Remember when our betters said it was outrageous to claim that Republicans are actually trying to sabotage the country:
Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the No.1 item on the president’s congressional “to-do-list,” refusing to allow a vote on a bill that would give tax breaks for companies that “insource” jobs to the U.S. from overseas while eliminating tax deductions for companies that move jobs abroad.
In voting against the bill, Republicans raised both substantive and procedural problems with the measure.
The bill, which needed 60 votes in order for the Senate to begin debating it, was defeated on a vote of 56-42.
With job creation the top issue this campaign season, and outsourcing being blamed as a big contributor to the high unemployment rate, Democrats saw the bill as an election-year winner. Sponsored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, who is running for reelection, the bill made it to the top of the “to-do list” for Congress President Barack Obama unveiled earlier this year.
The Bring Jobs Home Act would provide a 20% tax break for the costs of moving jobs back to the United States and would rescind business expense deductions available to companies that are associated with the cost of moving operations overseas.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had warned Democrats before the vote that his party would want to amend the bill — possibly with hot-button issues like repealing the health care reform law or extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, responded that those amendments were not germane to the bill and he would not allow votes on them.
Gut unions, keep unemployment high, and keep the tax cuts for the rich while devastating Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It’s a wet dream for the business owners who own the GOP- with high unemployment they can pay shitty wages with lousy or nonexistent benefits, while at the same time knowing that all the SS money they looted via tax cuts the last decade will never have to be repaid. Quite simply, they don’t want those jobs coming back here. The cheaper employment overseas with the added benefit of high unemployment at home making people feel lucky to have a McJob is precisely what they want.
Your modern GOP. And this 60 vote bullshit just disgusts me. We are no longer a functioning democracy.
General Stuck
We have an election coming up, and the functionality of our democracy will be in voters hands. It is up to them to punish the republicans for fucking the country up in what has become a wanton fashion, repeatedly in about every way they could. Republicans do this shit because the people let them. It is not the fault of democracy, imo.
They can choose lapel pins or egalitarian policy. And check out this poll and what is wrong with it.
handy
See? Scratch our backs, we
scratch yourstell you to take all your other evil Democrat stuff out of the bill and leave ours in. It’s only fair.gene108
Briefly watched Inhofe on CSPAN this morning.
His defense/explanation of Republicans not allowing this to go for a vote was because Harry Reid has done the unprecedented step of not allowing amendments to bills.
Per Inhofe, the Senate should be about debate and deliberation, where each side offers amendments and it isn’t the Republicans fault they block things, because Harry Reid is being a big bully – the biggest bully in the history of the Senate – by not allowing amendments to bills.
It will fly with the wingnut crowd and look for no pushback, when this BS hits the MSM on Sunday morning talk shows.
No reporter’s going to mention the amendments will to defund Planned Parenthood, expand GITMO, make waterboarding a Constitutional right and other irrelevant things to slow down the process and defeat the bill.
JPL
How many folks hear that they want to go back to the good ole days? hahahahahaaha
Comrade Dread
Tying in to your last post, if they impoverish millions, they can also hire workers for just enough to buy food and offer them credit to do so and maybe a bunk in a dorm that they charge them for.
JWL
“Remember when our betters said it was outrageous to claim that Republicans are actually trying to sabotage the country..”?
Sure do.
Because at the same time, the same people were being upbraided for daring to criticize Obama’s “Republicans ‘R Patriots, Too” mode of political rhetoric.
opie_jeanne
John, thanks so much for putting this up. We heard it on the car radio this afternoon but the report on it was kind of muddled, or maybe we weren’t paying attention properly at the beginning of the story because we were on the freeway in SoCal, and we are becoming used to the driving patterns in the Seattle area.
trollhattan
Jesus Cole, did you have a bunch of posts caught up in one of those S P A M servers they just busted?
Welcome back in any case.
Gin & Tonic
You convinced me. I’ll “probably” vote for Obama.
Gin & Tonic
You convinced me. I’ll “probably” vote for Obama.
Hoodie
@General Stuck:
People are morans and shit is fucked up and bullshit?
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Worst part is that…they really have no incentive not to pull rank every single time. It’s a constant win-win for them and it’s fucking infuriating. They get to block everything they can, they still claim ‘Oh, Dems run the showw and they can’t get shit done, what assholes’, and the public, still goddamned unaware of how unprecedented this kind of operation in the Senate is, still think ‘Oh, why can’t Dems do this, they have the majority, it’s their fault by playing stupid games!’
patrick II
You can mostly thank Harry Reid for this. The senate has the easy opportunity to change Senate rules every two years. Reid has declined to do so, in part because of his own sense of “tradition”, and some blue dogs who like the power to hold the Senate up themselves. This past election he did not change the filibuster rule in the Senate because he had a “gentleman’s” agreement with McConnell that the republicans would not continue to abuse the filibuster rules. Just call Reid Charlie Brown.
However, finally, Reid has seen the light and plans to change the Senate rules for the next session. Just in fucking time Harry.
Amanda in the South Bay
Your modern GOP. And this 60 vote bullshit just disgusts me. We are no longer a functioning democracy.
I’m sure Burnsie will come along and explain to those of us not blessed with law school degrees just how important the filibuster is and how we’re all wrong.
JGabriel
This is still unclear. Newspapers need to report that Republicans won by a “minority of 42 votes”.
Because we all know how much Republicans love to win with minorities.
.
PeakVT
@patrick II: Well, Reid wasn’t alone. But I think now all Dems have seen the light. Reid must be confident the Dems will hold the Senate.
Mojotron
probably a silly question, but I’ve never gotten a good explanation- how come the Dems don’t make them go through with the actual filibuster and just concede every time? Don’t they have the option of making the repubs do the full-on “standing there for 24 hours while reading the phone book and peeing in a bottle” filibuster instead of just folding? and wouldn’t the appearances of the GOP talking til they’re blue in the face in order to prevent a full vote (and, in this case, passage because they have the numbers to pass it if it gets past the filibuster) of a bill designed to reward people who don’t send American jobs overseas benefit the Dems?
Am I missing some angle?
WaterGirl
@General Stuck: That was way too long for me to make it through. Can you summarize what you thought was wrong with it?
The Other Chuck
@Mojotron:
Because the filibuster has never worked like that. Ever. Mister Smith Goes To Washington was fiction. The show about “breaking out the cots” during the Civil Rights Act filibuster was just that, show.
In real life, the people who would be forced to fill the senate chamber would be almost all the Democrats, because it would only take one lone Republican to “observe the lack of a quorum” and kill the bill entirely, requiring the votes of all the Dems present to keep that from happening.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I really don’t get how a thinking person could say that, either.
Edit: he seems like he might be a smart guy, but it’s hard to take someone seriously when they hold a position like that.
rea
@Mojotron: This has been explained a great many times, but basically, the party trying to filibuster wins if the Senate has to adjourn for lack of a quorum. That means that the party opposing the filibuster has to have at least 50 senators ready to answer a quorum call, while it only takes one to keep the filibuster going, plus another to ask for a quorum call if necessary–they can do it in shifts, and the rest can be off sleeping. The point is, all the physical hardship is on the party trying to break the filibuster.
Steeplejack
@Mojotron:
The “standing there for 24 hours while reading the phone book” thing apparently is a myth, but I’m too hot and sweaty to Google it for you right now. There have even been weighty threads on it here.
. . . Okay, I roused myself from my torpor long enough to go to Google and type in “Senate filibuster myths.” Voilà!
rikyrah
I feel ya Cole.
I feel ya.
PeakVT
@Mojotron: Following on what The Other Chuck said, the Senate operates on the basis of unanimous consent, and a filibuster happens whenever a senator refuses to grant consent. Obviously, this gives each senator a lot of power if they are willing to violate long-established norms and block things on a whim. By now the norm is almost entirely gone, so the rule (22, I think) has become a enormous impediment to conducting business.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: @WaterGirl: No “but” for me. But I was a pretentious douche when I was in my 20’s too.
JPL
The stimulus plan obviously kept us out of a depression but sometimes I wish the President would say you folks need a little suffering. They are nuts.
shep
And what do you call people who actively seek to damage the United States in service to foreign (multi-national) entities? That describes half of the country’s business interests and half of our government leaders. There’s nothing wrong with the democracy except that outright traitors cast half of the votes.
geg6
This once noble experiment in representative democracy is done, done, done. Stuck is correct above. Americans have proven that we aren’t smart or serious enough to deserve the beautiful government of the people, by the people and for the people that the Founders, in their optimism, left to us. We are now the banana republic that we used to tsk and shake our heads over when we watched how they operated in Central and South America in my youth. It’s over and all we can do is figure out how we can avoid becoming those people who live in the garbage and junk piles surrounding Rio de Janero as their betters commute to work in helicopters because if they travel by car they risk being kidnapped and murdered by the starving and furious masses.
As you may guess, it was a tough day at work and I am not feeling optimistic today.
Meanwhile, the lead story on the CBS Evening News is that we are in the midst of a whooping cough epidemic. Thank, Jenny Fucking McCarthy.
jwb
Then there is this nice item. Some local politifact units apparently have been awarding more lies to GOP and so the GOP says it is a clear sign of bias (rather than the GOP lies their ass off) and have taken to intimidating papers and reporters.
TenguPhule
Is it still uncivil and wrong to call for cutting these people’s heads off to mount on a spike as a warning to others?
gene108
@geg6:
What the Founders left was so screwed up it resulted in a Civil War that got over 600,000 people killed, because they designed a government, where a small state can gum up the works for everybody else.
California has two Senators. Wyoming, with a population of 500,000 has two Senators. Wyoming would be a middling sized town in California, but has the same weight as California in the Senate.
We’re a government designed to be held hostage to the interests of the few.
Mojotron
Thanks everyone, I kinda knew the Frank Capra thing might not be accurate:) Strom Thurmond held the record for longest filibuster on the civil rights act, so I knew it was a thing that people still sometimes did in real life, I just didn’t know about the quorum. and I’m guessing they can filibuster in waves, so unless it’s something you’re willing to really go to the mat for like civil rights the odds are against you breaking the filibuster and you’d look like half-assing quitters for trying and failing.
General Stuck
@WaterGirl:
I was just talking about the CBS poll questioning people about taxes and services. And the first question was ‘would you be willing to foregoe having gov services in order to pay lower taxes” , And 45 percent said yes, and I am guessing they were republicans. And the next several question were asked if they would be okay with having less service for specific services, like cops, firemen, teachers, etc, in order to pay lower taxes. And the 45 percent drops to like 12 percent, or close to that. For me, it highlights the nature of a big part of our electorate who have their heads up their asses about taxes, along with a lot of other things.
jwb
@General Stuck: You can lay that particular problem squarely on Reagan.
Chris from Arlington, VA
Were the Democrats in the minority and forcing 60 vote super-majorities on all bills, all we would hear from the GOP and the media would be righteous howls of indignation at the Democrat Obstruction!
What do we hear from the Democrats? Nothing… why? Why? I really don’t understand the motivation not to call a spade a spade, and denounce the GOP as obstructionists. I really don’t see the down side here. I know they’ve not said anything for three years, and it’s probably too late, but are they really that bed-wetting gutless? Do they even understand the game?
*bangs head against a brick wall
Maude
You have to wonder how wise this is with Romney outsourcing and now the Repubs keeping outsourcing.
Maybe they live in another world.
This is the second time they have refused to reverse this.
MattR
@gene108: IMO, the whole idea of Federalism/state’s rights might have made sense 225 years ago when the states were very distinct entites that were largely self contained (though obviously there was trade and other interactions between them), but it has become outdated by the interconnected nature of our 21st century society.
geg6
@gene108:
At the time, what they created made sense and the beauty of what they created is that they gave us ways to adapt it to the times that came later. I am fully aware of the flaws of their creation but it actually DID survive the Civil War that it helped create and adjustments were made. That’s all over now. Hell, they admit to the flaws in it themselves, if you read primary sources from the time. It was never designed to deal with the economic issues we face today nor did they expect a bunch of venal fetishists to insist that we go back in time and insist on “original intent” that ignores all progress and societal changes. We aren’t worthy of what they created. I stand by that.
OzoneR
@Mojotron:
No, because that’s not a filibuster. The only reason that was done is because the people filibustering did it to bring attention to their filibuster.
All a filibuster is is a minority party Senator standing up and objecting to unanimous consent to proceed with a vote. Basically, all you’d here is
REID: “I move we move to a final vote on passage”
REPUBLICAN: “Objection”
REID: “Then I move we enact cloture on [bill number here]”
PRESIDENT OF SENATE: “Clerk call the roll”
And then if you don’t get 60 votes, its over.
That’s a filibuster.
Hungry Joe
It worked as long as both parties admitted — however grudgingly — that whatever their differences they still had to work together (up to a point) to run the country. That is, they saw the other side as legitimate, if sadly mistaken, and worth dealing with.This gritted-teeth comity disintegrated in the years before the Civil War. And now it’s disintegrating again.
OzoneR
@Chris from Arlington, VA:
They do it all the time. It just never makes the news.
OzoneR
@General Stuck:
Tonight, I was at a civic meeting in New York City where people were complaining about out of control government spending and then complaining that the city won’t install a sprinkler system on a baseball field in a local park.
The money quote “It’s our money, we have to make sure they spend it on us”
As long as the government’s money is “our money,” we’re going to have these problems because people will never agree on what is a good thing to spend taxpayer money on, except maybe things that blow Muslims up.
OzoneR
@Mojotron:
Thurmond stood there and spoke because he wanted to stand there and speak, not because he was required to.
the Conster
@WaterGirl:
Yeah, exactly. That “probably” kills me – he’s obviously a white guy, because they’re the only ones who have the luxury of saying “probably”. The rest of us are hanging on to whatever privileges we have now for dear life. He can bite me.
Linnaeus
Neofeudalism, my friend.
Kane
Isn’t this what the Let Detroit go bankrupt strategy all about? Allow the American auto industry to collapse for the sole purpose of destroying the union jobs in Detroit. Labor made substantial concessions to help save the auto industry, and Republicans vilified them anyway.
Mnemosyne
@Mojotron:
IIRC, even within the movie what Jefferson Smith does is not actually a filibuster — he makes his lengthy speech in the hope of convincing the other senators to vote for his bill, not to block someone else’s bill. So the popular image of a filibuster isn’t even a filibuster.
mclaren
This is the kind of bill I’ve been beating the table for, for years and years now. Give the companies tax incentives for keeping jobs in America. Hit ’em with tax penalties for offshoring jobs.
Unfortunately, as a commenter pointed out above, the United Snakes of Amnesia is no longer a functioning democracy, so it’s global warming induced starvation and drought with a side helping of mass post-industrial automation-and-offshoring unemployment. Soylent green is tasty!
mclaren
@General Stuck:
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Hahahahahahahaha!
Oh yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, “the functionality of our DEMOCRACY will be in VOTERS’ [sic] hands!” Yeah baby!
We the voters have a choice!
We can choose [column A]: Barack Obama and 4 more years of endless unwinnable wars, 4 more years of tax cuts for the rich, 4 more years of murdering U.S. citizens without even accusing them of having committed a crime, 4 more years of cuts to basic services and the social safety net in order to fund massive increases in the already obscene gushers of cash squandered on America’s military-industrial-police-prison-surveillance complex, 4 more years of endless unwinnable drug war, 4 more years of police-state surveillance, 4 more years of political prisoners like Bradley Manning locked away and brutalized because truth is treason in the empire of lies…
…or…
We the voters can choose [column B]: Mitt Romney! And Barack Obama and 4 more years of endless unwinnable wars, 4 more years of tax cuts for the rich, 4 more years of cuts to basic services and the social safety net in order to fund massive increases in the already obscene military-industrial-police-prison-surveillance complex, 4 more years of endless unwinnable drug war, 4 more years of police-state surveillance, 4 more years of political prisoners like Bradley Manning locked away because truth is treason in the empire of lies!
Wowee! What a choice!
I feel like breaking into song. Dancing in the rain / I’m dancing in the rain / everything’s fine and I’m happy again /
Skippy-san
56-42. The key point is that the bill actually passed-but that the filibuster threat kept it from moving on. James Fallows is right-the media deserves to be beaten for reporting these votes the way they do. And the Senate deserves to be beaten for being useless.
chopper
no difference between bush and gore.
Jack
@gene108: Did the Tea Party candidates not run on the platform of “one issue per bill”? Then Reid is doing exactly as they wanted, correct?