World's greatest deliberative body watch
Breaking with recent precedent, Congress managed to pass some legislation yesterday, extending unemployment benefits and expanding the home buyer's tax credit. Kevin Drum looks at what it took to get there:
Democrats only had to break three separate filibusters in the Senate to get this passed! The first filibuster was broken by a vote of 87-13, the second by a vote of 85-2, and the third by a vote of 97-1. The fourth and final vote, the one to actually pass the bill, was 98-0. Elapsed time: five weeks for a bill that everyone ended up voting for.
Why? Because even though Republicans were allowed to tack on a tax cut to the bill as the price of getting it passed, they decided to filibuster anyway unless they were also allowed to include an anti-ACORN amendment. Seriously. A bit of ACORN blustering to satisfy the Palin-Beck crowd is the reason they held up a bill designed to help people who are out of work in the deepest recession since World War II. Details here and here.
By
Ezra Klein
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November 6, 2009; 10:19 AM ET
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"Seriously. A bit of ACORN blustering to satisfy the Palin-Beck crowd is the reason they held up a bill designed to help people who are out of work in the deepest recession since World War II."
One could breezily comment on the priorities of the Republicans and move on. But, seriously, Republican priorities are hurting the nation now and for years to come.
Posted by: pneogy | November 6, 2009 10:37 AM | Report abuse
Forget about Republican priorities, where are priorities of Washington Post? Why is that this did not make the front line news item on the web page? If 'anti-ACORN' measure was holding 'unemployment benefits what was Media doing there?
Something does not seem right.
Posted by: umesh409 | November 6, 2009 10:54 AM | Report abuse
"blustering" is SOP in congress. So what?
Posted by: liz953 | November 6, 2009 11:07 AM | Report abuse
They're not just demanding cloture to posture on ACORN. It's a deliberate stalling tactic. Every cloture vote eats up precious floor time until (they hope) Dems lose seats next year.
Posted by: glen5 | November 6, 2009 11:16 AM | Report abuse
Isn't this an economics blog? So why isn't Ezra discussing the 10.2% unemployment rate?
Posted by: RandomWalk1 | November 6, 2009 11:17 AM | Report abuse
Maybe we should start calling the Senate the world's MOST deliberative body. The greatness is quite easily disproven, but the deliberativeness is still in a class by itself.
Posted by: tomveiltomveil | November 6, 2009 11:20 AM | Report abuse
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