Today in Washington D. C. - Jan 5, 2009

The Senate is scheduled to convene for the first session of the 111th Congress at noon tomorrow, beginning with the swearing-in of senators. On Thursday, the Senate is scheduled to count the electoral votes from the presidential election in November.

From Senate & News Sources: A major focus of the The 111th Congress will be the economy. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell spoke with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos yesterday about proposals by President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress for a spending bill in the neighborhood of $1 trillion. Last month, Democrats were saying they wanted to have this proposed spending bill passed before January 20th. Sen. McConnell noted this, saying, “What I worry about . . . here is the haste with which this may be done. This is an enormous bill. It could be close to a $1 trillion spending bill. Do we want to do it with essentially no hearings, no input, for example, in the Senate from Republican senators who represent half of the American population?”

Democrat leaders seemed to be attentive to this point yesterday, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) saying he didn’t want “to have some false deadline” and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) saying he didn’t think a bill would be ready that early. Sen. McConnell also discussed some of the proposals being floated for the spending package, “We want to make sure it’s not just a trillion-dollar spending bill, but something that actually can reach the goal [of stimulating the economy] that [President-elect Obama] has suggested. I think nobody thinks we ought to be spending this money on things like Mob museums and waterslides.”

McConnell pointed to an area of agreement with the president-elect on middle-class tax cuts: “Republicans, by and large, think tax relief is a great way to get money to people immediately. A possibility would be to take a look at the 25% rate currently applied to the middle class, lower it to 15%.” However, Sen. McConnell also offered cautions on a couple of proposals. Obama has said he’d like to create 3 million new jobs, with 20% of them in the public sector. “That would be 600,000 new government jobs,” Sen. McConnell pointed out. “That’s about the size of the post office workforce. Is that a good idea?”

He also expressed his concern with ideas about “big, systemic changes” being part of any such bill. Sen. McConnell said to CNN, “I think we ought to make sure that we follow the admonition of the Speaker last year in talking about stimulus packages. She said they ought to be timely, temporary and targeted. In other words, we ought to try and avoid the temptation to use this stimulus package as a basis for systemically increasing spending.” Senate Republicans have signaled their willingness to consider a number of things to stimulate the economy, but it’s important that Republicans be part of the process given the size of this proposed package and the basic fact the GOP senators represent half of the country.

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