House passes $100 billion economic stimulus; Senate likely to make changes

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WASHINGTON – The Republican-led House narrowly passed tax relief legislation Wednesday that would provide a $100 billion jolt to the staggering economy. Democrats protested it would mainly help big companies, but President Bush urged quick Senate action on the bill.

“Part of the war we fight is to make sure our economy continues to grow,” Bush said during an appearance at a Maryland printing plant shortly before the House vote.

The close 216-214 vote, largely along party lines, came after hours of noisy debate reflecting the deep political divide on economic policy, a departure from the unity on some other matters on Capitol Hill since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Seven Republicans voted against the bill; three Democrats voted for it.

Democratic Reps. John Baldacci and Tom Allen of Maine voted against the measure.

“It officially shatters the myth of bipartisanship,” said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Undeterred, Republicans said the legislation was the ideal way to encourage renewed business investment, stop job layoffs and boost consumer confidence in time for the holiday shopping season.

“Investment is the driving engine in the economy,” said House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. “This bill provides a reward for the risk-takers who create jobs in America.”

Democrats sharply disagreed, accusing Republicans of assembling a package that favors the wealthy and big corporations over laid-off workers and threatens to trigger deep future budget deficits. Senate Democrats are certain to make major changes, most likely giving greater aid to the unemployed and fewer business tax cuts.

“The workers who have lost their jobs get bread crumbs from this bill,” said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.

Bush praised four main elements in the House bill, which costs $99.5 billion in 2002 and $159 billion over 10 years. They include a new round of tax rebates for people who didn’t get a check earlier this year; repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax; enhanced expensing write-offs for business capital assets; and acceleration of the cut in the 27 percent individual income tax rate so it falls to 25 percent in 2002, four years earlier than under current law.

Other key items in the bill would effectively cut long-term capital gains tax rates from 20 percent to 18 percent for most taxpayers, give major corporations refunds of alternative minimum taxes they paid up to 15 years ago and allow companies to deduct current operating losses from taxes they paid up to five years earlier.

Baldacci of Maine, who voted in favor of a substitute stimulus package that was killed earlier in the day, said the Republican version that eventually passed “was misdirected.”

“It needed to be more bipartisan,” Baldacci said. “I wanted it to be more directed toward working families and small businesses.”

He added that the federal income tax cut proposed in the package would act as a “double whammy” for Maine, which is already seeing tax revenues reduced because of the lagging economy. Maine uses the adjusted gross income line on federal tax forms as the basis for collecting state income taxes.

“This will affect state revenues, compounding the shortage we are already experiencing,” Baldacci said.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said tax breaks for business would oil “the machines that create jobs. … They’re not the enemy of working families. They’re the source of hundreds of millions of paychecks.”

But Rep. Corinne Brown, D-Fla., succinctly summarized the Democrats’ dim view of the corporate tax cuts: “Why does the big dog always get to eat first?”

Even though there is still considerable bipartisan support for some of the tax items, Democrats said the measure’s $12 billion in grants to states was far too little to tackle the growing unemployment problem.

They proposed an alternative that would have added 26 weeks of unemployment benefits and provided a 75 percent federal match for COBRA health insurance available to laid-off workers, but it was defeated on a 261-166 vote.

Bush echoed House Republicans in repeating that the $60 billion in spending already approved by Congress for recovery and war efforts was enough. “I strongly believe it’s time to balance this amount of spending with additional tax relief,” the president said.

Even so, the president dispatched Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to Capitol Hill to continue negotiating Wednesday with Senate Republicans and Democrats on a compromise package.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has outlined a $70 billion plan that includes greater unemployment benefits and health care provisions and fewer corporate tax breaks than the House bill does. Other senators are talking about an additional $20 billion in new spending on a variety of homeland security issues.

“We’re sort of staring each other down now,” said Sen. John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat who co-chairs a group of centrists that could be pivotal in the debate. “We’ve got to come up with something bipartisan, or it won’t get through.”

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who co-chairs the coalition with Breaux, said centrist senators would be focusing on crafting a stimulus package to immediately heal the slowing economy with provisions that are of limited duration and which spur consumer demand and business investment.

She also cautioned that the bill should avoid measures that would push interest rates up or include a “laundry list” of narrowly targeted provisions, “otherwise known as pork.”

“Obviously, the devil is in the details,” Snowe said. “We will have to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Treasury Secretary O’Neill said the meeting with the centrist senators was very encouraging. “We need to get what the nation needs without any additional time delay,” he said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also a member of the coalition, said that seeking guidance from O’Neill was important. “We’re trying to build a consensus,” she said.

The House bill is HR 3090.