McConnell: We Won’t Make Stimulus Passage Harder for Dems

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The Senate is poised to approve its $827 billion version of the stimulus bill tomorrow after a procedural test vote tonight, with three GOP senators putting the legislation over the 60-vote mark needed for passage.

Republicans had forced the stimulus vote to be pushed until today in order to examine the $100-billion-plus package of cuts negotiated by a group of centrist senators last week.

The question facing Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) now is whether he’ll have to work around similar delays from Republicans once stimulus talks with the House are completed — ideally by Friday. If the GOP wanted to be a thorn in Reid’s side, it could delay a final vote on the recovery bill until a week from today, imperiling President Obama’s deadline for passage.

But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters today that he doesn’t expect further delays will happen this week. The timeline for final passage of the stimulus, he said, “depends on how quickly the conference functions and resolves the differences among the majority in the House and the majority in the Senate.”

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