Senate G.O.P. Blocks Additions to Stimulus Bill
Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, controls the next steps on the economic stimulus bill.
WASHINGTON — By a single vote, Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked an expansive fiscal stimulus package championed by Democrats, as partisan rancor engulfed the effort to inject a quick burst of spending into the slowing economy.
The package needed 60 votes under Senate rules to move forward but failed 58 to 41, with 8 Republicans joining 48 Democrats and 2 independents in support of it. The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, switched his vote to no from yes at the last second, a parliamentary move that lets him control the next steps on the bill.
The political brinkmanship in the Senate stood in marked contrast to the House, where Republicans and Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi took just a week to reach a deal on an economic stimulus package with President Bush, and just four more days to pass the bill.
But eight days after that House vote, the Senate remained bitterly divided along party lines with just a few Republicans, some in tough battles for re-election, willing to cross over and support the Democrats.
The measure was opposed by Republican leaders who said the Democrats added too many costly provisions, including an extension of unemployment benefits, tax credits for the coal industry and increased subsidies for home energy costs.
The total cost of the Senate plan came to about $204 billion over two years, or about $40 billion more than the House version.
Senator John McCain of Arizona, the leading Republican presidential candidate, returned to Washington fresh off his string of victories in Tuesday’s voting, but he did not appear in the Senate chamber and did not vote. Adding to the partisan rancor, Democrats immediately questioned his whereabouts and seemed poised to blame him personally, and Republicans generally, for stalling the bill.
Aides to Mr. McCain said that he would have sided with the Republican leaders and that his vote was not needed.
The two Democratic senators running for the presidential nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, flew in to cast their votes in favor of the Democratic bill.
After the vote, Mr. Reid said he needed time to decide how to proceed, but aides said he was working the phones to see if he could round up one additional Republican vote.
The White House again urged the Senate to act quickly.
“It is crucial that the Senate now move quickly to pass a bill that will deliver relief to our economy,” the press secretary, Dana M. Perino, said.
The partisan feuding in the Senate hardly stemmed from presidential politics alone. Mr. Reid maneuvered aggressively in recent days to strong-arm Republicans into voting for the plan. He added $1 billion in home heating subsidies for low-income families to pressure Republicans from cold-weather states. And he enlisted AARP and an array of other interests groups to lobby for the Senate plan.
But some of those Republicans, like Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire, voted against the plan anyway.
The Senate infighting is in contrast to the swift resolution of an economic package in the House. That display of quick cooperation cast aside, at least for a moment, a year of partisan acrimony on Capitol Hill.
Both the House and Senate proposals contain a combination of tax rebates or payments for individuals and families and tax incentives for businesses all intended to spur spending and jump-start the economy. But under the House plan, more than 20 million Americans living on Social Security and more than 250,000 disabled veterans would not be eligible for the payments.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, had called for the Senate simply to adopt the House package with two changes: payments for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans, and a stipulation that illegal immigrant workers not receive payments. Mr. McConnell renewed that demand on the Senate floor just before the vote and chided the Democrats.
Praising House Democrats and Republicans for their stimulus deal, Mr. McConnell said, “Then, in an apparent jolt of nostalgia for last year, Senate Democrats decided to co-opt a bipartisan proposal produced by the House to put together a carefully crafted political document.”
He added: “The point here was to try to do a targeted, temporary jolt to our economy and to try to astonish the American people by doing it on a bipartisan basis rapidly. This package will not achieve that result.”
Mr. McConnell said that he and Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, one of the Republicans whose support Mr. Reid had sought, would offer an amendment to add payments for Social Security recipients and disabled veterans to the House stimulus plan.
And in a dig at the Democrats and their presidential candidates, Mr. McConnell said he would be happy to rename his proposal. “We can call it the Reid-Clinton-Obama bill as far as I am concerned,” he said.
Mr. Reid and other Democrats said the Senate stimulus package would be better for the economy than the House version. They said that the direct payments would go to people more likely to spend them, and that the tax breaks would go to businesses that needed them the most.
“We have an obligation to do what we think is best to stimulate the economy and we have done that,” Mr. Reid said.
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