As Michael noted, Claire McCaskill is now defending herself against Krugman on Twitter:
Just saw Krugman's comments on reduction in recov act. Question for him. Would no stimulus act be better than one thats 800 B instead of 900.
She follows that up with
Compromise had to happen or we would NOT have 60 votes. Period.
And for further evidence of how much the bill is the same, she claims:
Original Senate bill was 60% appropriationss, 40%tax cuts. Compromise was 58, 42.Senate bill is 90% the same as House bill.
I'm glad that's she expressing herself here, and that we're able to somewhat have a dialogue. But I'm not sure how much in good faith it is. McCaskill began by stating how glad she was that they got a $100 billion cut out of the bill, that the "silly stuff" that Republicans didn't like is now out. She then switches to a passive aggressive mode in defending the cuts - it's basically the same bill and it wouldn't have made it through the Senate - but glosses her own role in making the cuts. From the way she talks about the bill, wouldn't she have been among those voting against the bill if the cuts hadn't been made and new non-stimulative tax cuts hadn't been added in?
UPDATE: One of the last tweets from the only Twitter feed McCaskill is following (which is her press secretary's):
So glad that Claire was part of this moderate team Nelson is calling "the jobs squad". Very cool. Hopefully the others will see this is best 6:33 PM Feb 6th from web
...And another tweet from McCaskill's press secretary approvingly points to an awful article by Dana Milbank about how McCaskill, Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and the other "moderates" are workhorses trying to get the bill done, while everyone else, including Harry Reid and Barack Obama, are just show ponies trying to get attention.
An excerpt below the fold:
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