espuelas

Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky is holding the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country in his hands.

Bunning is using his prerogative as a Senator to hold up the bipartisan bill that will extend unemployment and health benefits to people about to lose them.

In the midst of the worst unemployment crisis since the early 1980's, a time when even qualified, diligent Americans simply cannot find work, unemployment assistance from the government is the only source of sustenance for millions of people and their families.

Bunning refuses to allow the Senate to vote on the bill until the costs of the benefits - $10 billion - is off set with cuts in the Federal budget.

While clearly the Federal budget deficit is of critical concern for the long  term economic health of our country - an economic emergency requires immediate action. 

The budget deficit must be conquered.  But it won't  happen when unemployment is hovering at 10%.

For the intellectually challenged Bunning:  fewer people working, less tax revenue flowing, the bigger the deficit. 

Historically, both Republicans and Democrats have come together during recessions to create a basic safety net for those most affected by economic crisis. 

Unemployment assistance has consistently garnered bipartisan support.  In fact, Bunning's action is being decried by both Democrats and Republicans.

Bunning's stance is morally repugnant.

The New York Times reports on the split among Republicans and the White House reaction:

The effort to end a Senate standoff over unemployment benefits and health coverage for the jobless escalated on Tuesday morning as Senator Susan Collins, the moderate Republican from Maine, became the latest lawmaker, and the first Republican, to try to override the objection of Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky.

The White House, meanwhile, called Mr. Bunning’s actions “irrational.”

Ms. Collins, who took the floor shortly after the Senate convened, said her effort was being made on “behalf of numerous members of the Republican caucus who have expressed concerns to me.”

“There are 500 Mainers whose benefits expired on Sunday,” Ms. Collins said. But Mr. Bunning, her colleague, continued to lodge his objection.

The effort by a Republican to end Mr. Bunning’s fight showed that the intensifying dispute is become a serious distraction in the Senate and a political liability for Republicans.

The White House spokesman’s criticism was couched in unusually strong language at a time when the administration is trying to be seen as searching for bipartisan comity.

“I don’t know how you negotiate with the irrational,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters at an informal morning briefing. “I don’t know how you prevent one person who decides they hold in the palm of their hand the livelihood of hundreds of thousands who have lost their jobs.”

The AP shows parts of the debate between Bunning and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Woo-hoo - the Senate may actually be able to legislate.

After a crazy period when Democrats and Republicans were at each other's throats over everything - with the American people suffering in the process - the United States Senate this morning passed a modest jobs bill with a bipartisan majority.

Is this the beginning of a new period of government functionality or simply a tactical retreat for both Parties so that they help change peoples' perception that the government is broken?

Whatever the answer, it's good to see some progress on fixing the economy, growing employment and resolving some of the serious issues affecting our country.

The Washington Post reports:

The measure passed 70 to 28, with 13 Republicans joining 57 Democrats in support of the package. One Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it.

"We've had so much gridlock," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), co-author of a key portion of the bill. Now, he said, "finally we have something" bipartisan to show the public.

The legislation is the first element of what Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has said will be a multipart "jobs agenda." The measure includes a new program that would give companies a break from paying Social Security taxes on new employees for the remainder of 2010. It also carries a one-year extension of the Highway Trust Fund, an expansion of the Build America Bonds program and a provision to allow companies to write off equipment purchases.

The next stop is the House, where Democratic leaders are weighing whether to pass the Senate version or go to conference to reconcile it with the $154 billion jobs bill the House passed in December.

Wednesday's passage of the Senate bill was made possible by five GOP defections on a procedural vote Monday -- from two retiring senators from the economically depressed Midwest and three New Englanders seeking to maintain a foothold in a region where Republican officeholders have grown scarce in recent election cycles.

New York Senator Charles Schumer gives a behind the scenes look at the Senate deliberations:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

FoxNews reports:

Companies that hire the unemployed would claim new tax breaks under a jobs-promoting bill the Senate passed Wednesday, delivering President Obama and Democrats a much-needed victory.

The 70-28 vote sends the bill back to the House, which passed a far more costly measure in December. Many in the House consider the Senate bill too puny, but they may simply adopt it and send it to Obama in order to get a win. Democratic leaders promise more so-called jobs bills are on the way.

The bill contain two major provisions. First, it would exempt businesses hiring the unemployed from the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax through December and give them an additional $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year.

Second, it would extend highway and mass transit programs through the end of the year and pump $20 billion into them in time for the spring construction season. The money would make up for lower-than-expected gasoline tax revenues.

The Senate's $35 billion proposal is a far smaller measure than the $862 billion economic stimulus bill enacted a year ago.

The measure cleared a key hurdle Monday when the Senate's newest member, Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and four other Republicans broke party ranks to defeat a filibuster. Republican leaders said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had used strong-arm tactics to bring the measure to the floor.

In all, 13 Republicans voted for the measure Wednesday. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the only Democrat in opposition.

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasted the measure for increasing the budget deficit to fund highway and transit programs. He said the measure made a joke of Democratic promises to adhere to "pay-as-you-go" budget rules requiring new spending programs to not increase the deficit.

"I don't think you get people back to work in this nation by loading more and more debt onto the next generation," Gregg said.

The 2010 mid-term elections in November are critical to the fortunes of both parties - and the ability of the country to emerge from economic crisis into a new era of sustainable growth.

For the Democrats, the elections will determine the size of their majority or minority  in Congress, and with it, their ability to implement a wide-ranging agenda of reform.

The Republicans are seeing November as a 1994-like chance to wrest control of the Congress from the Democrats and block the Progressives from making any further gains.  Also at stake for the GOP will be its relationship to the Tea Party.

And of course, the fate of the Obama agenda is also at play. 

While the party in the White House almost always loses seats in mid-term elections, the scope of that loss will be a critical determinant of how much the President can do for the rest of his term to push forward with his myriad campaign promises.

In a series of new polls published this week, Americans across the country agree that Congress is a dismal failure - and that action on the people's priorities has taken a back seat to political wrangling and inside-the Beltway politics that have no relevancy to American families and their prospects for renewed prosperity.

Like parrots, politicos from both parties are now screeching "bipartisanship", "bipartisanship" as if the mere act of saying the word will create it.

Action on a positive agenda will be the real test.

But the politicians are not (all) dumb.  They also read the polls and see how angry people have become and how that anger may turn into scary - and unpredictable - 2010 election results.

The PBS NewsHour analyses the challenges to bipartisanship:

The Washington Post reports on the Democrat's strategy:

The emerging strategy seeks to take advantage of the partisan stalemate in Congress over Obama's nominees and major policy initiatives, and to turn the page on a year when the White House failed to secure passage of complicated health-care and energy legislation.

The idea is to make Republicans either vote for a series of more modest bills identified as popular with the public or explain to constituents this fall why they opposed them.

The decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to offer a pared-down jobs-creation bill and dare the GOP to oppose it is the most visible sign of the plan so far. White House officials and congressional staff members say it will be followed in coming weeks by a House vote to lift the antitrust exemption for insurance companies, measures to assist small businesses and extend unemployment benefits, and a proposal to levy fees on Wall Street banks that received bailout money.

One senior White House official called the strategy an attempt "to force progress," at a time when polls show that the public wants bipartisan cooperation.

"If they support the measures, great," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. "But if not, the votes will show their hypocrisy and obstruction, which will demonstrate something in itself."

Politco reports on a coming Conservative "Manifesto" (think a 2010 'Contract with America") that will serve as the GOP's electoral call to arms:

With conservatives grappling among themselves for control of their movement — and the Republican Party — a group of more than 80 prominent conservative thinkers are set to unveil their version of a mission statement for the right.

What they are calling “the Mount Vernon Statement” in homage to George Washington will be unveiled and signed Wednesday — on the eve of the annual gathering in Washington of the establishment right, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The big names attached to it include former Attorney General Ed Meese, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, Media Research Center leader Brent Bozell, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, which is putting on CPAC, among others.

Organizers would not immediately make the text of the statement available, but they billed it as the next generation of the 1960 “Sharon Statement.” That document, produced by a group of young conservative intellectuals including William F. Buckley Jr. and taking its name from Buckley’s Connecticut hometown, helped define the conservative movement for years.

It comes as the conservative establishment is feeling heat from independents who have soured on Democrats but aren’t ready to warm up to Republicans and from the tea party movement, an explosion of largely new conservative and libertarian activism that has directed its frustration at both parties and at the political system as a whole.

A number of competing initiatives are jockeying with the Mount Vernon Statement to define the conservative movement and the Republican Party as it heads into the crucial 2010 midterm elections

The White House is also getting ready for the 2010 elections.  If the President cannot push through his agenda through an election-year clogged Congress, he plans to use executive power to enact part of his plans.  The New York Times reports:

Mr. Obama has not given up hope of progress on Capitol Hill, aides said, and has scheduled a session with Republican leaders on health care later this month. But in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign.

“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

Any president has vast authority to influence policy even without legislation, through executive orders, agency rule-making and administrative fiat. And Mr. Obama’s success this week in pressuring the Senate to confirm 27 nominations by threatening to use his recess appointment power demonstrated that executive authority can also be leveraged to force action by Congress.

Mr. Obama has already decided to create a bipartisan budget commission under his own authority after Congress refused to do so. His administration has signaled that it plans to use its discretion to soften enforcement of the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military, even as Congress considers repealing the law. And the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with possible regulations on heat-trapping gases blamed for climate change, while a bill to cap such emissions languishes in the Senate.