The Stimulus Dealmakers

The Senate moderates who put together a tentative deal to pass a $780 billion stimulus bill are now speaking on the floor. You can watch a live stream at CSPAN.org, if you're into that kind of thing on a Friday night.

Joe Lieberman: "It wasn't easy to get 60 votes, but tonight, we're gonna do it."

Update: Teddy's flying in tonight.

The bipartisan expert says, "It's not bipartisan" if only a couple Republicans vote for it.

Update: Harry Reid now says it's "unlikely" that there will be a vote tonight. David Vitter argued strenuously that the Senate should have some time to at least read the finalized compromise bill over the weekend.

McCain: "Mr. President, if this legislation is passed, it will be a very bad day for America."

Update: Lindsey Graham spanks Democrats for lack of bipartisanship and goes after Obama: "America has lost much more than $820 billion. It has lost the promise of a young President to change things...Don't tell me this is change I can believe in."

Graham: "When Joe voted with us, it wasn't bipartisanship. It was just us and Joe."

Update: Here's a gem from Joe Lieberman who I unabashedly adore on other issues, but sheesh:

Are we able to come together and give the American people, the American economy, American businesses, American workers the help that they can get from nowhere else to get this economy of ours moving again, to protect jobs, and to create jobs? The help's not going to come from the private sector. It's not there. It's not going to come from the personal consumption that normally drives 70% of our gross domestic product. It's not there. And you don't need to be an economist to understand that. People see it in their own lives: lost jobs, fear that their jobs will be next, an anxiety so deep that they will not buy what they need, businesses that are constantly laying off people. It's been referred to but here it is today. 600,000 Americans lost their jobs last month, January of this year. So the -- the only place help can come from now is from the federal government.

The full remarks from Sen. Mitch McConnell are after the jump, below. They sounded a very sensible and sensitive tone on the issue:"The question of whether or not the economy needs help is really not in debate. I don't think there's a single member of the Senate that believes that no action is the appropriate course for us to take.

"But one of the good things about reading history is you learn a good deal. And, we know for sure that the big spending programs of the New Deal did not work.

"In 1940, unemployment was still 15%. And, it's widely agreed among economists, that what got us out of the doldrums that we were in during the Depression was the beginning of World War II.

"We have another example.

"What is called in Japan the Lost Decade of the 1990's, where stimulus packages similar to the one we're considering tonight were tried again, and again, and again. And, at the end of the 1990's, Japan, looked very much like it did at the beginning of the 1990's, except that it had a much larger debt.

"Now, we've not seen the compromise proposal, which has been discussed here tonight. And, I know there's been a good faith effort on the part of those involved to pare down the size of the underlying Senate measure.

"But as near as we can tell, even after those efforts, it is roughly the same size as the House bill.

"According to the figures I've been given, the House bill is about $820 billion. The Senate bill, under the compromise, we believe, would be about $827 billion. Bear in mind the interest costs on either of those proposals would be $348 billion. So we're really talking about a $1.1 trillion pending measure.

"A $1.1 trillion spending measure. We're looking at a $1 trillion deficit for this fiscal year.

"We believe that the Secretary of the Treasury and the President will suggest to us as early as next week that we need to do -- what has commonly become referred to as a TARP round - some kind of additional assistance for the financial system as early as next week. We're talking about an extraordinarily large amount of money and a crushing debt for our grandchildren.