Oh, Sen. Jim Bunning. He's been objecting to a bill to extend unemployment benefits because it would add to the deficit. (Never mind his opposition to tax increases and his many votes for deficit spending -- apparently tax cuts are A-OK when they add to the deficit, but the jobless can go suck an egg.) This bill passed the House Thursday by a voice vote. that is, without any objection from either party.
So now Bunning is objecting to every procedure on the Senate floor to keep the bill from passing. If he can't be convinced to stop today, leadership will have to begin cloture procedures that require 30 hours of floor time, keeping the Senate working over the weekend in order to keep unemployment benefits from expiring. Incidentally, it's not that these benefits don't just help the unemployed; they also help the broader economy -- if the millions of Americans receiving unemployment benefits stopped spending, we would see a huge drop in GDP and a return to the pernicious cycle of recession.
Does anyone think that one senator should be able to halt senate business for two days when he is outnumbered by a broad majority? The bitter irony, of course, of this and all other obstruction tactics, is that the majority party will be blamed for its inability to accomplish anything. This is what we mean by the "inability to govern."
-- Tim Fernholz
