Reid, Byrd Unveil Economic Recovery Package

While most of official Washington remains engulfed in crafting an economic bailout package, two top Senate Democrats proposed legislation aimed at helping low-income and middle class Americans during the ongoing financial crisis.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) today unveiled a multi-faceted $56.2 billion economic recovery package, according to a statement from Reid's office.

“We must not forget Main Street as we work to address the crisis on Wall Street. Democrats believe that we must urgently pass another economic recovery package that will create hundreds of thousands of good-paying American jobs and prevent cuts in critical services for millions of Americans," Reid says. "With the economic news only getting worse each day, I call on the President, Senator McCain and congressional Republicans to join us to quickly get this done for American families.”

McCain is the 2008 Republican nominee for president and has taken the unusual step of suspending his campaign to get directly involved in financial dealmaking on Capitol Hill.

Key provisions of the bill would extend unemployment insurance benefits for seven weeks, address high food costs and energy prices, create jobs, promote education and job training, and aid small businesses, the statement says.

The stimulus bill also provides an additional $500 million for the Weatherization Assistance Program, which improves the energy efficiency of low-income housing. The amount of proposed funding would support more than 8,000 existing jobs, weatherize about 300,000 homes, and save each household about $400 in energy costs this coming year, the Reid statement says.

According to a fact sheet from Reid's office, the stimulus package includes: $10.8 billion for building and repairing highways, bridges, mass transit, airports, and AMTRAK, creating 384,000 jobs; $50 million for the Economic Development Administration (EDA) to help communities impacted by job losses due to corporate restructuring; $500 million for the COPS program to hire 6,500 police officers; $600 million for clean water systems that would create 24,000 jobs; $2 billion for school construction that would create 32,300 jobs; and $500 million to address some of the construction backlog for the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control, navigation, shore protection, and environmental restoration projects –- funds that will provide immediate construction jobs around the nation.

“There are consequences for failing to invest in America and the Bush administration has fiddled while Rome has burned," Byrd says. "The package we are outlining today addresses the rise in unemployment and high food and energy costs, and funds infrastructure repairs that will create jobs, while also aiding small businesses and rural communities to ensure that Main Street USA is here to stay. I urge all of my fellow Senators to join me in supporting swift action on these critically needed Main Street priorities.”

It was not immediately clear how much support the Reid/Byrd Economic Recovery Act of 2008 enjoys.

Many Democrats have been pushing for a second such economic stimulus bill for months, but had run into opposition from the White House and other conservative organizations. However, the sudden need for bipartisan cooperation to approve a $700 billion rescue program for Wall Street may alter the political dynamics and allow for the Reid/Byrd bill to become law.

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