Senate does the math for stimulus plan

As the Senate begins debate on who should benefit from a more-than-$150-billion economic stimulus package, Democrats have put two groups at the top of their list: senior citizens living on Social Security and Americans struggling to pay their energy bills.

Missing from the list are workers who lost their jobs in the downturn.

What accounts for this tally of winners and losers in the scramble for a piece of the stimulus pie?

The seniors are backed by the 39 million-member AARP, the nation’s largest membership organization. But how could those needing help with their energy bills beat out laid-off workers championed by labor unions, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful benefactors?

Like much in the Capitol Hill stimulus debate, there is no simple story line.

Democratic legislative priorities reflect a mix of electoral calculations, the chamber’s partisan split and even the geography of the Democratic and Republican delegations.

“We’re in the Senate,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) quipped last week, as he outlined his legislative plans. “This is the best I can do.”

Senate leaders expect this week to begin debating the stimulus package approved by the House.

But because of GOP opposition, Democrats eager to augment it may only be able to offer a handful of amendments. That prompted Reid to choose separate votes on rebate checks for seniors and energy assistance, but not for numerous other proposed additions.

For Senate Democrats, the decision to back more aid to seniors was as close to a no-brainer as there is in legislative politics.

Long the most faithful voters, seniors are courted assiduously by both major parties every electoral season. And when they began calling and e-mailing Capitol Hill to note that they had been left out of the House stimulus package, Senate Democrats acted quickly.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) put a provision in an alternative stimulus package he developed to ensure some 20 million more seniors would receive rebate checks. Also included in the proposal are about 250,000 disabled veterans.

“Who’s going to vote against that?” said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which has closely monitored the stimulus debate.

To press the case, AARP organized a grass-roots campaign that generated 75,000 e-mails to Senate offices in one day last week. By the end of the week, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) virtually dared Republicans to oppose it. “They will hear from senior citizens,” he warned.

Back home in Billings, Mont., Baucus, who is running for reelection this fall, called a news conference Friday to trumpet his efforts.

There is considerably less political muscle behind the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a relatively obscure program created to help low-income people and the elderly pay their winter heating bills. But in a closely divided Senate, it has something almost as important: a bipartisan group of senators from cold Northern states where the program has for decades been among the most cherished.

“We are here because there has been an awareness among the right members,” said Michael Bracy, director of Campaign for Home Energy Assistance, one of handful of groups that lobbied for the program.

Reid said last week that he wanted a vote on a bipartisan proposal to pump an additional $1 billion into the program.

In contrast, the majority leader appeared ready to abandon a staple of many previous economic stimulus packages: an extension of benefits to unemployed workers.

Many economists -- as well as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- believe extended benefits are among the most effective ways to get money into the economy quickly. They have also been a priority for labor unions, which have pumped tens of millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns in recent years.

But in the calculus of this debate, that wasn’t enough.

There is little Republican support for more government handouts at a time when the GOP is trying to rehabilitate its image as the party of limited government.

Democrats are eager to show they can get things done. And with a limited number of votes at his disposal, Reid left the proposal on the cutting-room floor.

Rather than seek a separate vote on the benefit extension, Reid said he planned to lump it into an amendment with other expanded benefits that were Democratic priorities. Few expect the amendment will make it into the stimulus package.

“We are where we are,” Reid said.

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noam.levey@latimes.com