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ANGRY GOP LETS OFF $TEAM-ULUS

With the $780 billion stimulus plan steaming toward expected passage in the Senate Tuesday, Republicans took some parting shots, hammering the bill as wasteful spending that will do little to jump-start the economy.

SEN. JIM INHOFFE: TAXPAYERS ARE REALIZING IT’S A DEM DISASTER

“This is still a very big spending bill,” said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona during a rare Saturday debate on the Senate floor. “You can’t fix it by simply shaving a little bit off.”

The Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, yesterday called the bill “uncontrolled spending.”

“Democrats have controlled both branches of the government for less than a month and you have to wonder if all that power has gone to their heads,” he said in the GOP’s weekly address. “They’ve been trying to force a massive spending bill through Congress under the guise of economic relief.”

He argued that increased tax cuts, rather than government spending, were the only solution – an approach President Obama dismissed as having already been a failure.

“We can’t expect relief from the tired old theories that, in eight years, doubled the national debt, threw our economy into a tailspin, and led us into this mess in the first place,” the president said in his weekly radio and YouTube address.

For New York, the bill represented a resounding victory, Sen. Charles Schumer said.

“This is the first bill in a very long time where New York gets back more than we put in and on every major issue New York did very, very well,” the Democrat said.

If the bill remains unchanged, New York state stands to get $5 billion for Medicaid, $1.5 billion in cash for mass transit, $1 billion for police departments and billions more for road and bridge projects.

“There was an attempt on the floor to cut New York’s money and we defeated it,” Schumer said. “New Yorkers can feel proud and walk tall because the federal government is coming to our aid in a way commensurate with our needs, as opposed to helping the rest of the country and sort of giving crumbs to New York.”

New York City’s budget would get $1.4 billion in Medicaid relief, $100 million for the NYPD, and billions for infrastructure, including the Second Avenue Subway and Fulton Street Transit Center.

“This will be real relief for New York City,” the senator said. “It doesn’t mean there won’t be any pain. But it means instead of using a meat ax, they [the city government] can use a scalpel.”

He said the compromise hammered out between Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans – which has enough support to get it past any threat of a filibuster – was far better than that passed by the House on Jan. 29.

“All those little porky things that the House put in, the money for the [National] Mall or the sexually transmitted diseases or the flu pandemic, they’re all out,” Schumer said.

If the bill passes in the Senate, a compromise bill will have to be forged with House negotiators.

Additional reporting by Cynthia R. Fagen

lukas.alpert@nypost.com