I don’t know what to think about today’s news that Harry Reid stepped forward to stop the Baucus-Grassley jobs bill. Steve Benen says it was a stinkeroo of a bill that would not have created many jobs but which would, of course, cut taxes. Specifically, these were estate and gift tax cuts that would have created no jobs at all and which would have added billions of dollars of cost to the bill. Benen wrote yesterday,
So why would the Senate move forward on a jobs bill that’s underwhelming in the job-creating department? It’s not a mystery — in order for legislation to pass, it necessarily has to be made worse. Democrats could write a terrific jobs bill — which, you know, would create lots of jobs — but Republicans won’t let the Senate vote on it. Republicans will, however, let the chamber vote on a weaker bill that does less good.
Democrats are effectively given a straightforward choice: embrace a good bill that gets killed by GOP obstructionism, or embrace a weak bill that won’t do much good but can pass. And here’s the kicker: when Americans notice that the jobs bill didn’t deliver impressive results, it’s the Democratic majority that will get the blame, even though Dems wanted a better bill.
Reid is being skewered for being against “bipartisanship.” Some news stories suggest that too many Senate Dems told Reid the Baucus-Grassley jobs bill gave away too much to Republicans; other suggest the Dems thought Republicans weren’t going to vote for it anyway.
So it’s back to the drawing board.
I hope that they can get an Unemployment Extension bill within the next week, though. The draft bill had UI’s end date being extended from Feb. 28 to May 31. It is important to get something in place before Feb. 28 because those checks are NOT retroactive. If it is not extended until sometime in March, as with the extension that happened in December, people will be without coverage for a few weeks. No coverage means no money. I looked at the draft bill — it was heavy with tax cuts that have no bearing on jobs. And I doubt the Republicans would have voted for it anyway.
I Baucus really any better than Nelson?
Reid or whoever had better summon the courage and smarts to get rid of the filibuster, or it’s over for the Democrats. It’s very clear the Republicans are not interested in governing, only in winning in 2010. I’m furious that our hard fought 2008 majority is so completely wasted by gutless milquetoast leaders who won’t fight as hard as the opposition. We’re continually being out-generalled.
Ezra seems to be right on the money (as usual). This bill was/is a Trojan Horse to ram through Bush-style tax cuts under the guise of a jobs bill.
Fug ’em. Do it by reconciliation or write a good jobs bill and MAKE the GOP fillibuster. This should be the strategy from now to election time – repeeatedly force the GOP to take unpopulist (I just coined that word) stands that show they are opposed to helping the unemployed and working-class bloke unless it is a windfall for the rich. If we don’t get that message across before November, we will get creamed.
moonbat – I wish it were a case of the Dems being “out-generalled” instead of it being a case of them hiding behind the Republican ‘agenda’ as an excuse used to placate their electorates back home while at the same time not offending their financial backers.
What a shame! It’s sad to see the political game playing when there are so many hurting people out here. It seems like somebody don’t give a shit about the financial stress that America’s families are suffering from. For the life of me I can’t see how tinkering with Estate Taxes is going to translate into jobs for the here and now.
So, once again, the lions let the lion-tamer rule!
If only the weakest lion would stop cowering at the crack of the tamer’s whip… But then, when our Democratic ‘pride’ of lions has no “pride,” what do you expect?
A lion with no balls is just a big pussy cat. Not one I’d have around my house, but, for all intents and purposes, it is what it is…
Also, I now have a better understanding of the term “Tea-bagger.”
“… but Republicans won’t let the Senate vote on it. Republicans will, however, let the chamber vote on a weaker bill that does less good.”
It’s actually a “WEAK TEA” movement – involving corporate sponsored events in which a bunch of conservative “T”alking points are screamed out by groups of male and female old “bags” who kvetch about socialized medicine while collecting SS and MediCare benefits, at the same time bitching about Obama’s deficits, which were caused by Bush, and their opinions are best articulated by Sarah Palin who makes that nitwit Bush sound like William F.(ucking) Buckley!!!
And the Democratic “lions” meow at the thought of all of this. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!
Soon, I’m going to wrap some myself in a large paper bag, stuff a string to my ass that says “Lipton,” and jump in Boston Harbor. That’ll be MY contribution to the jobs program: Have a bunch of people getting paid trying to fish my fat ass out of water before I steep too long.
The way this country is going, part of me hopes they fail!
A real jobs bill, that gets other critical goals accomplished at the same time, while offsetting the need for excess governmental dictate or control also at the very same time.
Please keep spreading the “word”, maha! Thanks
Two men I know have told me that are “tea partiers”, both get their “news” from FOX, one is 71, and LOVES Glen Beck. The Beck lover is constantly saying we have lost our country and we need to take it back.
Both men are hard working fellows,attend church weekly, and have taken a terrible financial beating over tha past several years. One of them has a wife who is very ill, just lost her job due to the fact that she can no longer function upright, and is having her medication denied by her insurance company.
Both were big Bush supporters, and were hawks regarding attacking Iraq and Afghanistan.Both are pissed about the bank bail -outs, both pissed at the UAW and the $100+ per hr the union guys were making(?).Both actually thought they would become rich with their 401K, and that Bush was right about privatizing S.S..
I had numerous discussions and arguements with them, which usually ended with them thinking I am “unpatriotic” and me thinking they are brainwashed proles.
When our discussions were over, I would always end with “see me in a year”.
Sadly, memory is short but idealism is not bound by time.
I have tried to understand their position, and the best representation of their thought process is the South Park episode titled “Dances with Smurfs”, season 13, episode 1313. You can view it at the South Park website, it is fantastic satire, really pegging the tea party movement, the “Becker-heads” in particular.
moonbat — I really think it would be a huge mistake to just get rid of the filibuster. Eventually, republicans are going to be back in the majority in the senate. Hopefully not anytime soon, but I remember when the republicans were talking about their permanent majority not that long ago … and then we’re absolutely going to need the filibuster in order to prevent the republicans from just throwing the country directly into a volcano…
The filibuster is not the problem here, the problem is that the republicans are abusing the filibuster, primarily because it is way, way too EASY to filibuster these days. So, I say, CHANGE the rules about the filibuster. It’s meant to be used only on rare, extreme occasions … so make it a lot harder to use. One good first step would be bringing back the requirement that you’ve actually got to have senators actually talking in order to sustain a filibuster, none of this filing and going back to bed crap.
gulag and others – On this occasion, Reid and other senate democrats actually pushed back against the republicans, prevented them from pulling their usual crap. And yet still they are called a bunch of cowering, weak, prideless, balless pussy-cats? If we refuse to acknowledge when they do good things, what motivation do they have for doing good things?
-me
Erinyes, I feel your pain I have many friends and family members of the same dimwitted teabagger ilk. Usually both sides of an argument have some merit and compromises can be found. I however have come to a different conclusion regarding the dimwitted teabaggers and far right wing-nuts in this country. Every argument they have is complete bullshit, they are guided by ignorance and couldn’t be more wrong about everything if they tried. I don’t even try to have a rational discussion with such people anymore, it’s just a waste of my time and energy. I was corresponding with a fellow engineer yesterday in Atlanta, he told me that because they had 2 inches of snow on the ground that global warming is proven a hoax. This is an engineer, he has a bachelor’s degree and a professional engineering license he is not some backward moron but he still thinks like one. Why? Because he is a publican a dimwitted teabagger, it doesn’t matter how mush formal education one has just being a teabagger publicant renders one’s mind useless. I explained to him that as an electrical engineer I prefer to defer to the climate scientists when it comes to climate science. I also reminded him that the snow was melting off the mountains in Vancouver, and that it’s called global warming not USA warming. His response was typical dimwitted and angry, not worth my time and energy.
Ian,
You’ve got a good point about Reid and the rest.
But I want MORE!!! And do it in a way that shows the other side for what it is – a bunch of whining hypocrites.
Republicans know how to frame an issue. We don’t. Democrats only know how to frame other Democrats.
And there, I’ve just proved it!!!
Hey, now, wait a minu…
I’m late to join such good discussions. As much as I like gulag – I gotta hand it to Reid this time because my own Max Baucus is the worst of the worst in terms of compromise. Remember the pictures of him standing behind Mr. Bush during the last round of tax cuts? He turned those into advertisements when he ran for re-election in 2002.
I really liked that episode of South Park about Cartman and the Smurfs. He becomes the school’s announcement reader and he turns the thing into long diatribes about how ineffective the school’s student body president is (I can’t remember what the girls name was/is), eventually she comes on his program and makes him look says, your right Cartman, why don’t you take over as school student body president? Of-course he finds out he can’t do anything in the position. The moral is: it is easy for Glen Beck and the others to tear something down, not easy to construct something.
Erinyes, next time you talk to your friends who claim they have “lost their country and want it back,” tell them that is just how the American Indian feels. As an American Indian, these people disgust me. They still have their guns, family, house, etc. Their children have not been taken away from them sent to a school to learn to become nice little white people with red skin. They have not been removed from their land to reservation land, which was land the white man didn’t want. They need to accept that a black man is President and learn to live with the fact.
erinyes..I don’t want to say that you’re unpatriotic…but it seems as of late the true measure of real patriots is that they don’t think for themselves, they just follow their god given leaders blindly and believe what they are told by those who are endowed by God with infallibility and superior knowledge.
“Ignorance in the defense of Liberty is no vice”
Thanks for the shout back from Uncledad, Bonnie, and Swami!
Bonnie, I simply cannot imagine how the American Indians must have felt, I hope they’re getting a bit of revenge back with the gambling revenue, but sadly, too little too late.
Swami, if the President and Congress dropped the “P” bomb (patriotism) on the wall streeters and bankers looting the system, perhaps they’d win a lot more friends.Just a thought………
erinyes,
I got another “P” word for the Republicans – “PUTZ!”
Isn’t it nice that they can blame over 40 years of their BS on a one-term President like Carter, and a two-term Democrat (who was actually, after Ike, the best ‘Republican’ President in MY lifetime; Nixon, was, sadly, after LBJ, the best ‘Democratic’ one), and blame the entire mess, specifically, the last 8-10 years on President Obama?
Deficit’s as far as the eye can see? Oh yeah, Tea-nut’s, it’s HIS fault!
If your wife is 8+ months pregnant by you, is it the fault of the boy-friend she met at the outreach center two weeks after you beat the $#!t out of her last month, for the 8th year out of the last 10? Do you expect us to believe that it ain’t YOUR baby???
Oh yeah, it was you, MF! It was YOU!!!
And you don’t even have the grace and dignity to say, “Yeah, we “F’d” up over the last 40 years. Here’s something new that we thought of BESIDE’S tax cuts…” “OK, it’s NEW tax cut’s, but here’s how they’re different… Blah… Blahdy-diddy-blah, da…!” Sure, there’ll be the same lyric’s, but maybe you can think up a new f@#%ing melody.
Why is it that being a Republican means NEVER having to say you’re sorry, and being a Democrat means ALWAYS having to way you’re sorry?
Are the people who still think the liberals are best for this country all sucking
off the taxpayers? It seems to me if the facts were laid bare most of these are either union ,bureacrats,or welfare recipients.Whatever happened to learning history instead of parroting what they hear on the liberal media.
Are righties who drop by here to comment all idiots? Pretty much. They don’t need anything approximating facts to conclude “most of these [these what?] are either union ,bureacrats,or welfare recipients,” because the little voices in their heads tell them all they need to know.
Are righties who drop by here to comment all idiots?
For the most part, yes!…But Wes has distinguished himself in a minimal amount of words as a total idiot..A mutton head of the highest order. It becomes discouraging to read and witness the stupidity generated from these morons who have no concept that no matter how responsible and steadfast in good citizenship and hard work a person is, there are factors beyond their control that have to be brought into account to understand the entire picture.
I’m not an advocate of free lunches, but how somebody such as our astute Wes cannot recognize our economic interdependence and understand that helping some is helping all, is beyond me. We are all in it together!
In regard to his babble about learning from history..I just shutter from the shock wave of that profound stupidity, and the voice of God comes to me from the recesses of nowhere saying, ” You see my son, it’s like I said..the mind is a terrible thing to waste, so take a lesson from Wes”