Obama’s stimulus plan heads for stormy Senate debate

US: President Barack Obama’s huge stimulus package faced a Republican blockade in Congress yesterday as opposition senators clamored for a fundamental rethink to his plans for economic revival.

The Senate was poised to debate the 819-billion-dollar bill after the House of Representatives last week passed the legislation without a single Republican vote in support.

Negotiations carried on through the weekend, as Obama feted a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the White House for a party to watch the American football Super Bowl Sunday night.

Interviewed on NBC’s pre-Super Bowl show, Obama took his message to what is usually America’s highest TV audience of the year.

“I think we’re going to be in for a tough several months.

We’ve got to get this economic recovery plan passed. We’ve got to start putting people back to work,” the Democratic president said.

“I’ve done extraordinary outreach, I think, to Republicans because they have some good ideas, and I want to make sure that those ideas are incorporated.” Obama scheduled a new round of talks with congressional leaders Monday evening at the White House.

The president was stepping up his lobbying after Friday’s release of dire figures showing the US economy shrank by nearly four percent in the last quarter of 2008, its sharpest decline since 1982.

Despite Obama’s appeals, Republican Senate leaders said they would use parliamentary tactics to stall the stimulus without a root-and-branch review of its mix of tax cuts and spending.

Washington, Monday, AFP