Here's a great opportunity for 2302 students to learn the billmaking process on the national level. We will follow the current stimulus bill -- The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act -- as it works its way through each chamber and back to Obama's desk for a signature.
Here's some text from Slate.com's Today's Papers to get us going:
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lead with, while the New York Times reefers, Barack Obama offering details of his economic stimulus plan. Obama said Saturday that the Democrats' package would protect unemployed workers from losing health care; help students pay for college; lower taxes and energy costs; and modernize roads, schools, and utilities. Republicans counter that it contains too much wasteful spending and too little in the way of tax cuts.
All of the papers allow the politicians to dominate the debate over the stimulus, with the NYT and WP (which is not a fan of the package) featuring House Minority Leader John Boehner's predictable criticism. "We cannot borrow and spend our way back to prosperity," he said (for the first time in eight years). Obama, meanwhile, employed the politics of fear, warning that without his plan "a bad situation could become dramatically worse."
Here are some relevant links:
- Wikipedia: The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.
- Open Congress.
- The White House Proposal.
- The House Committee on Financial Services.
- The Senate Finance Committee.
