Congress Expected to Pass Economic Stimulus Package
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Well, joining us now, our congressional correspondent, Jonathan Karl. Jonathan...</s>WOODRUFF: ... less than an hour ago, the stimulus package did not pass the House yet. You can bring us up to the minute.</s>JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, up to the minute, they are about to vote in the House on final passage of that bill. And as you heard the Democratic leader say, it's expected to pass, pass largely on partisan lines, Republicans in support of it. And meanwhile, what's interesting up here, Judy, is the very time the House is about to pass this Republican plan, over on the Senate side of the Capitol, the Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, is meeting with Democrats and Republicans on an alternative over there. Now you may remember, Secretary O'Neill had, some days ago, suggested that this House plan -- this House Republican tax cut of $100 billion is -- was in his words, "show business". So now the secretary of the Treasury -- working on what we expect will be a smaller tax cut and a stimulus plan that would also include some spending increases over on the Senate side.</s>WOODRUFF: And what we've seen is that both from the president and from leader Gephardt is that what we are likely to end up with is something in the middle between what's come out of the Senate. Jonathan, let me ask to you also to bring us up to date on the anti-terrorism bill that came out of the Congress today.</s>KARL: Well, sure, that we did have a vote on in the House side -- the final version of this anti-terrorism bill, giving John Ashcroft the powers to track down terrorists in the United States. And that passed by a vote of 357-66, largely, most of what the attorney general had asked for, not all the powers, but many of them, something that it hadn't faced originally -- opposition among people on the left and the right that were concerned about civil liberties. But as we see, an overwhelmingly positive vote for in the House. We expect a vote in the Senate on that possibly today, but more likely tomorrow.</s>WOODRUFF: All right. Jon Karl at the Capitol, thanks.