The House Appropriations Committee is circulating this morning an economic stimulus proposal (summary and bill text) they hope will be debated by the full House later this afternoon (nothing like the last minute). Chairman David Obey (D-WI) writes about the need for this legislation in the summary:

84,000 Americans lost their jobs last month and the number of unemployed Americans is the highest it has been since 1992. The economy has lost jobs for eight straight months, with 605,000 American jobs lost this year.

Congress responded quickly to the White House's call for a financial rescue package. The White House should join Congress in putting together a solid package for Main Street. Today the House will take up legislation to boost our economy, create jobs, and help provide additional relief to families who are struggling.

The House stimulus package consistents of blocks of spending on infrastructure (public housing, transit, schools, and water and sewer), energy development (electric grid moderinization, advanced vehicle battery technology, and renewable energy development) and human needs (unemployment benefits extension, job training, health care, and food assistance). The full cost of the House package is reported to be around $50 billion or a bit more.

Of course, Obey (and others who have been calling for this type of package) are right. If Wall Street was not literally melting before our eyes, the quickly deteriorating economy would be the top issue in the news. As Andrew Samwick reminded us yesterday blogging over at Capital Gains and Games, traditional economic indicators are really not doing very well, with demand for workers and manufactured products decreasing.

The Senate is working on a similar package, and Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) and Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-WV) have announced the Senate's will be $56.2 billion. 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." A detailed summary of the bill is available.

House Stimilus Summary
House Stimulus Bill Text

Senate summary

As the clock winds down on the 110th Congress, legislators are working at a furious pace this week, vetting financial bailout proposals, passing tax and spending legislation, holding oversight hearings, etc. All the things that Congress is supposed to do on a regular basis. It's just quite shocking to see them actually doing it.

So, here's a quick rundown on where things stand.

Senate
Yesterday the Senate took three votes on tax cut proposals (see details in this Watcher article), passing two of them. The first was compiled by both Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and his counterpart on the committee Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and is a $68.1 billion package to extend tax cuts and provide an Alternative Minimum Tax patch. This proposal also included $25.2 billion in revenue raising offsets. This bill passed 93-2. The second proposal was $18.3 billion in energy tax incentives that was full paid for by increasing taxes on the oil and gas industry. This also passed 93-2. These bill were both sent to the House today. While it originally looked as though the House would break apart the first proposal and pass AMT relief seperately, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced this afternoon he would postpone consideration of the tax bills to attempt to make some changes that will "take more time than just today."

House
The House finished off their work yesterday by passing a reconciled version of the FY 2009 Defense Authorization bill that passed the Senate last week. House and Senate leaders dropped provisions in the bill that drew a veto threat from President Bush, including restrictions on using private contractors for security functions in combat zones and allowing contract employees to participate in detainee interrogations. The bill will now be sent back to the Senate for final approval, which is expected.

While the House was voting on the authorization bill on the floor, appropriators were busy drawing up the details of a massive appropriations bill that combines three bills (Defense, Homeland Security, and Military Construction-VA) into one bill, includes a continuing resolution funding the rest of the government through March 6, 2009, and also includes $22.9 billion in emergency funding for disaster relief. The House Rules Committee approved the bill for consideration Tuesday night by a vote of 9-4. The total pricetag for this bill is $600.6 billion, almost 60 percent of the entire discretionary budget outlined in this year's budget resolution. The proposal includes limited additional items, but does appropriate $5.1 billion for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and $7.5 billion to support a $25 billion loan program to U.S. automakers.

Given the current status of this jumbling of legislation and the pending action needed on some kind of fiscal bailout, I can't see any way at all that Congress will adjourn on Friday (the 26th) as they have planned to hit the campaign trail. I've seen snippets of rumors that the House and Senate are thinking about hanging around for the weekend, but they really need more time than that. Now that McCain is suspending his campaign outside of Washington so he can come to Washington and continue to campaign, don't you think members of Congress could stick around at least one more week?

We'll be shutting down the BudgetBrigade a bit early today to head off to OMB Watch's 25th Anniversary celebration. Yup, that's right. OMBW is 25 years young this year and we're primed and ready for our quarter life crisis! We're taking some time to celebrate tonight with friends and supporters and remember 25 years of fighting for a more transparent and accountable federal government.

While we are looking back over some of our accomplishments of the last quarter century (and honoring the unsung work of some of our public sector colleagues), we are also looking forward to the challenges we'll face over the next 25 years and beyond.

You will be a key part of overcoming those future challenges, just as you've been crucial to our past accomplishments. Your involvement, along with hundreds of thousands of people just like you has helped to make us the success we are today. So thank you for your commitment to the open and accountable ideals that have helped guide OMBW over the past 25 years.

And if you want to help make sure those ideals continue to be realized, consider making a small donation to OMB Watch in honor of our 25th birthday. Your contribution will join with hundreds of others who want to ensure we are able to continue our mission and the important work we do everyday.

Ellen Miller blogs today over at the Sunlight Foundation about the legacy of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act). The Transparency Act mandated that all federal spending be easily accessible and searchable in the Internet. After the law passed in 2006, the federal government launched USASpending.gov in 2007, which was built on the software platform that powers OMB Watch's FedSpending.org.

Ellen reports the legacy of this federal law is being felt at the state level, all over the country:

Since 2007, 11 states (Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington) have established, via legislation or executive order, free and searchable Web sites that give access to state spending. And 24 other states are working on it, with more than half introducing spending transparency bills this year. B2G Exchange blog wrote in May that transparency Web sites were the "hottest new trend" in state government.

The original cosponsors of the Transparency Act bill - Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) - as well as the hundreds of advocacy groups and transparency organizations, blogs, and regular citizens who helped push this legislation to enactment should be very proud of this legacy. Let's hope it continues to spread.