Many of you may have heard that Senator Bunning (R-KY) has placed a hold on a spending bill in the Senate. Bunning is opposing the bill (which would extend unemployment benefits, fund highway projects, and prevent cuts to Medicare) because he disagrees with how it's funded.A hold is when a Senator objects to a bill being put to vote "by unanimous consent." In order to overcome the hold, the majority would have to call for a cloture vote (requiring 60 votes to pass) in order to bring the measure up for a vote. It's not clear that the Democrats (who now have 59 seats in the Senate) would be able to pass the cloture motion. While some Republicans, like Senator Inhofe, have called for Bunning to back down, other Republicans are supporting his crazy crusade.
What are the results of Bunning's irresponsible and petulant actions? Thousand of federal highway employees are off work (starting yesterday) without pay. In a time when we're already low on jobs, we can't afford these kinds of actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment
I encourage commenters to use their real name, although I do not require it.
Blogger employs an automatic spam filtering algorithm for comments. If a non-spam comment has been filtered out, email source4politics@gmail.com and the issue will be investigated.