"This legislation appears to blanket government programs in spending with little thought toward real economic results, job creation, or respect for the taxpayer," said Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.
Republicans questioned the inclusion of funding for such programs as the National Endowment for the Arts, $850 million for wildfire prevention and $600 million for new cars for the federal government. Those are a far cry from the traditional tools of stimulating the economy such as road and bridge construction, for which the bill allots $30 billion. Their inclusion reflects Democrats' expansive view of how the government can create jobs: helping the auto industry, for example, by replacing government cars and hiring people to restore areas hit by wildfires.
The drafting of this first major initiative of the Obama administration provides a glimpse of how the new president will be dealing with Democrats in Congress. He has approached them in a collaborative spirit, not the kind of top-down leadership that hurt President Bill Clinton when he presented a health care plan drafted with little input from Congress.
Obama, in contrast, laid out broad outlines and principles for the economy, and worked with Democratic lawmakers to flesh out the details. When Democrats criticized one of his proposed tax cuts for employers, he backed down. He wanted to spend less than congressional Democrats, but did not go to the mat over it.
"This plan is a significant down payment on our most urgent challenges," Obama said after the House proposal was unveiled.
The goal is for the House to vote on the bill by Jan. 28 and then send it to the Senate, where changes might be made that would raise the price tag. One possibility is a popular but costly measure to prevent upper-middle-class taxpayers from incurring a tax increase under the alternative minimum tax. That parallel tax system was established to ensure that the wealthy do not shelter all their income, but the system increasingly has hit less-than-wealthy families.
That $70 billion tax break was to have been in the House proposal but was dropped in the face of objections from fiscally conservative Democrats who thought it would do little to stimulate the economy.
The House bill focused on five main areas: tax cuts for middle-class families; creating jobs through investment in infrastructure; assisting people who have lost their jobs or health insurance; modernizing and reforming the economy; and assisting state and local governments to keep them from having to make further cuts in education and health care. The bill includes about $318 billion for state and local governments and nonprofit organizations for things such as education and health care.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
