Evidently the Senate has reached a compromise on the fiscal stimulus bill. I won’t go into the details since realistically it all meaningless until the House-Senate conference hammers out the particulars. Watch out for that one by the way.

I do want to highlight the hypocrisy of all of this. Here is really all you need to know at this point in time. From the WSJ:

Senate Democratic leaders struck a deal late Friday with three moderate Republicans on a leaner economic-recovery package, clearing a path to Senate passage of one of the most ambitious fiscal stimulus plans in decades.

The deal came after five days of partisan gridlock, and followed news earlier Friday that employers had slashed nearly 600,000 jobs in January. Senators valued the compromise plan at $780 billion — well less than the $930 billion plan the Senate debated most of the day.

Not counted in that estimate are several popular tax breaks — including measures to encourage auto and home sales — that were approved this week on the Senate floor and are expected to be incorporated into the legislation. Those could push the final cost of the Senate plan closer to $820 billion.

Note that this bill came to the Senate from the House with a price tag of around $830billion give or take a couple of billion here and there. The Senate larded it up to $930 billion and then took it back down to $820 billion. Now they want to sell it as a leaner version. Nothing changed. The deck chairs were rearranged a bit, the Republicans were tossed a few crumbs so they could score with their constituents money sources and it’s off to the races.

Do they all have that low opinion of us that they think we can’t see through what is occurring?

more: here