Posted on 03/04/2010 5:38:41 AM PST by reaganaut1
If Obamacare passes, Obamacare is forever. Just ask Jim Bunning.
The Kentucky Republican finally caved in Tuesday after relentless pressure from other senators — including Republicans — to drop what the Politico called his “one man” filibuster of a bill to extend expiring unemployment benefits. Technically, it was not a filibuster. It was an objection to a procedure, called “unanimous consent,” used to speed along uncontroversial legislation.
In this case, there ought to have been raging controversy: Bunning was objecting to yet another monthly extension of unemployment payments absent an explanation of how it would be paid for.
He was right to do so. These extensions happen continually. The stimulus — which is a redistribution of wealth from the private to the public sector, and from people who work to people who don’t — extended unemployment benefits for 53 weeks. Another extension in November added 20 more weeks. Cato’s Alan Reynolds reports that this brings the total to 99 weeks of benefits in high-unemployment states. The measure on which Bunning has relented adds another month. And having browbeaten him into withdrawing his objection, Democrats will now seek an extension through the end of this year, i.e., another 36 weeks or so.
None of this is paid for. Instead, the government borrows ever more money, incurring ever more debt and ever more interest on that debt. The price tag on the relatively modest, stopgap measure Bunning was blocking is put at $10 billion, but that does not count the interest that will be paid on the money borrowed to fund the bill. To count the interest would be to highlight the fact that we are filching the money from our children and their children rather than paying for spending today by cutting something else.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
We need some REAL patriots in Washington, that stand up to the King’s of New England. NO MORE TAXES.
As bad as or even worse than not being able to afford the immediate cost of unemployment benefits extensions, is the impact such extension has on the entirely necessary process of capital reorganization.
Seriously. The Washington backroom old boy network must be on nitro fueled overdrive to get so many of the GOP to give up and sign on.
Senator Bunning DID NOT cave in!!!
He was just on Fox news & explained that a deal was made to gve him the vote on the pay go & the RATS reneged on it!!
I'm ashamed of the Republicanss for not supporting him & it's no surprise that the RATS lied!
He's a decent & honorable man & what the RATS did should be made clear.
There are no real conservatives in the Senate
He did make them hold a recorded vote where 18 slimy GOPers came out of the shadows and voted against a bill they actualy supported.
Bunning is the only republican on the hill apparently.
I have no idea who or what the rest of the pathetic GOP is...
I admit to being somewhat confused here. It’s my understanding that all Bunning did was refuse to let the issue go without a vote, and the leadership could have brought the issue up as a bill to be voted on at any time, with or without his support, if they wanted. This is what they eventually did and it passed, by a large margin.
What I don’t understand is, just what he did that would be called a “cave in”.
I would appreciate someone with better knowledge of the whole thing filling me in here, mine is a simple mind and easily confused.
Where’s Demint?
I second that note. He said much the same on Hannity (though Sean could not figure out how to underscore his point and thus buried it).
You have it right. Bunning did not “cave” and what he was doing was not a filibuster.
One fact that isn’t widely known is that each senator, and i believe congresscritter has the right to object to the request for “unanimous consent” to waive the reading of bills. Late last year when a big stink was being raised about reading the bills, this particular hypocrisy was ignored by just about everything. So, when you hear critters complaining about the bills not being read, understand they are lying to you about why. They explicitly give consent to waive it.
“RINO John McCain “
*sigh* That “RINO” BS again. Anyone who uses the term “RINO”, who thinks they have some special claim on the Republican label or some special authority to declare who or who may not be in the Republican Party, is not worth taking seriously.
I call BS on you. The Republican Platform for 2008 included this line "Enforcing the Rule of Law at the Border and Throughout the Nation" in the section on National Security. John McCain hasn't never supported that idea, which is one of the points making him a RINO.
Nobody needs to make some 'special claim' on the Republican Label. We get to use the public positions of the Republican Party to decide if somebody is a RINO.
The McCain-Feingold law doesn't match up with the Republican position of "We support freedom of speech and freedom of the press and oppose attempts to violate or weaken those rights, such as reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine."
McCain is provably a RINO by objective standards.
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