The Democrats are starting to show some smarts. They should have done this long ago:
Retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) late Thursday launched a one-man crusade to block an extension of unemployment and COBRA insurance benefits, vowing to allow the benefit programs to expire Sunday unless Democrats agreed to pay for them with unused stimulus funds.
Bunning’s quixotic pursuit of deficit offsets at the potential expense of payments to unemployed or uninsured citizens enraged Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other Democrats, who vowed to keep the chamber in session until Bunning relents or collapses.
A senior Democratic leadership aide said Durbin would ask for unanimous consent to pass the extensions without Bunning’s payment scheme every half hour for the foreseeable future. “We’re going to keep doing it until we break him,” the aide said.
It's a strategy that could pay off big-time for the Democrats, but there's one misstep in the article:
If Bunning is successful, it could prove to be a significant blow to the GOP. Unemployment and COBRA health insurance benefits are popular, and with the unemployment rate soaring, lawmakers have been keen to ensure there are no interruptions in payments.
Should the programs lapse, Democrats could use the episode to tar Republicans as unconcerned with the poor.
Not the poor, but middle-class Americans who can't find jobs. This is not about the poor, it's about Republicans once again trying to screw the middle class.
3 comments:
It's about damn time the Democrats began to use the cojones. Now if they could just start this same tactic in the Senate, and make the Republicans actually filibuster instead of just threatening to filibuster, perhaps we'd see some progress on the nearly 300 bills the right-hand side of the aisle has blocked.
And I do mean the Senate. Early, out here. Need coffee.
This, along with Reid walking out of a meeting and Obama facing them down at their own conference, is the kind of thing that should have been happening from day one -- day one being in January, 2007.
I and other bloggers have been saying this for months -- if they want to filibuster, make them filibuster, and make sure the country knows what they're blocking and why -- not their stated reasons, but the real reasons.
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