EconomistMom.com

All that “bipartisan compromise”…just to end up with a recovery package just as large as the one that came out of the House. This morning’s (Saturday) Washington Post reported (based on news as of Friday evening):

[Republican Senator Susan Collins] called the Senate legislation “a considerable improvement over the House-passed bill,” which she described as “loaded, expensive and ineffective.” The new version, she said, “will help Americans throughout this country who are struggling because they lost their jobs.”…

The Senate changes bring what had been a $920 billion package down to about $820 billion. [The House-passed bill costs $819 billion.] Among the largest cuts: $40 billion from a $79 billion fund aimed at helping states preserve school funding as they try to balance their budgets. And negotiators cut in half $15 billion in “incentive grants” for states that meet certain goals for their initial education allotment…

Other (fresher) stories suggested the bipartisan group had reached a lower figure of $780 billion.  CQ reported on Saturday afternoon that:

The exact cost of the compromise remained somewhat in flux as the Senate engaged in three hours of debate Saturday and Democratic leaders put the finishing touches on legislative language. While the revised plan released Friday night carried an estimated cost of about $780 billion, amendments adopted during Senate floor debate are likely to push the total cost past $800 billion. Those additions include a provision sponsored by Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., that would create a $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers.

But both news sources made it clear that what the Senate had done was first added about $100 billion in tax cuts to the House version, then taken away nearly $100 billion in spending programs, setting Congress up for a conference battle between House and Senate that’s not going to be easily resolved–or at least not likely to get resolved without pushing the cost right back up to that $900+ billion level.  CQ describes the Senate pare-down:

At the behest of moderates, the Friday night compromise shaved about $108 billion from the original Senate proposal. Appropriators cut $83 billion in discretionary spending from the Senate plan, including funding for school construction and other programs favored by Democrats in the House and Senate. The Finance Committee pared back health care spending provisions by $7 billion, and scaled back the tax cut package by $18 billion.

In other words, spending was cut by $90 billion and tax cuts by just $18 billion.  And the Washington Post describes the trouble with that (deficit-financed) AMT relief that the Senate added:

Negotiations with the House could also dramatically alter the package. While the bills in the two chambers are now likely to be similar in size, the Senate has increased the percentage of its legislation devoted to tax cuts. The biggest change is the addition of a $70 billion provision that would protect more than 24 million families from the alternative minimum tax.

House moderates oppose including the AMT provision in the stimulus package, arguing that the issue should be addressed in the regular budget process so that its cost can be offset by spending cuts or tax increases…

With AMT in and some of House Democrats’ top spending priorities out, the package could become much more difficult for many House members to swallow, Democratic aides said. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said House Democrats will push hard to restore the Senate’s deletions. That means, lawmakers said, that the overall cost would grow to around $900 billion to accommodate the AMT fix.

In other words, forget this bipartisan “paring down” exercise.  Sounds like we’ll be back to the usual “bipartisan” “piling on” business soon, when the recovery bill heads into House-Senate conference negotiations.