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Vermont House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, has been working the phones for the past few days, trying to get other House speakers to join him in a letter to Congress about the pending stimulus package.

He'd said he had called speakers in Maine, Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island, New Jersey -- to name a few. He had hoped to have a group letter ready for delivery at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Then he heard that the U.S. Senate and House had essentially reached agreement on the stimulus package -- just a day after the Senate passed its version.

That was unexpectedly fast. And it short-circuited Smith's effort to try out some speaker muscle.