While we were specifically irritated that school construction money was cut from the Senate version of the economic recovery package, the compromise bill Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) forged is worth investigating more broadly.

And thanks to ProPublica, we’ve got a comprehensive, easy-to-read chart that stacks up the differences between the House version and newly-approved Senate bill. A quick perusal brings home the point quite clearly: the Senate bill is larded up with tax cuts while education funding, state aid, health care for the unemployed, and transit all suffer.

What’s most frustrating about the new version is that the “moderate” senators won’t admit they stripped down the bill for the sake of political appearances (rather than, say, economic principles).

Case in point: check out the following interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night. When pressed about the cuts to state aid, Sen. Nelson responded with weak denials that the compromise diluted the stimulative nature of the package:

If there is some economic justification for the cuts, then we’re all ears. But that’s just not the case. According to a new report by the Center for American Progress, Illinois could lose at least $2.4 billion in federal assistance and shed or fail to create between 19,284 and 23,866 additional jobs. The onus is on Nelson and Collins to prove the skeptics wrong. Thus far, they’ve failed to do.