Stimulus Update

Straight from HuffPo on Friday Night

The actual price tag on the Senate stimulus package will be north of $800 billion. The deal reached today will be passed as an amendment to the original bill and is roughly $780 billion. But the three amendments that have already passed this week will still be part of the law. One, a housing credit of $15,000 per buyer, is estimated to cost $19 billion. Another, a tax credit for folks who buy energy efficient cars, comes in at around $11 billion. A third, giving $6.5 billion more to the National Institutes of Health, would also be included in the total cost, which takes it to roughly $817 billion, close to the amount of the package passed by the House.

Republicans have been arguing tonight that the higher price tag means that there is, in fact, no deal -- since the deal is for the $780 billion. Democratic senators and Sens. Arlen Specter and Susan Collins said, however, that there is a deal and that the amendments will be worked out in the negotiations between the Senate and House. The NIH piece may have the best chance of survival because it was sponsored by Specter, whose vote will be needed again to pass whatever emerges from House-Senate negotiations. The assumption among Democrats, said aides, is that those amendments will be stripped out during the conference negotiations, because the crux of the compromise deal is the $780 billion package.

Now are we finally moving on?