The
GOP threw in the towel Wednesday night, having had enough of the
fight over an extension of unemployment benefits that the party had
held up for several weeks.
While the Senate was stuck in parliamentary limbo, some 200,000 people actively looking for work lost their unemployment benefits. The bill extends unemployment benefits for an additional 14 weeks across the country, and in states with the highest unemployment, the extension goes to 20 weeks. More on the bill here.
The extension itself was not controversial and passed 98-0. Getting
there, however, was a Herculean parliamentary task that indicates the power of even a weak minority party.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the third cloture vote on the bill to break a GOP filibuster. It passed 97-1. (That would be one oddball Senator, Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) as the lone Republican to object in public on this round.)
At that point, the GOP could have elected to require 30 hours of debate, plus an intervening day, before moving to final passage -- as they had insisted several times before, even after the pot had been sweetened for them. But later in the evening, they called it quits and agreed to move to a final vote.
While the Senate was stuck in parliamentary limbo, some 200,000 people actively looking for work lost their unemployment benefits. The bill extends unemployment benefits for an additional 14 weeks across the country, and in states with the highest unemployment, the extension goes to 20 weeks. More on the bill here.
GOP view of unemployment
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the third cloture vote on the bill to break a GOP filibuster. It passed 97-1. (That would be one oddball Senator, Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) as the lone Republican to object in public on this round.)
At that point, the GOP could have elected to require 30 hours of debate, plus an intervening day, before moving to final passage -- as they had insisted several times before, even after the pot had been sweetened for them. But later in the evening, they called it quits and agreed to move to a final vote.
See the rest of the story at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/gop-folds-on-unemployment_n_346259.html
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