It appears a modified version of President Obama's stimulus package will pass the senate tomorrow with the support of Senators Snowe, Collins and Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter.

The new package includes a raft of spending cuts drawn up by Collins and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The full list can be found in excel format here.

Head Start has been cut in half. K-12 education spending has been cut heavily, as has the higher education infrastructure money, but the pell grants have been spared. The biggest cut was to the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund which is meant to preserve vital services in states with budget deficits, like Maine. That line was cut by more than half. It remains to be seen what this will mean for our state budget.

Paul Krugman has some initial thoughts on the package up on his blog:

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts. [...]

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

Of course, I might be lying about all of this.