Senate Democrats Delay Stimulus Showdown

Senate Democratic leaders put off an expected showdown over an economic stimulus plan until next week, worrying that the absence of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) could doom efforts to force changes to the package fashioned by House leaders and President Bush.

"I still have two Democratic senators" on the campaign trail, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor. "Next Tuesday is Super Tuesday, and they're both very busy, as is Senator [John] McCain. So I probably can't get them back here until Monday, but I need them back."

Reid and other Democratic leaders all but conceded they would not have the 60 votes to replace the $146 billion stimulus plan passed by the House with a version approved by the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.

The Senate plan includes extensions of unemployment benefits and would give tax rebates to more affluent people, disabled veterans and low-income seniors -- groups left out of the House version.

A delay in consideration of the stimulus plans should have no impact on how quickly payments can be mailed. The Internal Revenue Service will determine eligibility and the size of tax checks based on 2007 tax returns, which are not due until April 15. It will take two months to reprogram IRS computers to cut those checks, a process the IRS intends to begin in mid-March to be ready to send the first checks in mid-May.

Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said any delay past mid-March could delay the checks. Until then, claims that one side or the other is standing in the way of the payments is political posturing, he said.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, said the delay had nothing to do with presidential politics. Democrats were putting off the showdown for parliamentary reasons, he said, mainly because Republicans were refusing to take up the bill until a separate deal is worked out on a stalled measure to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In Las Vegas today, President Bush signed a 15-day extension of the law that authorizes the government's program of eavesdropping on suspected terrorists, which is set to expire tomorrow. But he warned that his patience is running out.

Bush said that he "expects people of both political parties to get this work done."

"This tool was necessary six months ago, and yet it was set to expire as if the threat to our country was set to expire," he said.

In a late-morning speech at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina, Vice President Cheney said any additional changes to the stimulus package "would only slow down the process or derail the bill altogether."

The package is "not perfect legislation," Cheney said, but is "a sensible, fair, bipartisan agreement.