Though they’re poised to vote for the $827 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sometime today, Rhode Island’s two Senators say the measure may not be enough to solve the country’s economic problems.

“I’m afraid the first round of the stimulus is not going to be enough. I think we’ll be back doing this again,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), on Sunday evening, just minutes before hosting a community dinner at the Elks Lodge on West Shore Road.

Yesterday, during a media briefing at his Senate office, Senator John Reed said the same thing.

“This legislation will, I believe, be the first step on the road

to recovery, but I do believe it will be just the first step,” said Reed. Though the bill is expected to pass the Senate today, it is different from the House version, which passed a week ago because it emphasizes tax cuts and scales back spending on public works projects and government programs. The Senate version of the plan also cuts $40 from the fund that would help states deal with their budget deficits.

As a gauge to measure how comfortable the Congress has become with respect to intervening in the economy via massive government spending, consider the stimulus proposal of 1993 that was put forward shortly after president Clinton took office. At the time, the country was facing recession-like conditions, and the bill would have spent a total of close to $16.5 billion to extend unemployment benefits ($4 billion), increase education grants ($2 billion), improve highways and begin public works projects ($6 billion), create summer jobs ($2 billion) and increased community block development grants ($2.5 billion).

The 43 Republicans in the Senate however, refused to support the bill because there were no spending cuts proposed to offset the new programs.

This year’s Senate stimulus bill will authorize federal spending of nearly 50 times that amount.

This year’s bill is a compromise between the entire Senate caucus, which relies on Whitehouse and Reed, as well as at least two Republican votes.

Much like in 1993, most Republicans oppose the massive spending bill.

Whitehouse said the Republicans newfound fiscal conservatism is interesting, considering they voted to deficit spend to the tune of about $7.7 trillion over the last eight years.

“The Republicans are acting as if we can’t do deficit spending. They can’t do deficit spending? They’ve done close to $8 trillion in deficit pending over the last eight years,” said Whitehouse.

But unlike 1993, the Republican minority is not united in its opposition to the stimulus bill. Three Republicans have agreed to cross party lines and vote for what is regarded as a compromise bill that slashes some spending and increases tax cuts for the lower and middle classes.

Maine’s two moderate Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) a liberal Republican, began meeting with Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut), who votes with the Democrats on everything but national security, last week to hammer out an agreement.

At yesterday’s press conference, Reed said the tax cuts would be beneficial to most Rhode Islanders. Reed said 470,000 Rhode Island workers and their families would benefit from the tax cut.

“The problem with the economy today is that consumer demand has dropped,” said Reed.

The government, he added, needs to see give people an incentive to spend money, which the tax cut should do.

Reed said the Senate version of the bill itself would create or save 13,000 jobs in Rhode Island, make 14,000 families eligible for a new American Opportunity Tax credit that will make college more affordable, and offer an additional $100 per month unemployment insurance benefits to 86,000 workers in Rhode Island who have lost their jobs, and provide extended unemployment benefits to an additional 17,000 laid off workers.

Among the programs and projects cut by the moderate group of Senators in the proposed Senate bill is $40 billion from the state stabilization program that would allow states to deal with their budget deficits.

Under the Senate plan, Rhode Island would receive $132.4 million for highway and bridge repairs, $49.3 million for transit capital funding, $12 million for a Weatherization Assistance Program, and $16 million for job training for workers who have recently lost jobs.

The plan would also extend food stamps.

Both Reed and Whitehouse were disappointed the Senate version of the bill sliced $40 billion from the House version that would have been allocated towards aid for state governments. Both said they hoped the conference committee between the House and the Senate would vote to restore the money into the final bill.

The state would receive $109 million over the next two years in order to help balance the budget deficit under the Senate bill. About 60 percent of the money would be allocated to education in Rhode Island.

Reed said the money would help the state preserve it’s education and public safety services.

“To say this is going to solve the state’s problems, well it’s not,” said Reed. “But without this aid, the state’s problems are going to be much more difficult to handle.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan group of analysts who’s job it is to provide information to the Congress on their potential action, said the stimulus bill would likely have a positive short term effect, but would reduce the Gross Domestic Product over the next ten years due to an increase in the national debt, which will crowd out private investment.

“Higher deficits…tend to slow economic growth in the long term if they are allowed to persist, because they tend to reduce capital accumulation and the growth in the economy’s capacity to produce,” read a recent CBO report on the bill.

Reed said while the national debt may hinder growth over the long term, there would be no growth for a long time without government action.

“To get to the long run, we’ll need this bill,” said Reed. Meanwhile, Governor Donald Carcieri has written a letter to President Barack Obama asking the House version of the stimulus package to be revised in five areas, some of which have been addressed by the Senate.

In his letter, Carcieri asked Obama to provide relief for those families that have been affected by unemployment; provide assistance to state government budgets, to avoid tax increase at the local level; provide massive tax reductions across the board by lowering tax withholding rates and putting more disposable income in weekly family paychecks; provide financing for highway and bridge upgrades; and to stabilize the banking and credit system with low interest rates, and absorption of the toxic assets.

“These steps will restore confidence on the part of all Americans, and hopefully, stop the slide in home prices,” wrote Carcieri.