Dana Bash
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Following GOP Sen. Judd Gregg out of his presser, I asked him about CNN reporting that the White House was not happy that he didn’t help the President by voting on the economic stimulus bill.

Gregg replied, “I’m sure that’s true.”

I asked, well why didn’t you?

He replied, “because I gave my word to people.”

Then the elevator doors closed….

House and Senate negotiators are working to hammer out differences in a roughly $800 billion stimulus package.

Dana Bash,Ted Barrett and Evan Glass
CNN Capitol Hill Team

House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on an economic recovery bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

Multiple Democratic sources are giving some details of what they’re working out:

• Tax breaks for workers that had been set at $1000 per family or $500 per individual would be scaled back to $800 per family and $400 per individual

• $44 billion in aid to states, including money for education and other services.

• $6 billion – $9 billion for modernizing and repairing schools. That is intended to assuage House Democrats who are upset the Senate cut $20 billion for school construction. And, the emphasis on “modernizing and repairing” is meant to appease Senate centrists who believe school “construction” takes too long and therefore won’t stimulate the economy, and that state governments, not the federal government, should be responsible for building schools

• 35 percent of the bill would be tax cuts, 65 percent would be spending

• More money added to help people buy health insurance through the federal COBRA program

Baucus said it is possible the House could take the bill up as early as Thursday and the Senate possibly Friday.

Dana Bash
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Senate Democrats have dropped two controversial spending programs in the Senate economic stimulus bill: $75 million dollars for anti-smoking programs, and $400 million for STD and HIV prevention.

Two Democratic leadership sources tell CNN Monday Democrats did it as a “symbolic gesture” to show Republicans they are listening to their objections.

But one of the Democratic sources also conceded “it’s hard to explain when you’re in the midst of a crisis, why these programs are important. When people are struggling and thinking about their jobs, it’s hard to make that connection.”

Republicans, and even some Democrats, have been pointing to both of these items as prime examples of “excess spending” that doesn’t belong in this stimulus bill.

But there are, of course, many other programs that Republican senators, and even some conservative Democrats still want to scrub from the bill.

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Dana Bash
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Shortly after 5pm, Tom Daschle walked into the Senate Finance Committee’s suite of offices in the non-descript Dirksen Senate building.

Committee staff had just begun briefing Daschle’s former colleagues in the anteroom, about the investigation they had been conducting for a month about his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes – mostly for a car and driver he used for three years.

Daschle waited in the room next door.

Any other nominee may have been sitting nervously as the Senators deliberated over the controversy that will decide his fate.

Not Daschle.

According to a source in the room, the former Senate Majority leader spent some time catching up with his old friends, even sharing pictures with Chuck Schumer of New York, while he waited.

After Senators got their briefing on Daschle’s issues, they invited him into the room for about 15 minutes of questioning. Two sources in the room said most of the questions surrounded his tax problems, and that some of the queries were “were friendlier than others.”

But it turns out that almost all the Democrats on the committee had already decided they would stand with their former leader.

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Anderson Cooper talks with his panel about President Obama's plans to possibly crackdown on CEO Bonuses.

Dana Bash | BIO
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Bump into John McCain in a Capitol hallway these days, and you’re lucky if you get anything beyond a polite hello. Ask him a question on any policy or political issue, and he will almost always decline comment, and keep moving.

But the former Republican presidential nominee is not planning to keep a low profile for long.

CNN has learned that McCain may get seats on an unusually high number of key senate committees, so that he can engage on a wide range of high profile issues before congress, and his formal rival in the White House.

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Dana Bash
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Even Barack Obama's most ardent Senate supporters tell CNN, voting to give him 350-billion dollars more for a bailout their constituents despise, was wrenching. Says Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota, "It's easy to vote against this." She continues: "You know if you go home, to vote to help [Mister] Obama get this money, there is not going to be a parade waiting for you.

But vote for it she did. She's one of many senators the President-elect called to pitch personally. To pitch and to promise that thistime taxpayer money will be better spent.

"He's talking to a lot of us," Sen. Klobuchar says, "about how important it is to give him the tools he needs to tackle this financial crisis."

"He's also acknowledged the horrible mistakes made by the past administration," she adds.

In fact it went beyond phone-calls. Senators demanded written assurances Mister Obama would address those mistakes.. and got letters promising more transparency and accountability on how he will use bailout funds.

Democratic Senators say it was Team Obama's full-court press that scored a crucial victory on such a controversial issue.

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Dana Bash
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced tonight they will vote Thursday on the resolution of disapproval for releasing the remaining 350 billion dollars of the bailout fund.

A senior Democratic leadership aide says they are hopful, but admits to CNN that they are still not sure they have the votes to give President-elect Barack Obama the money he argues is essential to fixing the economy.

So, why are Democratic leaders holding the vote without knowing how it will go?

"The longer this thing hangs out there, the more water it takes on," said the Democratic leadership aide.

The decision to hold a Thursday vote comes hours after the President-elect's top aides held an urgent closed door meeting with Republican senators urging them to support giving them remaining bailout money.

But most Republican senators emerged from the meeting saying their minds were not changed and they still were unlikely to support this.

As CNN reported earlier in the day, multiple GOP senators who voted for the program in the fall, no longer support it.

So the challenge still for Mr. Obama is convincing enough of his fellow Democrats, many of whom still tell CNN they are very skeptical.

This disapproval resolution is not allowed to be filibustered, so it only needs a simple majority, 51 votes, to be defeated.

If it is defeated in the Senate, the request will automatically go through, since the law says both houses of Congress must pass disapproval measures to stop the bailout funds from being released.
It is likely this vote will not occur until after 5pm, after the markets close. But the timing is still fluid.

Barack Obama is facing bipartisan opposition to his plans for the bailout funds.

Dana Bash, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent
Brianna Keilar, CNN Congressional Correspondent

Barack Obama is already having trouble getting fellow Democrats to give him the remaining $350 billion dollars for Wall Street.

But now, he has a growing Republican problem.

Some half a dozen Republican Senators who voted for the financial rescue in the fall tell CNN that they plan to oppose it this time.

“I think it would be very difficult voting for the TARP funds because in the first $350 billion, there was no transparency. We don’t even know how it was spent,” Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign told CNN.

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Barack Obama met with Senate Democrats for the last time Tuesday before next week's inauguration.

Dana Bash | BIO
Senior Congressional Correspondent

Consider the irony here: Barack Obama is finally spending his political capital, and he's using it on a joint effort with President Bush, to fight fellow Democrats in Congress, for a wildly unpopular Wall Street bailout.

And a full week before taking office, he even came to Capitol Hill to remind Democrats he's going to have a veto pen, and he's not afraid to use it.

I talked to more than a dozen Senate Democrats, and it was abundantly clear why he had to go to such extremes. They despise the idea of spending an additional 350 billion taxpayer dollars on what they view as a mismanaged rescue program.

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