Handing President Barack Obama an initial victory on his first major legislative effort, the U.S. House passed an $819 billion economic stimulus bill Wednesday, setting the stage for Senate action -- and a flurry of lobbying -- on an even costlier measure next week. While House passage of the wide-ranging spending and tax break package (HR 1) was a substantive success for the new president, it was a bust in terms of his goal of garnering broad bipartisan support. Despite Obama's personal appeals to GOP lawmakers throughout the past week, not a single Republican supported the bill, which passed, 244-188. Eleven Democrats voted "no," according to a report of Associated Press. The House rejected three GOP amendments, including a $478.7 billion substitute amendment focused on cutting individual and business taxes, while voting to raise the cost of the underlying bill by $3 billion during the floor debate. GOP support may also be hard to come by in the Senate when Democratic leaders bring their version of the stimulus package to the floor early next week. The Senate stimulus package (S 1), approved in separate pieces by the Senate Finance and Appropriations committees this week, totals about $888 billion, owing largely to the inclusion of a one-year "patch" to prevent the alternative minimum tax (AMT) from hitting millions of taxpayers in 2009.
