The dysfunctional U.S. Senate and the Grand Obstructionist Party

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

First, the good news. The U.S. Senate managed to pass a slimmed-down jobs bill today. Senate passes $15 billion jobs package:

The Senate on Wednesday approved a $15 billion package of tax breaks and highway spending that aims to bring down the country's stubbornly high unemployment rate. By a vote of 70 to 28, the Senate approved the bill and sent it on to the House of Representatives, which could approve the measure quickly for President Barack Obama to sign into law.

* * *

The bill includes a $13 billion payroll tax break for businesses that hire unemployed workers, along with subsidies for state and local construction bonds.

It also extends the highway-construction fund through the end of the year.

The bill's costs are offset by a crackdown on offshore tax shelters.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he expects to take up a second jobs bill this week that could extend unemployment benefits, renew an expired research-and-development tax break, and provide money to cash-strapped states.

Today's vote was made possible only because five Republican Senators defected on a cloture vote on Monday to kill a Grand Obstructionist Party filibuster of the bill. That's right, the GOP's legislative agenda to simply oppose everything includes opposing assistance to the more than 10% unemployed Americans in this country and reviving our national economy. Harry Reid snags victory on $15B jobs bill Remember in November.

The Grand Obstructionist Party now forces a cloture vote on even the most routine of legislative matters. The U.S. Senate has been rendered dysfunctional by this extraordinary abuse of the filibuster (recently dubbed the "Tarantino" in a viewer contest on the Rachel Maddow Show because it "kills bills." Too clever.)

Despite today's bipartisan vote for the jobs bill, there remains a backlog of 290 bills passed by the House but stalled in the Senate. Senate sitting on 290 bills already passed by House; tension mounts – TheHill.com

Exasperated House Democratic leaders have compiled a list showing that they have passed 290 bills that have stalled in the Senate.

* * *

An aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the list is put together during each Congress, but that this year’s number is likely the largest ever. However, he said Pelosi blames GOP senators, not Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

“The Speaker believes that the filibuster has its place, but clearly Senate Republicans are taking what was once a rare procedural move and abusing it to the detriment of progress for America’s working families,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

* * *

In January, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) suggested the Senate was out of touch with Americans, and did not differentiate between the two parties.

“[Senators] tend to see themselves as a House of Lords and they don’t seem to understand that those of us that go out there every two years stay in touch with the American people,” Clyburn said in an interview with Fox News Radio. “We tend to respond to them a little better.”

Earlier this month in an MSNBC interview, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (Conn.) said, “There’s a host of things that we’ve passed already, and there needs to be action in the Senate, and people are tired of it,” adding that he was “glad the president cited the House” for making more progress than the Senate in his State of the Union address.

The list of stalled bills includes both major and minor legislation: healthcare reform; climate change; food safety; financial aid for the U.S. Postal Service; a job security act for wounded veterans; a Civil War battlefield preservation act; vision care for children; the naming of a federal courthouse in Iowa after former Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa); a National Historic Park named for President Jimmy Carter; a bill to improve absentee ballot voting; a bill to improve cybersecurity; and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Hammill said Pelosi’s office also compiled a second list in December of 90 pieces of legislation that have passed the House, more than 60 of them with at least 50 Republican votes.

“There’s a perception that the House is really partisan these days, but the actual numbers show otherwise,” Hammill said.

Reid, like Pelosi, blames Republicans for the legislative logjam. In a speech late Monday on the Senate floor, he took the GOP to task for opposing a job-growth bill pending before the chamber, and said Republicans are abusing the filibuster.

“We had to file cloture some 70 times last year,” Reid said. “Seventy times. That’s remarkably bad. Let’s change that.”

Arizona's twin embarrassments, Senator Obstruction, Jon Kyl, and Senator McNasty, John McCain, are leaders of the Grand Obstructionist Party legislative agenda to simply oppose everything. Sen. Obstruction voted against cloture and the jobs bill. Sen. McNasty missed the cloture vote but voted against the jobs bill. U.S. Senate: Legislation & Records Home > Votes 00024, 00025.

Arizona, among the states with the highest rate of unemployment and a devastated state economy, has two senators who led the fight against the jobs bill. Arizona's twin embarrassments care more about partisan political warfare than doing the work of the people and serving the best interests of Americans.

We here in Arizona have the power in our hands to begin to restore functional government and our democracy. Let us begin this year by throwing that bitter old man, Sen. McNasty, out of office.