November 11,2009
“[In early October], Senate Republicans blocked consideration of an extension of unemployment insurance. When they finally let it come to a vote, the measure passed 98 to 0” [bold/underline added]– quoted from Harold Meyerson in The Do-Nothing Senate, referencing this action.
There’s 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and 2 Independents in the Senate. That means at least 47 Republicans voted for the bill. Although there were some meaningless objections to how the new benefits would be paid for, the delay by the Republicans was mainly due to their wanting to further address some ACORN issues by attaching an amendment, which had nothing to do with unemployment. The latter, along with most other GOP amendments, didn’t get approved. So why did they block it from consideration then vote for it anyway?
Answer: Not because they weren’t in favor of it, but simply because it was just another Democrat bill – “just say ‘No’ to everything”.
The moral to this story? “No matter what we believe in, no matter if it’s a good bill or not, no matter if it’s what America needs, no matter what the citizens need, no matter that 7,000 unemployed workers were loosing their benefits each week — if it’s a Democratic bill, we-will-fight-it“. I’m certain that tens of thousands of unemployed citizens who had and were loosing their benefits greatly appreciated the in-fighting.
Cynical Synapse
// Nov 11, 2009 at 4:44 PM
Sheesh! We can throw trillions at Wall Street and the so-called Stimulus. But Congress and Senate want to keep playing party politics with everything. Just vote out all the incumbents. They’re worthless and out of touch.
OldMan1
// Nov 12, 2009 at 5:11 AM
Amen, brother!!! Time has long come and gone to purge Capital Hill. Quite frankly I can’t think of more than one or two I would approve of keeping, and probably no one would even recognize their names, which means all the trash and troublemakers we know are unfit to serve. What we the commoners have allowed to happen is nothing short of a Capital Hill dictatorship from both sides of the isle.
I have long agreed with you CS on “re-elect no one”, but included electing no one from either side of the two political extremes. It’s the extremist left and extremist right that is destroying our system and our country.
What I advocate is an election where a candidate’s political party affiliation is not disclosed until afterwards, thereby being elected or not elected on specifics. If they can’t tell us specifics during campaigning, we don’t need them. Then if they deviate after being elected, don’t re-elect them.