It makes no sense to continually target the President while giving Congress a pass [View All]

Senate Uses Budget Technicality To Scuttle Jobs Bill For Vulnerable Workers

Our guest blogger is Melissa Boteach, the Half in Ten Manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For the past few months, the talk around town has been around the conflicting imperatives of job creation and deficit reduction. Yet, somehow, a provision that would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs for vulnerable workers, without adding a penny to the deficit over the next 10 years, failed to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate yesterday.

A fully paid-for amendment offered by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that would have spent $1.3 billion to create up to 500,000 summer jobs for disadvantaged youth and $1.3 billion to provide opportunities for states to build on innovative Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs that are projected to create more than 100,000 subsidized jobs by September for vulnerable workers was scuttled by a 55-45 vote.

These two programs not only provide immediate economic relief for hard-hit families and communities; they have the potential to change the long-term employment prospects of youth and families by offering skills training and work experience so that workers can be full participants in the recovery that will eventually come.

These two programs not only provide immediate economic relief for hard-hit families and communities; they have the potential to change the long-term employment prospects of youth and families by offering skills training and work experience so that workers can be full participants in the recovery that will eventually come.

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“I think we have got to do everything that we can to get a public option so that is absolutely something ... somebody can and should do,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats.

Sanders said liberals have not decided who would offer such an amendment. However, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) led a petition drive to get Senators to sign a letter pledging their support for it. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has been tracking the letter signatories and Member statements, projects 41 firm votes in favor of the public option.

Sanders said he believes supporters will have the votes when the amendment comes up. “I can’t swear it to you, but I do think we can,” Sanders said. “I think that some people for whatever reason choose not to sign a letter but will vote. Yeah, I think we’ve got it.”

Despite Sanders’ declaration, it remains to be seen whether any public option amendment can be written in a way that will allow it to pass with 51 votes. If provisions of the amendment do not meet strict reconciliation rules that require every piece to have a budgetary impact, the amendment might have to overcome a 60-vote point of order — a feat that is nearly impossible to achieve.

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Single-payer aside, Sanders chalks up the difficulty Democrats have had passing health care to a mistaken belief about party unity when reform efforts kicked off.

"The major error Democrats undertook was to assume we had 60 votes or even 59," he said. "We never had that."

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Give Me a Break

March 10, 2010

The Senate on Wednesday passed a bill to extend through the end of the year unemployment insurance and help make health care coverage affordable. It passed overwhelmingly, although some senators voiced dire warnings about the deficit. Indeed, as Senator Bernie Sanders has said, the projected $1.6 trillion budget deficit is a very serious problem. It must be addressed. He has suggested ways to do so. He has called out deficit hawk phonies, however, who conveniently forget their deficit qualms when they want to eliminate the estate tax on American’s most fortunate families, for example. In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Sanders accused the paper’s editorial page of the same kind of double talk. “Let me get this straight,” he wrote to the Journal. “You oppose a $250 one-time payment for seniors struggling to cope with spiraling health-care costs during the first year since 1975 that there will be no Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, but you barely batted an eye when Congress sank $700 billion into a bailout for Wall Street bankers.

“You liked the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy so much that you derided the worry warts ‘spooked by the charge of deficit spending,” he continued in the letter to the Journal. “You have been an unabashed cheerleader for ending the estate tax on the country's most fortunate families, without a peep of protest about digging us all deeper into debt. You back the unpaid for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are costing trillions of dollars.

“Give me a break,” he concluded.