By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - The next time you want to buy a car, take along George Voinovich.

Ohio's junior senator said he would go for no more than a $350 billion tax cut. He faced down Senate Republican leaders, House Republican leaders and eventually his party's own president. By Thursday, he had his deal: $350 billion and not a penny more.

"I think people know that I try to be a team player, that if I do take a position, that it's a position I take because I believe in it, because of my convictions," Voinovich told Ohio reporters Thursday afternoon.

"Some of my colleagues don't agree with me, but they respect me for the fact that I stuck to my guns. And quite frankly, the real winners here, in my opinion, are the American people. They've got a good stimulus package for a reasonable price."

The House and Senate were expected to approve the tax cut package by week's end.

President Bush had lobbied hard for a large tax cut, flying to Ohio to deride $350 billion as a "little bitty" tax cut when the country needed a "strong and robust" one. But by Thursday, Bush was on Capitol Hill lobbying Republicans to vote for the $350 billion.

The White House's liaison in the House, Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, was left to field conservatives' ire. He met with leaders of various House factions late Wednesday and acknowledged conservative leaders were "very disappointed."

Voinovich is up for re-election next year, though he said that was not a factor in his tax-cut stand.

Yet his stubbornness is likely to make the already popular Voinovich even more appealing, said political expert John Green of the University of Akron.

"He pretty much stuck to his guns despite enormous pressure from the president and from some in the Republican Party," said Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics in Akron. "Whenever a politician takes a high-profile stand like that, they can get in trouble if they back down. Whether one agrees with Voinovich or not, he showed he was steadfast."

Some critics say the final compromise tax package really exceeds Voinovich's $350 billion threshold because some of the tax cuts might not be allowed to expire.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, put the package's price tag at $810 billion to $1.06 trillion if provisions that are supposed to expire are renewed instead. It meets the $350 billion limit only through what the think tank calls "massive use of budget gimmicks."