It has been widely reported that Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are working on stripping public spending from the stimulus bill before it passes the Senate. The good news is that the amount of spending they have removed from the bill has come down from the originally reported $200 billion to $78 billion (although the exact size of the cuts is still up in the air). That is still a lot of spending cuts but, as Elena Schor reports, "the Nelson-Collins cuts have become the best hope for getting the recovery plan over the finish line." That seems pretty much undisputable right now.
Given this situation, I want to know the names of the twenty or so Senators, most of whom appear to be Democrats, that are members of the Collins-Nelson gang (emphasis mine):
Collins and Nelson are working together to draft a bill that could cut as much as $200 billion in questionable items from the stimulus package. It's a work in progress with no hard numbers or details just yet on which things would be eliminated. We're told there are more than 20 other senators working on this effort.
It appears that these twenty or so Senators are actually running the government right now, so I think we need to know who they are.
We were promised greater transparency in government over the next four years. As such, I say we start by having someone produce a list of the people who are actually running the government.
I am going to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to figure this one out. If you have any information on the matter, please provide it in the comments.
Update: There are apparently 18 Senators in the group. David Kowalski makes the catch:
The Washington Post says there are 18 (and they met with Obama). It only names four: Snowe, Collins, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and hints at three others (Specter, McCain, Baucus). This group, especially the Democrats, are afraid to step into the daylight.
A good start.
Update 2: Lieberman (I-CT), Bayh (D-IN) and McCaskill (D-MO) also involved (pardon the source). That makes 7.
Further, it is highly likely that Conrad (D-ND, given his public reservations about the bill, and Specter (R-PA) and Voinovich (R-OH), given their voting patterns on the stimulus, were also involved. That would make 10. Specter and McCain are also strong possibilities, given the implications of some of the stories on this subject. That would make 12.
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