Tuesday, March 2, 2010

FINALLY, Bumblin' Bunning Gives Up & Releases Unemployed Hostages!

Oh, wow. Mr. Batsh*t Crazy GOoPer has relented... And he gets a vote on his batsh*t crazy amendment in exchange!

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) has accepted a deal to drop his one-man filibuster of a bill that would extend expiring unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of people.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office has confirmed to TPMDC that Bunning accepted the deal, but declined to provide details.

Bunning, in exchange for dropping his objection, will get one vote on an amendment to pay for the bill, which will cost an estimated $10 billion. Bunning's amendment to pay for the bill will be the only amendment allowed on the floor. A final vote is scheduled to begin at 8:30 tonight.

Hehe. Again, Harry Reid played this right out of the ball park! But wait, I thought Jim Bunning was the "Hall of Famer" here?

So at least we'll see unemployment benefits restored this month for the nearly 20,000 Nevadans (and over 1 million other Americans) whose benefits were dropped over the weekend. However, the damage will still be done. (H/T Open Left)

Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-Ky.) one-man filibuster ended on Tuesday.

Bunning agreed to stop blocking legislation to extend benefits and COBRA health plan subsidies to the unemployed after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) agreed to allow him a vote on an amendment to pay for the $10 billion bill.

It's the same deal Bunning was offered last week, but Bunning at the time decided to continue his fight. He'd been holding up an extension of the benefits since Thursday. [...]

Andrew Stettner of NELP says that, no matter what, some 205,000 people won't get a check this week, since it takes anywhere from two to six weeks for the states to get their bureaucracies geared up. "We've already crossed the Rubicon. Now, we have to play catch-up," he says. [Emphasis mine.]

So thanks to Jim Bunning and his fellow batsh*t crazy radical right Rethuglicans, these 20,000 Nevadans will still see interruptions of their benefits, and may go without food and be late on their bills. Thanks for nothing, Teabagger Zombie Death Cult!

Well, hopefully Harry Reid can start cleaning up Bunning's mess tonight with the vote. Let Bunning's idiotic amendment get voted down and get these benefits moving again. These workers paid out of their own pockets for unemployment insurance and the vast majority of them are moving as quickly as possible to find a new job. It's simply been unfair and cruel for the Rethugs to hold up their benefits, and hopefully the American people are getting a better idea of what the GOP is all about (and why we don't want them to have any more power in Congress!).

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