Democrats have lashed out at former vice-president Dick Cheney, accusing him of abusing his power, amid reports he ordered the CIA to withhold information from Congress about a secret counter-terrorism program.

Lawmakers vowed to hold hearings on the nature of the alleged top secret program and efforts to keep members of the US legislature in the dark.

A senior member of the US Senate, Democrat Kent Conrad, who called the alleged failure to notify Congress about the program “a serious breach” said:

“This is a question of whether the former vice-president of the United States denied certain sensitive information to the intelligence leaders in Congress. That is not acceptable,”

Speaking on Sunday on CNN television, Conrad said Central Intelligence Agency notification to key members of Congress about its secret programs

“is required by law”

“That’s a serious matter,”

Representative Anna Eshoo, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she would call for the panel to hire an outside counsel to investigate the issue.

The Democrat told The Washington Post in reports published on Sunday:

“We have to know who gave the order for this, who gave the order to conceal this, where did they draw the money for this,”

Eshoo said the committee might have to use its subpoena power to interview some officials who oversaw intelligence issues during the Bush administration.

Officials were vague about the precise nature of the highly secret program.

Two former agency officials told the daily it involved a series of proposals designed to provide US intelligence agencies with a “needed capability” – without providing details as to what was meant.

The latest proposal was aired in the spring of 2008 but was not carried out, the officials said, although they told the newspaper it did not involve interrogations of detainees or surveillance of US-based communications.

Both were highly controversial practices that have been roundly condemned in many quarters, as the United States prosecuted its war on terrorism during the Bush administration.

The New York Times, which broke the story about the role alleged to have been played by Cheney in keeping the CIA program under wraps, reported that CIA chief Leon Panetta ended the program when he learned of its existence on June 23.

Panetta is reported to have revealed Cheney’s role in a closed briefing one day later to the Senate and House intelligence committees.

“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,”

An intelligence official told the newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity.

News of the alleged program came as lawmakers from both President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party and opposition Republicans are in bitter dispute over whether the CIA informed Congress adequately and comprehensively about sensitive programs.

In May, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that the US spy agency misled lawmakers in 2002 about interrogation techniques widely seen as torture, including “waterboarding”, a simulated drowning method used on terrorism suspects.

On Sunday, senior Republican senator Judd Gregg conceded that in his view,

“if somebody told the CIA not to inform the appropriate members of Congress on information, that’s wrong”.

Nevertheless Gregg said:

“That isn’t a reason to disassemble the CIA and make them a whipping child in the middle.”

The Republic lawmaker said the controversy pointed to a

“continued attack on the CIA and our intelligence gathering organisations which is undermining the morale and capacity of those organisations to gather intelligence”.

Technorati Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Dick Cheney, Kent Conrad

Barack Obama will make his long-awaited address to Muslims in Egypt on June 4, accelerating his bid to mend the US image in the Islamic world from an epicentre of Arab civilisation.

The speech, fulfilling an Obama campaign promise, will focus on how Americans and Muslims abroad can secure the “safety and security” of their children in a more hopeful future, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

The trip, certain to unfold amid a massive security operation, will come as Obama tries to ignite stalled Middle East peace efforts and will represent his most significant attempt yet to engage the Muslim world.

Arabs and Muslim believers across the world have been alienated by the war in Iraq, abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad and the Guantanamo Bay “war on terror” camp which Obama has ordered closed.

Gibbs said that the exact venue for the speech had yet to be decided, but most speculation will centre on Cairo, the capital of Egypt, the most populous nation in the Arab world.

“On June 4, the president will give a speech in Egypt. The speech will be about America’s relations with the Muslim world,”

He added that there were no plans for Obama to make any further stops in the Middle East during the visit, which will precede a trip to France and Germany focusing on World War II commemorations.

The president promised during his 2008 election campaign to make a speech at a major Islamic forum within the first 100 days of his administration which ended last week, but the timetable slipped for logistical reasons.

As Obama tries to kick start Middle East peacemaking, the visit will follow trips to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.

Obama is also trying to coax sworn US foe Iran to the negotiating table in a bid to halt the Islamic state’s nuclear program.

Gibbs defended Obama from claims that by choosing Egypt, where the State Department says there are

“significant restrictions on the political process and freedom of expression” the US president was watering down US support for democracy promotion abroad.

“It is a country that in many ways represents the heart of the Arab world,”

“I think it will be a terrific opportunity for the president to address and discuss our relationship with the Muslim world.”

Obama last month reached out to Muslims from the well of the Turkish parliament.

“You cannot put out fire with flames,”

Obama said, arguing that brute force alone could not thwart extremism as he sent a flurry of coded messages throughout the Middle East.

Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia and is the son of a Kenyan father of Muslim heritage, drew on his own biography as he sought to forge new trust with the Islamic world.

The president said US ties with Islam could not be simply defined by opposition to terrorism, decades into a US struggle with extremism that was sharpened by the September 11 attacks in 2001.

“The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country – I know, because I am one of them.”

Within days of taking office in January, Obama launched his effort to engage the Muslim world by granting an interview with the Al-Arabiya television network.

Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies here said:

“Obama has created a combination of curiosity and excitement throughout the Middle East,”

“He embodies change in a region where many people are terribly thirsty for political change.”

The White House also said Friday that Obama will visit the German city of Dresden and the former Nazi death camp at Buchenwald in June 5, before travelling onto D-Day commemorations in France.

Obama’s great-uncle, Charlie Payne, took part in the liberation of part of the Buchenwald camp in 1945 with the US Army but Gibbs said it was unclear whether he would travel with the president.

Payne was a private in the 89th Infantry Division during World War II when he took part in the liberation of Ohrdruf, a forced-labour camp that was part of Buchenwald.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, egypt, Middle East, Muslims

Hitchens debated Blackwell about this, with Hitchens declaring a crisis of faith in the country, one that shows a decisive tide is turning against the forces of religion. Blackwell disputed this, arguing that the influence of religion ebbs and flows but won’t ever really fade away because we are fundamentally a Christian nation going all the way to the Founding Fathers. Hitchens vehemently fought back against this notion.

Per usual with Hitchens, the debate was heated and incredibly intriguing. Watch the exchange in its entirety below:

Stephen Colbert, a comedian who plays a slightly goofy conservative Republican, began his Comedy Central TV show The Colbert Report this week brandishing a pitchfork.

“Nation! I am enraged!” he yelled to his audience.

“AIG announced this week that they are giving executives $US165 million in bonuses. Excuse me? That bail-out money is supposed to be used responsibly – in ways we never see, to prop up businesses we don’t understand,”

“Well, the Government says they can’t stop it, but we can, folks! Our founding fathers knew that when the rights of the people get trampled we must become a torch-and-pitchfork-wielding mob, empty of all thought.”

“Let’s go get AIG!” he said, brandishing his pitchfork as his audience cheered wildly.

Colbert’s skit came uncomfortably close to the mark.

Americans – who have spent a year watching jobs disappear by the hundreds of thousands, unemployment rise to a 25-year high of 8.1 per cent, their neighbourhoods decimated by foreclosures and their pension plans slashed by a stockmarket they barely understand – are viscerally angry.

But it is not just outrage at the sheer chutzpah of those at AIG who took bonuses after the company was given $US170 billion of taxpayer funds just to survive.

The AIG bonuses have laid bare the unbridled greed that has driven US-style capitalism in the past decade, confronting even the most staunch defenders of deregulated markets. It has exposed a lack of moral compass in the system and it has rattled Americans’ faith that the best and brightest will rise to the top and be justly rewarded.

Just as disturbing for some Americans, though, are the solutions that President Barack Obama proposes:

- that Government should intervene more strongly, that it should spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars and their children’s tax dollars to rescue companies and banks,

- that it should spend up big on government projects to save the economy.

This isn’t how American capitalism works, either.

It all boiled over this week. Ordinary Americans jammed phone switches at talkback radio stations, flooded blogs and TV stations with emails and deluged their Congressional representatives as the news about AIG and bonuses to executives kept coming.

The company has been forced to enhance security at the Connecticut and London offices of its financial products division, the part of the company at the eye of the storm over bonuses. It was this group of just 350 people whose trade in risky credit default swaps – essentially insurance on the value of mortgage-backed securities – brought the venerable insurance giant undone.

The lawmakers have responded quickly and with a vehemence that is almost as unseemly as Colbert’s mock call to arms. An Iowa Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, went on radio to suggest that the bonus recipients should “follow the Japanese example” and either resign or commit suicide.

Washington has staged its own version of a pillorying. The chief executive of AIG, Edward Liddy, was called before a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday, where he was lectured and harangued about the bonus payments, even though he took over in October at the request of the Government – for a $1 salary – and played no part in writing the bonus schemes. He’d looked into stopping the payments but decided he had no legal avenues.

“Malfeasance” and “a complete violation of trust in the people who invested in your company,” said Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

“We have teachers right now across the nation that are receiving pink slips, especially in the state of California. I mean, they’re doing an excellent job, and yet they’re not getting bonuses.”

Liddy was repeatedly asked to name names, which he refused to do, saying he feared for the safety of his staff. Some, he said, had already handed back the bonuses – ostensibly part of a scheme to retain key staff – which range from $US6 million to about US$100,000. Angered at his refusal, Representative Barney Frank said he would subpoena them.

Next week it will be the turn of the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, and Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, for a public flogging as congressmen seek to find someone – anyone – to blame for what the White House called “outrageous” payments.

Meanwhile, President Obama was trying to harness the public anger to drive his push for more regulation and more intervention to stabilise the financial market.

“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry. What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way,”

Polls show he still has a big stock of political goodwill. Some 59 per cent of people approve of the way he is handling the economy, while 40 per cent disapprove, according to a CNN poll taken last weekend, before the AIG crisis erupted.

The same poll showed that 86 per cent of people want his policies to work, although a smaller number – 64 per cent – think they are more likely to work than fail.

But President Obama is walking a fine political tightrope.

In this volatile environment, that political capital could quickly evaporate, putting at risk not just his future ability to convince Congress to support further measures to save American banks, but also his own chances of being more than a one-term president.

In the short term, keeping the American public’s trust in his ability to handle the economy is paramount.

During the election campaign he faced Republican attacks that he was a socialist or, worse, a communist. The tom-toms have begun to beat again about Obama’s liberal agenda.

Last week Obama hit back, telling a small business round table he was a “strong believer in the free market“.

“I believe that our role as lawmakers is not to disparage wealth but to expand its reach, not to stifle the market but to strengthen its ability to unleash the creativity and innovation that still makes this nation the envy of the world,”

But in trying to impose remuneration caps, he risks giving the Republicans more ammunition to attack, while at the same time raising expectations too high on Main Street that he can curb the excesses of Wall Street.

Just as outrageous as the bonuses was the culture of Wall Street, based on greed, excess risk-taking and a bubble-and-bust mentality, he said on Wednesday.

“The financial regulatory package that we’re designing, as well as the economic policies that we want to put in place, are going to put an end to that culture,”

Obama is also grappling with another serious problem. His Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, who was confirmed despite overlooking $US43,000 in tax, is now a target, thanks in part to his poor performance in selling the Government’s plan for dealing with toxic assets.

Geithner insists he did not know about the AIG bonuses until last Tuesday – just days before the bonuses were paid – but Liddy insists he told the Federal Reserve staff months ago and he assumed they were keeping Treasury and the White House informed.

The who-knew-what-when drama is now consuming the Washington media, even though Geithner was clearly not responsible for the bonuses and commonsense says that he might have had a few more pressing issues on his desk than $US165 million in bonus payments.

Whether it’s fair or not, the newly-minted President has a serious political problem on his hands.

On Intrade, a futures contract is being offered that Geithner will not survive beyond June. On Wednesday, Connie Mack, a junior Republican in Congress, and some traders on Wall Street went so far as to call for Geithner to quit. The Republican leader of the House, Representative John Boehner, said the Treasury Secretary was “on thin ice”.

President Obama, however, expressed “complete confidence” in Geithner and his economic team.

Mr Obama told reporters as he left for California on Wednesday:

“Tim Geithner didn’t draft these contracts with AIG,”

“There has never been a secretary of the Treasury, except maybe Alexander Hamilton during the Revolutionary War, who’s had to deal with the multiplicity of issues that Secretary Geithner is having to deal with – all at the same time.”

“He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand,”

But Obama knows that the handling of the economy is the yardstick against which he will be measured by the American people in four years, and selling that message of competence is crucial to his survival.

For the Republicans, too, the AIG bonus affair has thrown into sharp focus the party’s internal conflicts.

Several Republicans gleefully reminded their Democratic colleagues this week that they did not support government bail-outs in the first place. The decision to bail out AIG was the policy misstep, not the bonuses themselves.

Others, heeding the public outrage, were more focused on how to prevent such payments in the future.

By Thursday, when a bill to tax the AIG payments at 90 per cent went to a vote, it seems that outrage and free-market capitalism had claimed roughly even numbers.

Eighty-seven Republicans, joined by six Democrats, voted against the bill. Boehner described the bill as a “sham” which would not work.

But 85 Republicans voted alongside 243 Democrats for the measure, which needed a two-thirds majority. The Senate is due to vote on a similar bill next week.

Obama’s success in crafting a new, more morally-centred form of US capitalism will need the support of some of those Republicans down the track.

His huge agenda of regulating the markets more effectively will be just one plank in an agenda that is, perhaps, more weighty than any other in history.

Technorati Tags: AIG, barack obama, Stephen Colbert, Tim Geitnet

With his first month as President in the bag, Barack Obama is receiving an unparalleled level of support from the American public in regards to his ability to handle, and in this case fix, the shattered economy. In fact President Obama has the largest lead over opposition party in overall trust to handle the economy as any U.S. President has had in over 20 years.

Even sky high approval ratings, President Barack Obama still has some undeniable challenges in front of him in regards to the post-partisanship government he spoke of so often throughout his long and hard fought presidential campaign. Nonetheless Obama clearly holds the upper hand, both in overall approval and on the dominant issue of the day. He leads the Republicans in Congress by 61-26 percent in trust to handle the economy, the biggest such lead for a president in ABC News/Washington Post polls since 1991.

Obama’s overall approval ratings are definitely strong, in both the literal and historical sense, currently hovering at 68 percent of Americans approving of the job he has done so far. However when you look closely at the polls internal findings you will find that the partisanship is as glaring as ever with 90 percent of Democrats approving of Obama’s performance thus far, and only 37 percent of Republicans happy with the newly elected President. This sharp party line divide among American’s is nearly identical to the numbers that accompanied George W. Bush in his first term which was hot off the heels of the controversial 2000 election and its subsequent outcome.

As mentioned above, the partisanship divide is as clear cut as ever before, but with that said it also becomes important to point out that many American’s are giving the President credit for his attempts at bringing the two sides together. More or less, a healthy majority of American’s recognize that while it may not be working yet, Barack Obama is undoubtedly attempting to forge a healthy middle ground between the Democrats and Republicans:

While President Barack Obama cannot be happy with the ultra-partisanship we are currently seeing, regardless if he is being recognized for trying to bring the two political factions together, it begs the question; how bad is this split for Republicans? According to the same ABC News/Washington Post poll — the hyper partisanship appears to be a bigger downfall for the Republicans, whose party remains on life support after what the majority of Americans fee was a disastrous Bush presidency. Below are the numbers – and it won’t take long until you see that if anyone is hurting from the inability to work together, it is the elected officials of the right:

• The Democratic Party leads the Republicans by 56-30 percent in trust to handle the country’s main problems. That has slightly improved from 56-23 percent in December, as congressional Republicans found a unified voice in opposition to the stimulus. But the December number was the Republicans’ worst in ABC/Post polls since 1982; they still have far to climb.
• Fifty percent of Americans approve of the way the Democrats in Congress are doing their jobs, while 44 percent disapprove – if hardly a barn-burner, still the Democrats’ best in two years, since April 2007, just after they regained control of Congress. And their Republican counterparts are a good deal weaker: 38 percent approve, 56 percent disapprove. (Democratic gains have come mainly in two groups: among Democrats themselves, and among liberals. Seventy-seven percent of Democrats now approve of their own party; just 55 percent of Republicans feel the same about theirs.)
• The Democrats are holding the edge in partisan affiliation they’ve built since 2004, when the public soured on the Iraq war and the Bush presidency in turn. Thirty-six percent in this poll identify themselves as Democrats, just 24 percent as Republicans. On average in 2003, by contrast, the parties were at parity, 31 percent apiece.

I have also attached a graph that pretty much reinforces the bumbers cited above — You will see just how much the public’s trust level in terms of the economy has dropped off for Republicans starting back in 2005 and plummeting at a fairly steady rate ever since:

Some constants have remained throughout this first month. For instance,young people still support Barack Obama at an unprecedented rate. Among young adults, or as they are being referred to nowadays, “Millennials” (those between the age of 18 and 30) his overall approval rating peaks at a startling 84 percent, compared with 59 percent in his weakest age group, seniors (this was a trend we saw throughout the primaries and general election as well.) There are income gaps here as well; among people with incomes less than $50,000, 66 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the economy; among those in $100,000+ households, this drops to half. Two possible reasons: Better-off Americans are more apt to be Republicans. And they’re in Obama’s cross hairs on taxes — and their awareness of it.

If you are interested in seeing the entire ABC/Washington Post poll regarding Obama’s first month in office you can do so by clicking here. It is really quite interesting and unfortunately, familiar to what we have seen throughout the past couple of years. The main difference  is that now it’s Republican’s who are in the doghouse, and many would say it’s rightfully so.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, Breaking news, Breaking political news, Breaking Politics News, Democrats, george w. bush, GOP, latest Polls, Latest Presidential Polls, Obama

President Barack Obama on Saturday savoured his first major victory in Congress with the newly passed $US787-billion economic stimulus package aimed at combating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The president could sign the bill as early as next week, less than a month after taking office. He described the bill’s passage as a “major milestone on our road to recovery”.

Speaking in his weekly radio and internet address, Obama said:

“I will sign this legislation into law shortly, and we’ll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done.”

At the same time, he said:

“The problems that led us into this crisis are deep and widespread, and our response must be equal to the task.”

The bill was passed on Friday with politicians largely voting along party lines, allowing Democratic leaders to deliver on their promise of clearing the legislation by mid-February.

The Senate approved the measure 60-38 with three Republican moderates providing crucial support. Hours earlier, the House vote was 246-183, with all Republicans opposed to the package of tax cuts and federal spending that Obama has made the centrepiece of his plan for economic recovery.

Obama “now has a bill to sign that will create millions of good-paying jobs and help families and businesses stay afloat financially”, said Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who was a leading architect of the measure.

“A stimulus bill that was supposed to be timely, targeted and temporary is none of the above,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in remarks on Friday on the Senate floor.

Told that no House Republican backed the measure on Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reacted by citing another number: “Three-and-a-half million jobs that we look forward to saving or creating.”

Obama gave a thumbs-up sign upon hearing of the package’s passage in the House. He hailed the massive bill and the “spirited debate” that accompanied it, but said:

“It’s only the beginning of what we must do to turn our economy around.”

He said those things include implementing the separate, newly reconfigured $US700 billion financial industry bailout program, stemming home foreclosures, reforming financial sector regulations and crafting what he called a “responsible” federal budget.

The Senate vote was held up to allow time for Democratic senator Sherrod Brown to fly back from Ohio, where his mother died earlier in the week. His was the decisive 60th vote for the bill in the 100-seat Senate.

The legislation, among the costliest ever considered in Congress, provides billions of dollars to aid victims of the recession through expanded unemployment benefits, food stamps, medical care, job retraining and more. Tens of billions are ticketed for financially strapped states to offset cuts they might otherwise have to make in aid to schools and local governments, and there is more than $US48 billion for transportation projects such as road and bridge construction, mass transit and high-speed rail.

Obama’s much touted tax break for middle- and working-class Americans survived but was scaled back. To tamp down costs, several tax provisions were dropped or sharply cut back.

After the Senate passed the stimulus package, Obama took his first significant break since taking office on January 20.

Obama and his family are spending the Presidents’ Day holiday weekend at their Chicago home. Aides say they have no public events, and the first couple plans to go out for a Valentine’s Day dinner on Saturday night.

AP

Technorati Tags: barack obama, congress, President, stimulus

US lawmakers have announced an agreement on a compromise $US789 billion stimulus plan, and say they hope to have it ready for President Barack Obama’s signature in the coming days.

“I’m particularly pleased that we have produced an agreement that has the top line of $US789 billion, that it’s less than either the House or the Senate-passed bills,” Republican Senator Susan Collins told reporters on Wednesday.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said: “The difference between the Senate and House versions we’ve resolved. The bills were really quite similar.

“And I’m pleased to announce that we’ve been able to bridge those differences,” he said, expressing his hope to have a vote in both chambers of Congress

“within the next few days, maybe as early as tomorrow”.

AFP

Technorati Tags: stimulus package, US Congress

The US Senate has passed a $US838 billion economic stimulus plan, touching off difficult compromise negotiations with the House aimed at sending President Barack Obama a final bill this week.

Obama, making a campaign-style stop in an economically hard-hit part of Florida, immediately called Tuesday’s outcome “good news” and “a good start” to his bid to rescue the battered US economy.

Senators voted 61-37 to approve the package, setting the stage for talks aimed at reconciling differences between their legislation and the House of Representatives’ rival $US819 billion plan.

Leaders of the Democratic majorities in both chambers have said they will work as long as it takes to get a final package to Obama, who has urged lawmakers to meet a self-imposed February 16 deadline for doing so.

The Senate vote came after a small group of swing-vote senators crafted a smaller alternative to what had ballooned to a $US940 billion package, securing support from three moderate Republicans: Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter.

Their critical support — Democrats can count on 58 votes and need them to reach the 60 votes needed to thwart parliamentary delaying tactics — may be an obstacle to making major changes to the Senate version of the legislation.

Hoyer also said that the House would keep at the compromise talks until there was agreement, whether or not lawmakers pass Obama’s self-imposed February 16 deadline for getting a final bill to his desk.

The Senate version sliced popular funding, including about $US14 billion for school construction and $US40 billion in direct aid to US states, many of which are facing painful cuts to meet legal bans on running budget deficits.

The Obama administration has said that he would like to see some of the education monies return to the bill, which blends tax cuts and government spending to battle the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

AFP

Technorati Tags: barack obama, Economy, President, stimulus plan

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s Democratic Senate allies unveiled a pared-down plan to pump at least $US780billion into the ailing US economy and vowed to pass it this week.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that this severe recession we’re in does not become another Great Depression,” Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid said, as all but a handful of Republicans vowed to oppose the deal.

The accord’s price tag would be far smaller than the $US937billion previously under consideration, a reduction aimed at winning over elusive Republican support that was entirely absent when the House of Representatives passed its $US820billion version of the measure.

If the measure clears the Senate, both chambers would reconcile their rival bills, and then vote on the resulting final product – which Mr Obama has said he wants to see on his desk by February 16.

Politicians were to resume debate on the measure in a rare weekend session.

Senator Reid signalled that he believed his 58 Democrats had enough Republican support to secure the 60 votes needed to thwart any parliamentary delaying tactics and said he hoped for a vote “as early as we can next week”.

The new compromise measure emerged under pressure from the White House and ever-grimmer unemployment numbers.

“We trimmed the fat, fried the bacon and milked the sacred cows,” said Democrat Senator Ben Nelson, a leader of the group.

The final cost could rise to about $US800billion because of various amendments still pending, Senate sources said as Republican foes of the original package quickly trained their guns on the new agreement.

Republicans said their calculations put the new bill at roughly $US830billion, plus nearly $US350billion in debt service – meaning the overall price tag was about $US1.2trillion.

“We’re talking about an extraordinarily large amount of money and a crushing debt for our grandchildren,” said Senator McConnell.

“If this legislation is passed, it will be a very bad day for America,” said Republican Senator and failed presidential candidate John McCain.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs highlighted catastrophic job loss figures and declared:

“We are pleased the process is moving forward and we are closer to getting Americans a plan to create millions of jobs.”

Technorati Tags: barack obama, Economy, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, President, stimulus package

Despite all the talk by the US President, Barack Obama, of post-partisan politics, and a personal appeal to Republicans on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, today’s vote on the $US850 billion stimulus package looks set to go along party lines.

The huge spending package is almost guaranteed to pass the House of Representatives because the Democrats undoubtedly have the numbers. But only a handful of Republicans are expected to vote for it.

Even before Mr Obama arrived on the Hill, the Republican House leadership announced they would urge their colleagues to vote against the massive pump-priming bill because they disapproved of both its size and the detail of some of the spending. There appeared to be more open-mindedness among some senators whose states voted for Mr Obama.

In between his meetings with the House and the Senate Republicans, Mr Obama urged the Republicans to reconsider in the national interest.

“There are some legitimate philosophical differences with parts of my plan that the Republicans have, and I respect that. In some cases they may just not be as familiar with what’s in the package as I would like. I don’t expect 100 per cent agreement from my Republican colleagues, but I do hope that we can all put politics aside and do the American people’s business right now,”

The House minority leader, John Boehner, thanked Mr Obama for including Republicans in discussions.

“We both share a sincere belief that we have to have a plan that works, that will revive our economy, create jobs and help preserve jobs in our country,”

“I think our members enjoyed the conversation. I think the President enjoyed the conversation. I look forward to continuing to work with him to improve this package.”

There were signs that White House officials were trying hard to demonstrate good faith on the bill. House Democrats have agreed to drop plans for family planning funds for low-income groups from the package in order not to antagonise anti-abortion Republicans.

Under the scuttled contraceptive provision, states would have been able to offer family planning services – including contraceptives – under Medicaid, the Government’s health program for the poor, without having to obtain federal permission.

There were also negotiations under way on tax concessions for small business, which also rank high on the Republicans’ list of priorities. But Mr Obama was adamant he would not budge on the decision to give a $500 tax rebate to low-income taxpayers who do not pay tax but who pay social security contributions. He told Republicans that Ronald Reagan, the Republicans’ fiscal hero, had taken a similar decision when he was president. The bill is expected to reach the Senate later this week. Mr Obama needs two Republicans to support the bill for it to go to a vote, and his office had hoped to get as many as 80 votes out of 100. It is more likely they will get a dozen at most.

Some Republican senators were simply adamant they would not support the bill.

South Carolina senator Jim DeMint accused the Obama Administration of creating “crisis and widespread panic”, just like the Bush Administration did to force Congress to act.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, Economy, republicans, stimulus