House Passes $819b Tax & Spending Bill, 244-188, Summary of Provisions

The House of Representatives passed an $819b tax and spending bill today on a vote of 244-188, with 11 Democrats opposing it and zero Republican votes. Republicans claimed lots of special interest “pork” line items and a lack of tax cuts for their opposition. There is a Senate vote next week on a similar $900b package, and Obama is pushing for reconciliation between the two bills by February 13. Republicans are calling for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bridge the partisan gap before then.

Below is a summary of bill provisions from the WSJ. The full article is worthwhile reading for a summary of which states get what and what it does to the deficit:

Although most of the money — about $526 billion — will be spent in 2009 and 2010, spending on some programs, including student-loan programs, clean-water projects and housing assistance, is expected to last well beyond the current recession. The House bill expands access to health care for the unemployed, represents perhaps the largest expansion of the federal government’s role in education financing ever and begins what Mr. Obama has promised will be a push toward renewable energy that will continue throughout his presidential tenure.

Also tucked inside is $335 million for programs that help prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. The Senate version includes $70 million for a supercomputer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and $75 million for smoking-cessation programs.
Question of the Day

The package, which would cost more than the entire Iraq War, would reverse the Bush administration’s approach to boosting the economy. That approach relied heavily on tax cuts that tended to put money in the pockets of middle-class and more affluent Americans. The $275 billion in tax relief offered in the stimulus package focuses more on lower-income families. It also includes business incentives to spur job creation and a $500 payroll tax holiday for workers.

…In the education realm, the stimulus aims more than $125 billion at bolstering public education, an unusual federal intervention in a sphere usually left to state and local governments. It calls for spending $20 billion on school and college renovations. There’s another $79 billion proposed for aid to the states to help them avoid education-related layoffs. In addition, more than $2 billion would go to the Head Start program, $13 billion to supplemental funding for high-poverty areas, and another $13 billion for special-education programs.

The plan provides $5 billion for the construction and repair of public housing. Democrats say this will reduce a backlog of such projects and will mostly be distributed according to existing formulas. But Rep. Jerry Lewis (R., Calif.) depicts it as a quiet reversal of a 30-year trend of the government extracting itself from public housing construction.

In an effort to directly help those hurt by the economic downturn, the plan provides $27 billion to continue unemployment insurance benefits through Dec. 31. It allots $9 billion to increase the current benefit from roughly $300 to $325 per week.

The bill also expands COBRA, the law that allows a company’s former employees to continue receiving group coverage. It would fund 65% of individuals’ premiums for up to 12 months. And it allows workers older than 55, or those who have worked at a company for 10 years, to keep their COBRA coverage until they qualify for Medicare or find a new job. Among the plan’s biggest departures is allowing those who are unemployed to enroll in Medicaid, the health program for the poor. It would temporarily expand Medicaid to allow millions of unemployed workers to qualify for benefits.