If the GOP Isn't Forced to Vote, They'll Never Learn

If the GOP Isn't Forced to Vote, They'll Never Learn

• Analysis

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

Tuesday night Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called a bluff. The question now becomes: Is this a fluke, or a trend in the making?

In a long fight to extend jobless benefits for the almost 9.8 percent of Americans who are unemployed, Republicans have made every effort to slow the process in the Senate. After being presented with crazy amendments addressing some of the GOP's favorite new obsessions such as ACORN, the bank bailout and immigration, Reid basically said, "To hell with it" and called for a cloture vote.

It's about time, and not a second too soon for the growing numbers of unemployed.

Cloture, as many of you know, is a vote to end discussion and move on to a floor vote on the merits of the proposed legislation. It is why those oft-mentioned 60 votes (the number required to come to such a conclusion in the Senate) are so important these days.

The vote on whether to consider HR 3548, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009, in the Senate was 87 to 13, moving the bill toward final consideration on the Senate floor. The bill has changed since its original passage in the House last month, so a reconciliation process will be necessary in which the two houses of Congress must agree on a compromise.

Surprisingly, the Senate bill is more generous than the House version. The House voted to extend benefits for 14 weeks only to states with high rates of unemployment (above 8.5 percent), paid for by extending the unemployment taxes already being paid by businesses. But the Senate bill proposes to extend benefits for 14 weeks to all states and for 20 weeks to states with the high unemployment rate of 8.5 percent singled out by the House.

But while Senate Democrats have been working to make the bill more helpful for unemployed citizens, Republicans of that same chamber have been dragging their feet with the help of unrelated amendments.

"Republicans decided to make a political statement by demanding completely irrelevant amendments -- amendments that have little, if anything, to do with unemployment or even the economy generally -- and they decided that the political statement was more important than helping their constituents afford to pay bills," Reid said.

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Posted by "Bear" at 2:37 PM