GOP kills jobs bill despite majority support

GOP kills jobs bill despite majority support

By Steve Benen

There were no doubts about the eventual outcome of the Senate fight over the American Jobs Act. Democrats would have needed at least seven Republicans who were willing to let members vote on the legislation, and the actual number was zero. The overall result was a foregone conclusion.

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That’s true, and it’s exactly the point the White House wanted to be able to make. Yesterday, there were reports that several members of the Senate Democratic caucus — Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin, Joe Lieberman, Jim Webb, Jeanne Shaheen, and Jon Tester — who would either vote with Republicans or fail to vote at all. The result would have been a political loss as well as a legislative one — Republicans would have been able to argue, accurately, that a majority of the Senate rejected the president’s jobs bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) deserves a lot of credit for making sure that didn’t happen. In the end, the American Jobs Act got 51 votes, and only two Dems — Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and Montana’s Jon Tester — sided with Republicans. (The official final tally was 50 to 49, but that’s only because Reid had to switch his vote for procedural reasons.)

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What matters most is that Senate Republicans, in the midst of a jobs crisis and intense public demand for congressional action, killed a credible jobs bill for no apparent reason. Most Americans support the American Jobs Act’s provisions; it enjoys strong support from economists; it includes ideas from both parties; and the CBO found it will even lower the deficit over the next decade.

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Senate Votes for Obama Jobs Bill, But GOP Filibusters It

Ari Melber

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While opponents of the jobs bill were clearly outnumbered, they signaled their commitment to filibustering the legislation to death. It takes 60 votes to cut off debate, of course, and Republicans voted against an initial, procedural cloture motion to move from debate to the straight vote.

So, the bottom line is that the Senate currently has the votes to pass this bill. The GOP is willing, however, to shut down Senate business indefinitely just to prevent that vote.

If you glance at the headlines, though, you'd think the Senate just failed to come up with the votes for this bill. Here are just a few typical (and influential) examples:


Political reporters have become so accustomed to the constant abuse of the filibuster, they don't even lead with the news here: A jobs bill during an unemployment crisis has majority support, but is being blocked from a straight vote. It's not just reporters, either -- the political establishment, including many Democrats, have largely accepted the premise that all legislation should be subjected to a 60-vote super-majority hurdle. Yet this is a very new, very damaging way to run the Senate. (Washington Post's Ezra Klein has the radical data.)

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