several of her subcommittee chairmen.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), a subcommittee chairman on the influential Financial Services Committee, publicly ripped the House stimulus and was one of 11 Democrats to reject the bill on the floor.

At the House Democratic retreat on Saturday morning in Williamsburg, Va., Pelosi suggested lawmakers will focus on the similarities in the two bills “and then get down to the finer points.”

She added, “I am certain that the president will be signing [legislation] before Presidents Day.”

Liberals in the House are already making noise that they might vote against the conference bill if it mirrors the Senate legislation.

Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said last week, “Many of us may not support it in the House” if the Senate makes “so many changes,” such as adding more tax breaks and cutting spending provisions, which is what the Senate did.

Compared to the House measure, the Senate bill scales back the subsidy to help cover health insurance for workers who have lost their jobs. The House legislation included $40 billion to subsidize healthcare coverage through the COBRA program. In the Senate compromise, there is roughly $20 billion.

The Senate compromise also pares back education funds substantially from the bill that passed the House. The Senate draft includes $13.9 billion for Pell Grants to help pay for college tuition, while the bill that passed the House seeks $15.6 billion.

In the House, Democrats included $79 billion for fiscal relief to the states, including $39 billion for local school districts and public colleges and universities.

However, the compromise in the Senate nearly halves that amount to $39 billion in fiscal relief, including roughly $27 billion for local school districts and colleges. The Senate compromise also halves to $1 billion the amount of money for the Head Start program.

The Senate bill also cuts $3.5 billion from the House version that seeks $20 billion for nutrition assistance programs.

Meanwhile, Obama on Saturday tapped into his broad online network of supporters to push the stimulus package. In a video posted to his website, barackobama.com, and supported by his Organizing for America campaign, Obama said that, “sometimes Washington is slow to get the news,” and the president told his supporters “change never begins from the top down.”

Obama said that the plan will help prevent the economy from falling “$1 trillion short of what it’s capable of producing this year,” and would “create or save more than 3 million jobs.”

“I hope that you’ll talk about the importance of this plan with your friends and neighbors because we cannot wait to take action,” Obama said. “We’ve inherited a terrible mess.”

Jared Allen and Molly K. Hooper contributed to this article.