February 07,2008

Finance Panel’s Economic Help For Seniors, Veterans Approved By House, Headed To President’s Desk

Checks will be in the mail for 20 million seniors, 250,000 disabled vets after Senate additions to economic stimulus plan are signed into law

Washington, DC – Senate Finance Committee provisions giving tax rebate checks to 20
million American seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans have been approved by the
House of Representatives tonight, and are expected to be signed into law quickly by the
President as part of an economic stimulus bill. Last week, Finance Chairman Max
Baucus (D-Mont.) presented and the panel passed a package of provisions to improve on
a House-proposed economic plan by allowing seniors living solely on Social Security and
veterans living on non-taxable disability benefits to receive stimulus checks just like
millions of other Americans.

“I kept saying that the Senate could improve on the House package and get it all
done before February 15, and that’s exactly what’s happened. Thanks to some
persistence in the Senate and the good sense of the House tonight, the President now
gets to sign a better economic stimulus bill into law,” Baucus said. “There were
many, many calls to simply accept the original economic stimulus agreement and
pass it without changes. But I had more than 20 million good reasons to stick to my
guns on improving it. The 20 million seniors and 250,000 disabled veterans we
added to this economic stimulus plan are part of the American family, and they will
contribute these funds to the American economy. Adding these folks to the
economic stimulus plan was the morally right thing to do and the fiscally right thing
to do. I’ll be proud to see the President sign this into law.”

The Finance plan also included safeguards missing from the House bill to ensure that
illegal immigrants could not receive rebates, which the House approved tonight as well.
The Senate voted 81-16 today to accept the bipartisan Finance Committee provisions and
to send the measure back to the House for final approval.

A summary of today’s amendment is available on the Finance Committee website at
http://www.finance.senate.gov/

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