While Congress continues to squabble over what's in and what's out of the stimulus package, 20 million television viewers will be waiting breathlessly to see if they'll need to shell out a few bucks just to catch American Idol.

Currently still in the bill is a $650 million provision that will send $40 rebate checks to 6 million households that have yet to convert their analog TVs to digital. (If you do the math, we really only need $240 million, but how could they possibly do anything without larding it up with a little pork?) After Friday's Senate compromise, the provision stayed in, pending this week's negotiations with the House - then President Obama's signature.

All of the U.S.'s broadcast signals were to be converted to digital-only by February 17. But at the urging of President Obama, the deadline has been extended to June 12. Unless given another extension, all analog television sets (sold before 2004) will be rendered obsolete unless they're connected to cable, satellite or a converter box.

All four major networks have pledged to wait until the June 12 deadline to extinguish the analog signals. But many people - unaware of the extension - have already worked themselves up into a tizzy:

Betty Poesch, a retired dental assistant in Holladay, spent about $430 to convert four televisions to digital, including buying two converter boxes, two antennas, and a VCR/DVD player and digital tuner. All this so she could record shows such as "CSI" and "NCIS."

"It's a big inconvenience," she said. "I don't understand why they had to do it. We had to go replace everything."

Here's an idea: Maybe that provision should be scratched out of the stimulus bill. People will go on a television-buying binge and maybe kill the recession just like that. Americans can't live without their TVs.