Senate version of plan provides $300 bonus for seniors, others

January 24, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior citizens receiving Social Security would get a bonus payment of $300 under the Senate version of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan.

The $820 billion Senate measure includes tax cuts and spending proposals totaling $455 billion under the plan released Friday by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., in anticipation of a panel vote Tuesday. That $455 billion measure will be paired on the Senate floor with about $365 billion in further spending proposed by the Appropriations Committee.

A House companion measure slated for a vote Wednesday carries an $825 billion price tag, with one-third reserved for tax cuts.

The bonus for seniors is but one chapter in the Senate proposal. There’s also a temporary two-year $500 tax cut for most workers and $1,000 for couples, a $2,500 tax credit to help pay for college, tax cuts for businesses and to promote renewable energy, and $87 billion worth of help to states struggling with their 2009-10 budgets for the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.

The $300 bonus for seniors and disabled people receiving Supplemental Security Income payments would cost $17 billion and is perhaps the biggest difference between the House and Senate economic recovery plans. Veterans who get disability and pension payments would also get the $300 under the proposal. The emerging House and Senate plans are generally similar otherwise.

Neither the House nor Senate measure includes help for middle- to upper-income taxpayers caught in the alternative minimum tax, which aimed to prevent tax-avoidance by the extremely wealthy but now threatens about 24 million additional tax filers.

Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Finance Committee’s top Republican, said Friday that he would work to add a one-year AMT “patch” to the Senate bill to protect those taxpayers from getting a tax increase.

The Social Security bonus is a one-time payment. Other provisions in the stimulus measure generally extend for two years.

The Finance panel also would subsidize for two years almost two-thirds of health insurance premiums for the unemployed retaining health care under the so-called COBRA program. It would extend unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless through the end of 2009, increase the weekly benefit by $25 and provide unemployment benefits to more part-time workers. Up to $2,400 in unemployment benefits would be tax free.

The Senate plan would also provide a $7,500 tax credit for middle-income, first-time home buyers who purchase homes in the first half of 2009.