Sen. Barbara Boxer’s steaming mad over the economic stimulus package!

Not only are all but three Senate Republicans refusing to support the $838 billion economic rescue bill, but the Senate will need 60 votes to avoid a Republican filibuster, and none of these things please the California Democrat. "This isn’t easy but to say to do nothing … to do nothing is a hostile act on the American people," said Boxer during an interview with MSNBC this morning, noting that 500,000 jobs are being lost a month, with 600,000 lost in January alone. "You can’t do nothing — there’s no dollars out there."

The Senate approved the bill Tuesday, but now it’s up to House and Senate negotiators to hammer out the differences between their two versions; the House bill is $819 billion. But then, the final bill has to go back to both houses for passage — again. Lawmakers hope a compromise bill can be sent to President Obama by the end of the week for his signature. That means they have to work fast.

"They’re forcing us to get 60 votes," Boxer said of Republicans, adding that even the ailing cancer-stricken Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, came back to vote to make sure Democrats have enough support. "If they didn’t have a 60-vote hurdle for everything, we could get this done. It’s very difficult for me, as a person of action, to see this happen … let’s just have a vote."

Centrist senators like Sen. Susan Collins, R-ME, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-NE, and Sen. Olympia Snow, R-ME, are promising to vote against the bill if it comes back with a higher price tag. Meanwhile, in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has been raging against the Senate’s take-it-or-leave it approach to the stimulus bill. In fact, she’s so mad, that she cut off fellow Democrats from complaining about it during a Tuesday caucus meeting because it just got her blood boiling more. Both Obama and Pelosi want to restore much of the spending cut by the Senate, particularly $21 billion in school construction and technology grants, $10.3 billion in COBRA insurance and $8.6 billion in new Medicaid coverage for the unemployed.

"At a certain point, after a couple of members had expressed themselves, she asked that future speakers not address that issue because it was reminding her how angry she was," Rep. Anthony D. Weiner, D-NY, told Politico.

There’s tough negotiations on the stimulus still to come. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail!