President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package appears headed for almost certain passage in Congress, even as the House and Senate get down to the difficult task of reconciling competing bills. Obama will take his case to the American people next week with his first prime-time news conference planned for Monday, after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlines details for a new financial-sector rescue plan. Then he'll participate in town hall-style meetings in towns suffering particularly hard times - Elkhart, Indiana, on Monday and Fort Myers, Florida, on Tuesday. But things haven't gone quite the way the new Obama team expected. It's been a rough two weeks of on-the-job training for the former one-term Illinois senator. “You know, it's referred to as sausage-making and probably for good reason,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Still, Obama aides claimed they were satisfied with the results, given the enormity of the challenge. “In a matter of weeks, we moved through both houses of Congress a very complex piece of legislation,” Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Saturday in an interview. “I don't know if there is a parallel in history.” The $827 billion measure is on track to pass the Senate on Tuesday despite stiff opposition from the Republican Party and disappointment among Democrats, including the new president who labeled it imperfect. “We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, sounding a note of pragmatism that liberal followers rarely heard on the campaign trail.Still, the popular president - six in 10 voters approve of his performance so far - scolded Republicans with a pointed reminder that Democrats, not Republicans, were victorious in November. Hours later, the Senate convened a rare Saturday session to debate a compromise forged between Republican moderates and the White House on Friday, a rare burst of comity aimed at securing passage of the bill with a few Republican votes joining the Democratic majority. The compromise reached between a handful of Republican moderates led Susan Collins of Maine, the White House and its Senate allies stripped $108 billion in spending from Obama's plan, including cutbacks in projects that likely would give the economy a quick lift, like $40 billion in aid to state governments for education and other programs. Yet it retained items that also probably won't help the economy much, such as $650 million to help people without cable receive digital signals through their old-fashioned televisions or $1 billion to fix problems with the 2010 Census. Among the most difficult cuts for the White House and its liberal allies to accept was the elimination of $40 billion in aid to states, money that economists say is a relatively efficient way to pump up the economy by preventing layoffs, cuts in services or tax increases.
