President Obama has meeting with congress, listens to republicans gripe about his stimulus package, tells them, "I won"

[Terminator]

President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who's in charge of these negotiations. "I won," Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package. They also raised red flags about a refundable tax credit that returns money to those who don’t pay income taxes, the sources said.

The Republicans stressed that they want to include more middle class tax cuts in the package, citing their proposal to cut the two lowest tax rates — 15 percent and 10 percent — to ten percent and five percent, rather than issue the refundable credit Obama wants.

At another point in the meeting, sources said Obama told the group: “This is a grave situation facing the country.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama would hold another economic meeting in the White House Saturday for a "broader group."

After Friday's meeting, Democratic and Republican leaders publicly wrangled over the developing stimulus plan.

But perhaps taking a cue from Obama’s “I won” line when Democrats were asked if they were concerned about Republicans blocking the package, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had a swift one-word answer: “No.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the bill was on track for passage by February 16, while Republicans continued to voice their opposition.

“We expressed our concerns about some of the spending that’s being proposed in the House bill,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said after meeting with Obama.

“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”

Boehner said congressional Republicans are also concerned about the size of the package.

“Government can’t solve this problem,” he said.

Reid said a Congressional Budget Office report that says the stimulus funds won’t be pumped into the economy until 2010 doesn’t provide an accurate picture.

Republicans have used the report to back up their argument against a near $1 trillion package. But Reid said Obama Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag told them CBO only analyzed 40 percent of the bill.

He also said Orszag guaranteed “that at least 75 percent of the bill would go directly into the economy within the first 18 months.”


Pelosi suggested that the package, currently at $825 billion, could become even larger.

“It has grown,” Pelosi said, “and we’re still in the process.” At the meeting, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, passed out copies of the Republicans’ five-point stimulus plan. At first blush, Obama said, “Nothing on here looks outlandish or crazy to me,” Obama said, according to a source familiar with the conversation. He seemed particularly receptive to some Republican ideas about increasing benefits to small businesses.

But when the conversation got down to other specifics, it was clear that some of the Republican ideas were clearly non-starters with the new president – including calls to put off tax hikes during the recession. “He rejected that out of hand and said we couldn’t have any hard and fast rules like that,” Cantor said.

[countybear]

Does anyone else see the futility of 'infusing' big businesses with 'loans' of large sums of cash, placing them under increasingly overbearing government 'oversight', then taxing the money back out of them on the back end?

I think that plan is called 'government expansion', not 'economic stimulus.

[Terminator]

WASHINGTON -- President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.
"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.
One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.
"There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats," the official said. "We shouldn't let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done."
That wasn't Obama's only jab at Republicans today.
While discussing the stimulus package with top lawmakers in the White House's Roosevelt Room, President Obama shot down a critic with a simple message.
"I won," he said, according to aides who were briefed on the meeting. "I will trump you on that."
The response was to the objection by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to the president's proposal to increase benefits for low-income workers who don't owe federal income taxes.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...h-want-things/

[MacLean]

So in two years, when we send his ass a Republican Congress, let's remember the "I won" bullshit.

[Morris]

Youth and inexperience are already coming to roost, eh? Hard lesson to be learned soon by the Messiah.