Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said yesterday that an economic stimulus package should offer more to the needy and the elderly.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

PROVIDENCE — U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse yesterday urged Congress and President Bush to expand a federal economic stimulus package that they proposed last week.

Speaking to a group at the John Hope Settlement House, a community organization based in the city’s West End, Whitehouse recommended that the stimulus package be broadened to include an extension of the unemployment insurance and food stamp programs, as well as special payments to Social Security beneficiaries.

President Bush and legislative leaders last week reached general agreement on a stimulus package that would, among other things, generate income-tax rebates for millions of taxpayers and increase the amount of the deduction many businesses claim when buying new equipment and other items.

Whitehouse noted that the proposal has yet to be formally considered by the House, let alone the Senate.

“We, in the Senate, hope that we can make some adjustment” to the package, Whitehouse told about 60 people yesterday.

The group had gathered to promote the use, by low-income Rhode Islanders, of the federal earned-income credit, which is essentially a tax break for the working poor.

In an interview after his speech, Whitehouse said that while the broad outlines of the economic stimulus package have been agreed to, “The nature of it … remains undefined.”

This presents an opportunity to make changes to the package, he indicated. “We’re not going to rewrite the whole thing,” he said. But it is “unlikely” that the Senate would allow the package to go through without putting its own mark on it, he said.

Whitehouse, who serves on a Senate committee on aging, urged Senate leaders not to overlook older Americans, who he said are especially hard-hit by the rising cost of living.

“As I’ve traveled across Rhode Island, I’ve heard from countless seniors who are struggling to make ends meet,” Whitehouse wrote in a letter last week to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

“Troubles in the housing market, high home energy prices in a bitterly cold winter and the rising cost of badly needed prescription drugs force seniors in my state, and across America, to stretch already severely limited incomes even farther. As the cost of living has gone up, Social Security benefits have not kept pace, and many seniors are facing difficult decisions,” Whitehouse wrote.

“I encourage you to include in the stimulus package an alternative mechanism to channel funds to senior citizens,” he wrote.

Because Social Security benefits and savings represent the primary sources of income for most senior citizens, “one possible mechanism for covering the elderly would be a temporary increase in Social Security benefits,” Whitehouse said in the letter.

More than 190,000 Rhode Islanders received Social Security benefits in 2005, the last year for which data is available, he said. Social Security beneficiaries represented 92.4 percent of Rhode Islanders aged 65 and older, he said.

Extending the unemployment and food stamp programs would also help those who are struggling with higher living expenses and, in many cases, lower income, he said.

“With many Americans already grappling with sharp increases in day-to-day costs, rising foreclosure rates and turmoil in the mortgage securities markets have worsened the threat of a recession that could severely impact quality of life for low- and middle-income families,” Whitehouse wrote.

ndowning@projo.com