According to the New York Times:
Senate Democratic leaders said on Thursday that they were short of the 60 votes needed to advance a $161 billion economic stimulus package toward approval in the Senate.
Why do they need 60 votes?
Sixty votes are needed under Senate rules to shut off debate on a measure and move to consideration of the measure itself, a step known as cloture. Without cloture, opponents of a Senate bill would be able to prolong the debate indefinitely.
So the Republicans have decided that they don't want to vote on the bill, probably because they know it would pass, and they can't have that. How would it look for the Democrats to be able to gloat that they were able to pass a bill to help Americans in this time of crisis? (I'm not arguing that it would help, that's just what the Dems would claim.) And in an election year, at that.
Plus, the Republicans see this as an opportunity to gain ground in a completely unrelated fight --Bush's illegal wiretapping.
They also said that they had yet to reach agreement on extending the Bush administration’s terrorism surveillance program, which Republican leaders have set as a condition for allowing the stimulus bill to move ahead.
Why won't the Republicans stop with the partisan politics long enough to work with the Democrats in giving the economy a much-needed boost? Why must they constantly put party concerns above all else? Why won't they allow the stimulus bill to receive an up-or-down vote, like they were crying about over and over the one time the Dems blocked a judicial appoinment (or maybe it was two times)?
3 comments:
Sad but true: the fundies hijacked the GOP sometime back in the early 90's and the Republican party has not been the same since.
"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy." -U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, R-CT, (New York Times 3/23/05)(source)
hey Mike.....democrats never play partisan politics? Nikki
First off, ditto what EvilPoet said. The Republican party is no longer run by conservatives. It's dominated by bitter hateful neocons and christofascists. (The Democratic party having been taken over by corporatists.)
More to the point, though, for four years (January '03 - January '07) I had to listen to Senate Republicans like Rick Santorum and Bill Frist whine like children about the obstructionist Democrats. They went so far as to threaten "the nuclear option" of changing the Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster, when the Dems blocked one or two of Bush's judicial nominees.
Now, in the first year the Dems were back "in charge," the minority Republicans used the filibuster more times than in any 2-year session. Plus, they're blocking the "stimulus" package just to get Bush's illegal wiretapping bill passed.
So my point is not that the Democrats never resort to partisan politics, it's that the Republicans are a bunch of hypocrites.
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