Fragile talks, late-night intrigue, partisan sniping: This is how the stimulus passed

J. Scott Applewhite / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada talks to reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday after the Senate passed the stimulus bill. At that point, the big task remained to reconcile House and Senate versions of the legislation and get the final version approved, which would take until late Friday night.

By Lisa Mascaro (contact)

Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Washington — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stood at his desk at the front of the Senate chamber before a vote on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery package and delivered five words he said the country had been waiting for: “Help is on the way.”

Obama wanted a massive injection of government spending to stop the nation’s painful recession. Joblessness stood at a generational high nationwide, and at 9.1 percent in Reid’s Nevada. Foreclosures have swept the country, with Nevadans losing houses at a faster rate than anywhere else in the nation.

Spirits seemed high Monday evening as Reid uttered the statement. He had reached a milestone. Three Republicans had joined his Democratic majority in voting 61-37 to move Obama’s landmark then-$838 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act over a daunting procedural hurdle. He needed 60 votes, got 61.

The bill was certain to pass in the Senate the next day. The House had approved somewhat different legislation.

Now, with two versions of the largest legislative expenditure in the nation’s history before them, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reid had to engage in what had become in Washington the lost art of compromise.

Tuesday

As the bill sped through final passage midday Tuesday, Democratic senators began hollering their “ayes” with gusto — a practice not usually seen in the stately Senate. Reid slung an arm over the shoulder of a colleague and walked quietly down the center aisle, out the door in apparently weary triumph.

Reid lunched with senators, then stepped before the microphones to announce he planned to work throughout the night, if necessary, to finish the final product “within the next 24 hours.”

The House and Senate would negotiate over the differences in the two versions of the bill and get it to the president as quickly as possible.

“Every day, tens of thousands of Americans lose their job,” Reid said. “This is an emergency. We have to move this quickly.”

Obama had wanted the bill as soon as he was sworn into office Jan. 20. But after two decades in Congress, Reid knew it would take longer. He told the Las Vegas Sun in December he was hoping for early February. A deadline was eventually set for Presidents Day, which is Monday.

Reid and Pelosi had been at the White House very early that Tuesday morning, meeting with the president, who guided them on what the final bill should look like.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had been dispatched to the Hill. The administration had put the two bills side by side, sorting out what should stay and go.

The $819 billion House-passed package tilted more toward Democratic priorities — enhanced benefits for the unemployed, $500 tax credits for workers, $20 billion to build new schools and $79 billion to help Nevada and other states avoid slashing pay for teachers and cops or cutting vital services to balance budgets.

But in the Senate, some of that large-scale government spending was swapped out for tax cuts that were needed if Democrats were to draw in three crucial Republican votes — those of Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

The bill swelled to $838 billion, but gone was $20 billion for school construction, and aid to the states was slashed to $39 billion. In their places were tax credits for those buying homes and cars.

The two bills would go to a House-Senate conference committee, which would hash out the differences.

By 2:30 p.m., Reid had entered the first of what would be nearly nine hours of negotiation. In his suite off the Senate floor, Republican senators and their moderate Democratic allies huddled.

Down the hall, Pelosi met with her lieutenants.

For the next several hours, Reid and Emanuel shuttled back and forth between the two.

Reid needed to retain a fragile compromise on the big-ticket issues between the House and Senate. He also had to keep his home state in mind. Nevada, especially hard hit by the recession, would be given a large percentage increase in Medicaid funds — money that would help the state provide health care for the army of newly unemployed. Nevada, in fact, got the largest percentage increase.

Reid also supported a scaled-back provision sought by the Las Vegas casinos for a tax break on their canceled debt, an initiative first sought by his Republican colleague, Sen. John Ensign.

Reid succeeded in quadrupling to $8 billion federal grants for high-speed rail that could one day help build a maglev railroad from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. It is unclear just when and how Reid fought for those items, but by week’s end all were included.

But the meeting ground on and on. The deal was not done when lawmakers called it a night.

“Narrowing differences,” was the official statement.

For a guy who doesn’t like to take phone calls past 10:30 p.m., it was a late night.

By 1 a.m., Reid headed home.

Wednesday

Reid was up early and had a breakfast fundraiser for his 2010 reelection campaign. He got to his office at 8, greeted by several waiting senators.

They were ready to continue negotiations.

Rahm Emanuel had basically moved into Reid’s suite by now, setting up shop in the office of Reid’s chief of staff.

Reid and Emanuel had not worked closely together before this, but the brash-talking former congressman and the hardscrabble senator from Searchlight became fast allies — a few F-bombs notwithstanding.

With Reid’s office serving as the power center of negotiations, he would own this moment as much as anyone — and that thought cannot be far from the mind of a senator facing reelection in a year. Democratic fortunes across the nation will rise and fall with Obama’s success, and Obama’s success will turn in a big way on this recovery plan.

Ads are running against Reid in Nevada, criticizing him for what Republicans were calling “wasteful Washington spending.” Reid’s fans in organized labor and elsewhere were running counter-ads supporting his leadership.

The House-Senate talks continued into Wednesday afternoon. At some point over these days it became clear Obama gave the green light to trim his signature middle-class tax cut, aimed at 95 percent of working Americans. It was cut from $500 to $400 for individuals and $1,000 to $800 for couples.

A deal drew near, with a conference room set up for the 10 lawmakers from the House and Senate who would negotiate the final product at 3 p.m.

(Before we go any further, we should pause here for Val Kilmer. It was about this time when the movie star slipped into the Senate gallery to watch the floor action. Even when the dome is fixated on preventing the next Great Depression, an actor still turns heads.)

Shortly before the 3 p.m. meeting time, Reid emerged from his office with the block of moderate Senate negotiators in tow.

Just before doing so, he had called Pelosi to tell her he was about to announce the deal on what was now a scaled back $789 billion package. Pelosi did not stop him — a detail that would become important.

Standing before cameras before heading to the conference committee meeting, Reid said: “Like any good negotiation, this involved give and take. And if you don’t mind my saying so, that’s an understatement.”

Then something stunning happened down the hall. The crowd in the packed committee room waited for Reid and the others to arrive. But they never showed.

Pelosi and House Democrats were not fully on board. They were unhappy about the school construction cuts.

The House, led by the chairman of the Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, had secured

$20 billion for school construction that experts said would generate more than 315,000 jobs.

Obama had talked about the importance of modern new schools for “teaching our kids the skills they need for the 21st century.”

The Senate had zeroed out the funding to make way for the tax cuts.

A day earlier, Miller knew he had support from other lawmakers for reinstating the funding. “I started getting calls from senators,” he told reporters at a news conference Wednesday. “ ‘You have to rescue the school modernization fund,’ ” he recounted.

But Collins, one of the three crucial Republican votes, dug in. She was unwilling to insert a new federal program in what has historically been a local venture. In education circles, the debate over who should build schools has been long running.

Reid walked from his office down the hall to the speaker’s chambers, where Miller and others were gathered. “I explained to him the importance of it,” Miller said.

Eventually, the parties reached an agreement. The states would not get stand-alone money for school renovation, repair and modernization — critical needs in Las Vegas. But schools could find money for those improvements by tapping into the now-$54 billion going to the states.

It was not the separate construction budget Miller wanted, but it at least provided enough wiggle room for school districts that wanted to do upgrades short of building a new campus.

By 5 p.m., the players finally gathered in the committee room.

Reid waited as the other lawmakers spoke. Republicans complained about the big bill of pork and being shut out of the process. Reid tapped his pencil impatiently.

When it was his turn he told his opponents not to lecture him about the way things work under the Capitol dome.

“I guess partisanship is in the eye of the beholder,” Reid said. “Did I agree with some of the things they made us swallow? No I didn’t. The minority has a lot of power in the Senate. That’s the way the Founding Fathers set it up.”

As the meeting was breaking up, one House chairman wanted to add to the long evening of speeches with an addendum. But he couldn’t get his microphone to work. “It doesn’t want to hear,” the lawmaker said.

“Kind of like the rest of us,“ Reid quipped.

The room fell silent.

Then everyone cracked up.

Reid made an unusual escape that evening for a night on the town. It was Lincoln’s birthday, and the historic Ford’s Theatre, where the president had been assassinated, was reopening after a renovation.

Obama attended, with the first lady. Reid and his wife settled in for the show.

Thursday

The day would come and go with no actual copy of the bill to read because it was still being put in final form.

Those under the dome became restless.

Obama had engendered much good will by going to lunch with Republicans shortly after his inauguration. But now it was becoming clear they would give him no additional votes.

In fact, Republicans intensified their opposition, no longer saying the bill would lead to the “Europeanization of America,” a veiled reference to the s-word (socialism) that dogged Obama on the campaign trail as he talked about universal health care.

Republicans spent the day highlighting the spending in the bill, portraying it in tried-but-true anti-pork talking points.

Ensign had explained earlier in the week that during the lunch meeting with Obama, the president had promised to have his economic adviser, Larry Summers, look into Ensign’s ideas for corporate tax breaks. The Nevadan said he never heard back from the White House, although he noted that he was pleased the legislation included the debt-buyback sought by the Las Vegas casinos.

“Never called my office, never sent a memo,” he said. “He could have got 80 votes.”

The votes were set for the next day.

Finally, just before Reid’s normal do-not-call time of 10:30 p.m., the bill emerged.

Friday

On Friday afternoon, every House Republican including Nevada’s Rep. Dean Heller voted no. Nevada’s Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus voted yes.

By evening, the Senate had mostly voted, but the vote on what was now a $787 billion package was being held open for a final senator.

Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio was returning from his mother’s memorial service. As Reid had said in setting the vote, “When one’s mother dies, we have to be a little more understanding of the situation.”

Plus, Sen. Ted Kennedy, who is fighting brain cancer but had made the vote earlier in the week, could not make this final one.

At 10:45 p.m., Brown entered the Senate chamber and cast his vote with a single thumb-up.

Reid blew a kiss to Brown’s wife, the columnist Connie Schultz, seated in the visitors gallery.

Rather than 61 votes, Reid would get 60. But it was enough.