Over the past couple of weeks, the president has been criss-crossing the country politicking about his $447 billion stimulus/jobs bill and calling out the congressional GOP membership for not conducting a vote on it.
This is the same jobs bill for which President Barack Obama was quoted as saying pass my bill repeatedly in the joint session of Congress held almost a month ago on Sept. 8.
Well,Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced this past Monday afternoon on the Senate floor that he was prepared to offer the presidents jobs bill as an amendment to the pending legislation, which was a bill dealing with Chinas currency manipulation, and ask for a vote. Sen. McConnell crafted his amendment from the identical language used by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Sept. 13 when he introduced the presidents jobs bill, S 1549, in the Senate.
McConnell began waving the amendment on the Senate floor, requesting that the Senate conduct a vote as soon as practicable. After all, McConnell said, This is what the president has been asking for. However, this request was not only turned down by Senate Democrats, they blocked any ability by any senator to offer any amendments including, but not limited to, the subject of the presidents jobs bill.
Senate Democrats remember all too well the embarrassment of this past spring when Republicans offered the presidents budget as an amendment to the then-pending legislation. On May 25, when the votes were cast, the presidents budget proposal received a resounding vote of 0-97.
This week the Senate majority leader was bound and determined not to have a repeat of the presidents budget going down in flames, so he blocked any other senator from offering any amendments to the pending legislation. After that, the Democratic leader quickly went to work to modify the presidents stimulus/jobs bill so as to garner strong Democratic support. The new version of the presidents bill is S 1660 and it now includes a tax increase on any American who makes over $1 million. The tax increase included in the new proposal will hit mainly small-business owners to the tune of 5.6 percent.
On the Senate floor Thursday, in an effort to conclude the debate on the China currency bill, McConnell used a rarely exercised procedure that would have allowed him to call for a supermajority vote (67 senators) to allow the Senate to conduct a vote on the presidents original stimulus/jobs bill.The Senate Democrats were so afraid of having to cast a vote on the presidents proposal, that the Senate leader used a parliamentary maneuver that, in effect, made it no longer in order to use the procedure McConnell was using to force a vote on the presidents jobs bill.
You see, the Senate Democrats, specifically most of the occupants of the 23 Democratic seats up for election in November 2012, were so fearful of having to go on record supporting or opposing the presidents jobs bill, that they decided trashing the Senate rules to block the vote was better than having to be on record.
Casting votes in the U.S. Senate is one of the main job descriptions listed when you recite the role of a U.S. senator. The fact that so many senators run from that responsibility is despicable. The reality that Senate Democrats would go to such lengths in changing the Senate rules just to avoid casting a tough, political vote is feeble at best and makes this writer understand more fully how our Congress permitted the nations debt and budget to get to the disastrous stage it is today.
Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, elected United States Senate secretary for the majority and minority. Currently she is a senior legislative adviser for Covington & Burling, LLC and is the founder of Gradegov.com.
