WASHINGTON — Rhode Island’s congressional delegation last night joined the overwhelming Democratic majority that pushed through the House an epic jolt of federal money for the ailing economy, with Rep. James R. Langevin calling this “our FDR moment” and Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy expressing concern that the $819-billion package is “not aggressive enough.”

Both Democrats staunchly defended one of the most unusual characteristics of this emergency spending plan: It would spend significantly more money on antipoverty programs than it would on such traditional job-creating public works projects as road building.

Langevin and Kennedy stressed their belief that the huge injection of federal spending is urgently needed to build public confidence in the government’s efforts to right the wobbling economy, as well as to boost employment. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has estimated that the package of spending and tax breaks would create 3 million to 4 million jobs, neither Kennedy nor Langevin would hazard an estimate of how many would be created in Rhode Island.

They both said it isn’t yet possible to estimate with any precision how much money the bill would send to Rhode Island, but they agreed that the state’s first-year total for the two-year program might be in the range of $700 million to $800 million. That sum would not include tax breaks or certain spending tied to formulas and to experimental programs — to save energy, for example, or improve the medical system — that will be run out of Cabinet agencies. It would include more than $200 million for highways, transit systems and other public works. Langevin and Kennedy heartily endorsed the bricks-and-mortar spending and argued that much more might yet be needed.

“I understand right now how bad the economy is both in Rhode Island and nationally,” said Langevin. “What is clear is that if we do nothing, we’re going to be in a far worse situation than we are in right now.” At a comparable point during the Great Depression, Langevin said, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the nation on a course that “laid the groundwork for prosperity for future generations.”

Langevin said, “This is our FDR moment,” when President Obama and the Congress must “step up and do what’s right for the country.”

Langevin said it is right for the nation to tend to the poor at this moment. “We have a moral obligation to help the most vulnerable in this downturn,” he said, defending the bill’s heavy emphasis on spending programs for poor people — such as Medicaid, food stamps, home-heating aid and subsidies for impoverished school districts.

Langevin argued, further, that such spending will “filter through the economy.” He said a dollar’s worth of food stamps, for example, has a ripple effect on agriculture, food transportation networks and so on.

Kennedy likewise endorsed the systematic increase in antipoverty spending. He also argued that the large sums headed for state accounts is a key to preventing large-scale layoffs of public employees. But Kennedy added, “I feel that we need a bolder vision for our country now” that might encompass even more aggressive federal public works spending.

“At the end of the day, I think people would rather have a job than any kind of assistance from the government,” he said.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com