Fourth House GOP economic package wins Democratic backing

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, March 6, 2002

By Curt Anderson

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – On their fourth try at recession relief, House Republicans have found a combination of jobless aid and tax cuts that gained Democratic backing and stands a decent chance of becoming law. Senate Democrats expressed support and the White House said President Bush would sign it.

“This is a package deserving of strong bipartisan support and should be taken up by the Senate,” said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

With House Democratic leaders endorsing the measure, passage seemed assured in a vote Thursday afternoon. Yet, as with three previous economic plans approved by the House, the bill’s ultimate fate lies with a Senate divided almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called the GOP effort “long overdue and awfully late.” He reserved judgment until all details are reviewed but added that the bill appeared to “deserve our support.”

“We’re pleased with the decision of the Republican leadership,” Daschle told reporters.

Bush had been pushing for a broader economic stimulus package since the Sept. 11 terror attacks exacerbated a downturn. He told a Hispanic business group Wednesday that Congress should act despite evidence that the economy is recovering.

“I think the economy has still got problems. … I still think we ought to do more,” Bush said. “There needs to be a stimulus bill.”

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer urged Congress on Thursday to pass the measure, which he called a scaled-back version of Bush’s economic stimulus plan.

“The president is concerned that we don’t have a jobless recovery,” Fleischer said. “It’s a compromise. The president is saying today he will support a compromise.”

The legislation, costing an estimated $94 billion over five years, would extend regular 26-week jobless benefits by 13 weeks and allow for additional automatic extensions in states with high unemployment rates. It would give businesses a three-year, 30 percent tax write-off for new business investment and a more generous way to deduct losses.

It also creates a “Liberty Zone” in the lower Manhattan section of New York in which $5 billion in various tax breaks would be available to help the city recover from the attacks. In addition, the bill would extend a list of popular tax breaks that have expired or will do so this year.

Discarded were provisions from earlier versions that had drawn Democratic opposition, including accelerated income tax rate reductions, bigger tax breaks for corporations and a tax credit to help the jobless buy health insurance.

“We could have passed this bill last fall,” House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said. “It’s too bad it took the House Republicans so long to assist the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.”

The three previous House-passed economic packages went nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, which responded by twice passing a straightforward extension of the unemployment benefits.

Democrats have been pressing Republicans to take up and pass the simple unemployment benefits extension, pointing to the estimated 1.3 million people who have exhausted their regular 26 weeks of aid since Sept. 11. In January, there were about 7.9 million unemployed people in America.

The decision to go with a consensus approach came after House GOP leaders ran into criticism at a Wednesday meeting of the rank and file, when some lawmakers questioned an earlier, tentative decision to vote on a bill combining a health care tax credit with an extension of jobless aid.

Several GOP aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said lawmakers objected to continued delays on recession relief as the November elections draw closer.

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