By Byron York
Chief political correspondent 2/9/09 11:29 am
Been on the phone this morning with various sources on Capitol Hill. The bottom line is that there will be a cloture vote at about 5:30 this afternoon Eastern time — the vote in which Democrats, with the help of Republicans Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter, will barely top the 60-vote hurdle required to stop a filibuster. Before that, however, people are pretty much sitting around, trying to learn more about what they are preparing to pass. “Today is the day that people are actually reading over the bill, trying to figure out what’s in it, what’s out of it,” one insider told me.
It’s an incredibly rushed process. After a compromise was worked out in the Senate on Friday night, staff had to actually write the legislation. Senators didn’t get the final version of the bill until 11 p.m. Saturday. Now, they’re expected to vote at 5:30 p.m. today. “By the time we vote, we will have had this bill just over 43 hours,” another insider told me, “which means we’ve been considering $300 million in spending every minute.”
After this evening’s cloture vote, there will be a vote tomorrow about noon Eastern time in which the Senate stimulus bill will actually be passed. Then it’s off to the conference committee, where Republicans expect Democrats to want to make big changes. “Obviously the House guys were very upset that a lot of things they care about very deeply were cut,” one Senate aide told me. Senators expect the House to try to put much of that back in, with the support of Democratic senators like Carl Levin, who this weekend told reporters he wants to see more additions in the conference process.
Again, it will be a rush job. After the final Senate vote Tuesday, a conference will have to be set up. Insiders expect negotiations to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, with a final bill possibly ready on Friday. Lawmakers are under heavy pressure from the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress to pass it immediately after that; they don’t want to go through another weekend without a final result. Right now, it’s not clear whether any of the House Republicans who voted unanimously against the bill will change their minds to support it, nor is it clear whether any Republican senator beyond Collins, Snowe, and Specter will vote for final passage. In the end, more GOP support seems unlikely. “Remember,” says one of my Senate insiders, “right now, as it stands, more Democrats will have voted against the bill than Republicans for it.” – Byron York
