The plan, which supporters hope will help turn around a crumbling economy that seemingly spawns more bad news every day, includes tax cuts, money for transportation and infrastructure projects and aid to states to keep workers on their payrolls among its many provisions. As official went on work on the Senate floor, a group of moderate Democrats and Republicans met for hours going "line-by-line" to trim spending from the plan, which currently will cost just under $900 billion. Majority Leader Harry Reid -- who earlier had vowed to work "through the night" -- called it quits shortly after 8:30 p.m. "I think staying here later tonight would not benefit us," he said. Getting the bill through the Senate by the end of the week would keep the legislation on track to be signed into law by Presidents' Day, February 16, which has been Obama's target. However, some GOP members appeared dead-set against the plan and bridled at Reid's suggestion that time is of the essence. The House passed an $819 billion version of the stimulus plan last week, but no Republican voted in favor of it. The president will need at least some Republican support to get the 60 votes needed to bring the bill before the full Senate.
In the wake of the Civil War, the Southern states lay in political and economic ruins. Several arduous decades of reconstructing a still-proud society lay ahead. In the short term, the Federal and state governments needed to plan for the adoption of new state constitutions, new land policies, and new rights of suffrage. The reform of these institutional structures proved easier to accomplish than those of racial attitudes or justice. The story of reconstruction is in large measure a story of the tension between expanding the rights of freedmen and the unabated racism of Southerners and Northerners alike. A corollary tension also developed between the so-called radical re-constructionists, who sought a complete overhaul of Southern society in the image of the North, and...