Senate Approves Stimulus Package

The Stimulus Package was approved in the Senate on Tuesday by a vote of 61-37. Now it is up to the two houses of Congress to make one unified bill out of two and send it to the President.

WASHINGTON (Catholic Online) - With the help of three Republicans, President Obama's $838 billion stimulus package was approved by the Senate 61-37. Now, negotiations with the House will be needed to unify to two spending packages into one bill that will be sent to the President.

In a last-ditch effort to stop the package from moving forward, Senate Republicans brought up a budgetary point-of-order that was defeated by the same numbers with which the package was then approved.

On Monday, when approximately $108 billion was cut from the budget, Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania crossed the aisle to cast their votes with the Democratic majority.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated that he believes a bill may be ready for the President's signature by the end of the week even though there are many differences in spending between the two versions. However, House Majority Leader Stenny Hoyer cautioned that negotiations could go into next week.

Response on Wall Street was immediate; with stocks plunging, the Dow Jones closing down 4.6 percent with banking stocks hit the hardest.

President Obama was on the road, trying to build grass roots support for the stimulus package in For Meyers, Florida which had the highest foreclosure rate in the U.S. for 2008. Monday he brought the same message to Elkhart, Indiana.

The president's speech was almost the same both days, calling the situation as "dire as any since the Great Depression." He cautioned, "we don't act immediately, millions more jobs will disappear."

"So we simply can't afford to wait and see and hope for the best," Obama said. "I believe in hope, but I also believe in action."

While Congress was focusing on the stimulus package, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was busy outlining the administration's strategy to manage the remaining $350 billion in the bank rescue package already in place.

Geithner, who previously worked for the Federal Reserve, noted that they will play a key role in the remainder of the bailout. The Secretary indicated that the plan, when pooled with private funds, to grow as large as $2 trillion.

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Randy Sly is the Associate Editor and Home and family Editor of Catholic Online.

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