WASHINGTON — An emergency plan to save the jobs of tens of thousands of public-school teachers and other government workers overcame a key Senate hurdle Wednesday, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would summon lawmakers back from their August break to finish work on the measure.
Two Republicans crossed party lines to advance the $26 billion package, handing President Barack Obama a victory in his campaign to bolster the shaky economy. With many governors struggling to close gaping budget deficits, administration officials feared that a fresh round of state layoffs or tax increases could knock the nation’s wobbly recovery off-course.
The aid package would not entirely close those budget gaps. Hampered by election-year anxiety over the mounting national debt, congressional Democrats were forced to slash Obama’s original request for state aid nearly in half and come up with a plan to pay for it.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in both parties signaled that the measure probably marks the end for spending bills aimed at boosting economic activity.
“I think that this should be sort of the final down payment,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a key swing vote who helped break the impasse Wednesday and overcome a Republican filibuster. Sen. Susan Collins, also of Maine, provided the second Republican vote, allowing the package to clear its last major hurdle on a vote of 61-38.
“An important step”
Obama hailed the vote as “an important step towards ensuring that teachers across the country can stay in the classroom and cash-strapped states can get the relief they need.”
Even as the federal government is preparing Friday to release new unemployment figures likely to underscore the weakness of the economic recovery, a separate jobs bill aimed at spurring hiring by small businesses was stalled in the Senate and unlikely to move until after Labor Day.
Aides said a final Senate vote on state and education aid is likely this afternoon. The package would then go to the House, whose members will return to Washington on Tuesday.
“As millions of children prepare to go back to school — many in just a few days — the House will act quickly to approve this legislation once the Senate votes,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.
House members left town last week, and many rank-and- file Democrats had looked forward to the break as a chance to defend dozens of seats at risk in the November elections. But aides said many lawmakers will welcome the interruption, viewing it as a chance to score a fresh legislative victory for teachers and public-service unions, which are important Democratic constituencies. The House had earlier approved the state aid in a different form.
Republican leaders criticized the package as a giveaway to labor and an undeserved bailout for profligate state governments. Even though the final version of the bill would reduce deficits by $1.4 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Republicans also argued that the measure would darken an already- grim federal budget outlook.
“Washington needs to take care of its own fiscal mess, not deepen it by bailing out the states,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The measure would extend programs enacted in last year’s economic-stimulus package, giving states an extra $10 billion for education programs and $16 billion to plug holes in their budgets opened by growing demand for Medicaid.
To pay for the new spending, the measure would cut off in 2014 an expansion of food- stamp benefits enacted in last year’s stimulus. And it would end tax breaks for some multinational corporations that are based in the U.S. but have operations and pay taxes abroad.
Keeping 160,000 jobs
The Education Department estimates that the education fund would preserve the jobs of about 160,000 teachers and other educators. State officials say the aid will spare them from laying off thousands of other workers.
After the vote, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said the bill would keep Colorado from having to make $200 million in additional cuts to the budget “after already having had to make the most savage cuts in modern history in our state.”
“The education-jobs funding in this bill that is so critical will save between 2,000 and 3,000 teacher jobs in my state alone,” he said.
