WASHINGTON Congress adjourns without passing a stimulus package

In many recent polls, Americans have made the economy a higher priority than fighting terrorism.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
WASHINGTON -- Congress adjourned for the year Thursday after wrapping up a $20 billion anti-terrorism package and a medley of other bills, but lawmakers exited pointing fingers over the economy.
Capping an extraordinary 2001, the House and Senate left town after sending President Bush three bills providing hundreds of billions of dollars for defense, schools, health and foreign aid. They also approved legislation granting tax breaks to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, lowering federal fees paid by investors and helping states clean up industrial sites.
But after all the cries for cooperation, the weekend negotiations, the walkouts, the end runs, the 11th-hour near-deals, Congress' effort to come up with a compromise to revive the economy derailed over an implacable fact: When the political stakes are high enough, sometimes nothing is better than something.
Now the recriminations begin -- not merely as an in-the-Beltway blame game but as a foundation of the 2002 election campaign.
The impasse over how to help the economy will also help set the tone and the agenda for the second year of the 107th Congress.
Daschle's response: Despite a significant shift toward middle ground by the House Republican leadership -- and a rare Capitol appearance by President Bush -- Senate majority leader Tom Daschle said that a $214 billion GOP stimulus plan was still a bridge too far for Democrats.
"We have to draw a distinction between passing something and passing anything," said Daschle, at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday. "There is nothing that divides our parties more than economic policy. It's the basis of identity in our two-party system."
But the Senate Democratic leader is already taking heat for this position. White House officials are dubbing Daschle "obstructionist," a charge that could carry weight with the American public at a time when the president's popularity is hovering above 80 percent.
The economy is also a top priority for Americans, outranking anti-terror efforts in some recent polls. Many also show stronger support for President Bush on the economy than for congressional Democrats.
In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll earlier this month, 59 percent of those surveyed said that tax cuts to business would do more to encourage investment and create jobs than unemployment benefits and consumer-spending incentives.
Priorities: Early on, House Republicans pulled out of bipartisan talks on a stimulus package to push their own plan, which heavily emphasized tax cuts to business.
Business groups missed out on the first Bush tax cut last spring, and have been lobbying hard to be included in any subsequent tax cuts. GOP leaders saw the stimulus package as a means to do that.
For Democrats, the key priority was to extend unemployment insurance and health benefits to the nearly 1 million workers who have lost their jobs since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The toughest impasse in the stimulus plan was over health care issues, which have been a stumbling block in Congress for years. Republicans proposed a new tax credit to help laid-off workers purchase health insurance. Democrats wanted to use federal dollars to help workers maintain the health coverage they had when they were working, as well as to beef up Medicaid.
A hastily crafted bill passed the House on a vote of 224-193 Wednesday night, but Democrats were already declaring the centrist measure dead on arrival in the Senate.