Wednesday, February 11, 2009; 3:56 PM

House and Senate negotiators reached agreement today on a stimulus plan with a cost of about $789 billion after scaling down the versions passed by both houses, congressional leaders announced.

"The differences between the Senate and House versions were resolved," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters this afternoon.

He said the final version "creates more jobs than the original Senate bill and spends less than the original House bill." The bill passed by the Senate yesterday totaled $838 billion. The House version approved last week had a price tag of $819 billion.

Reid said the bill would create 3.5 million jobs and fulfill President Obama's pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of American families. He said the final bill would be put to a vote on the Senate floor "in the next few days, maybe as early as tomorrow."

"This has been a give and take," Reid said, adding that "the House is part of this arrangement."

Announcement of the deal came after House and Senate negotiators, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Reid, huddled this morning to try to iron out the final details on the massive package in advance of a formal House-Senate conference this afternoon in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Room off the Senate floor. Democrats hoped the conference would produce quick agreement and set the legislation on a glide path to quick passage in the House and Senate.

In a brief appearance before reporters in the Capitol to announce the agreement, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joined Reid and other key senators in praising the final product.

"I'm particularly pleased that we have produced an agreement that has the top line of $789 billion," she said. "It is a fiscally responsible number that reflects our efforts to truly focus this bill on programs and policies and tax relief that will help turn our economy around, create jobs and provide relief to the families of our country."

Collins, one of three Republican senators whose votes for the bill yesterday gave it a filibuster-proof majority, also said that in the final version, "we were able to increase the amount of infrastructure spending," which she called "the most powerful component in this bill to create jobs." She said the bill contains about $150 billion for infrastructure including transportation, environmental, broadband and other projects.

More than 35 percent of the funding goes for tax relief, Collins said.

"We do not have the luxury of time," said Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), another key negotiator. "We must expeditiously face the facts and pass this measure. To delay this any further would lead to consequences that could be horrendous."

Inouye said more delay "could lead to a crisis worse than the Great Depression." And, since the United States is now the world's only superpower, "if we go down, there'll be chaos in this globe," he said.

The agreement on a trimmed stimulus package came as Obama continued his public exhortations to lawmakers to send him legislation he can sign into law.

"Enacting this plan is both urgent and essential to our recovery," he said at a construction site in Northern Virginia. "The time for talk is past."

Earlier, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who led Democratic efforts to forge a compromise bill with a handful of Republicans, indicated that he held out little hope of getting more Republicans to support the package, despite the reduction in the overall price tag.

"People who are critical are going to be critical because of 'fill in the blank,' " he said.

Before the House-Senate conference, Democratic negotiators convened a final meeting with Senate centrists who had forced steep cuts in the spending portion of the stimulus plan -- which at one point last week had grown to almost $940 billion in new tax cuts and domestic spending.

Even after the Senate scaled down its version to $838 billion, approved 61-37 yesterday, the centrists continued to demand more reductions. Senate aides said the targets were reducing Obama's "Make Work Pay" tax cut of $500 a year for most individuals and $1,000 a year for most families, paring it down to $400 and $800, respectively.

Other reductions were likely in a $15,000 tax credit for all home purchases in the next year as well as a tax credit for the purchase of new cars, both of which were added to the Senate bill after little debate.

House Democrats have objected to wholesale deletions from their original bill during the Senate debate, but they appeared likely to see some return of aid to states that totaled $79 billion in their plan. The Senate reduced that figure to $39 billion. Senators also zeroed out a fund that would finance school construction, another priority for which House Democrats are pushing to restore funds.

Accompanied by Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), Obama visited a long-running project to complete the final section of Fairfax County Parkway in an area near Fort Belvoir. Nearby, a $1.8 billion complex for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is under construction.

The visit was intended to highlight the impact that the stimulus package could have by providing aid to states for infrastructure and other projects.

"We're here today because there's a lot of work that needs to be done on our nation's congested roads and highways, crumbling bridges and levees, and crowded trains and transit systems," Obama said. He said his plan "contains the largest investment increase in our nation's infrastructure since President Eisenhower created the national highway system half a century ago."

Obama also mentioned that the chairman of Caterpillar Inc., which manufactures equipment being used in the Fairfax County Parkway project, said his company would be able to rehire some of the 20,000 employees it laid off in recent weeks if the stimulus package is enacted. Obama is scheduled to visit East Peoria, Ill., tomorrow to talk to workers at a Caterpillar manufacturing plant.

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