Analysis: Senate prospects for jobless bill weak

[Joanne98]

By ANDREW TAYLOR
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 14, 2010; 3:52 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Senate is where legislation often goes to die, and it's looking more and more like that's the fate awaiting a new jobs bill wanted by President Barack Obama.

After barely limping out of the House last month, prospects for a deficit-financed jobs bill appear bleak in the Senate, where it's probably going to take all 60 votes in the Democrats' coalition to pass it.

That's doubtful. About one in six House Democrats voted no when the bill squeaked through the House last month.

Prospects for getting the required unanimity among Senate Democrats is especially bleak since the first item of business on the Senate's agenda when it returns next week is a bill to let the government sink itself another $925 billion into debt. To turn around and take up legislation to spend perhaps $75 billion to $150 billion of that strikes some Democrats as a bad vote.

There's also Obama's upcoming budget projecting another record deficit atop last year's record $1.4 trillion, adding to the difficulty in passing a new, debt-financed jobs package.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., supports the idea of a new stimulus measure but acknowledges the hurdles to passing one. Democratic moderates like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Evan Bayh of Indiana have already registered concerns.

"It's hard to answer in a vacuum without knowing what's in it, but if it's just a wish-list of spenders' favorite items, that's not going to go through," said Bayh.

"Senator Nelson is very concerned about the level of federal spending and the deficit," said Nelson spokesman Jake Thompson. "He would look at a jobs package, but those factors would weigh heavily in his mind." Nelson also thinks there's plenty of stimulus money still in the pipeline, Thompson said.


Talk of a second economic stimulus measure - more pleasingly packaged as a "jobs" bill - intensified after the nationwide unemployment rate topped 10 percent last fall.

Obama has proposed new spending for highway and bridge construction, for small business tax cuts and for retrofitting millions of homes to make them more energy-efficient. He also proposed an additional $250 apiece in stimulus spending for seniors and veterans and billions of dollars in aid to state and local governments to avert layoffs of teachers, police officers and firefighters.

The House responded with an approximately $174 billion measure accepting many but not all of Obama's ideas. But the 217-212 vote on Dec. 16 vote was hardly encouraging. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had to work the floor for a full hour to win the tally, which was held just after Democratic leaders forced through stopgap legislation to raise the debt limit by $290 billion.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who's been preoccupied with health care, has handed off the jobs issue to allies Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. They've taken a roster of more than 100 ideas submitted by lawmakers and have tried to winnow it down to about a dozen proposals, including steps to help small businesses create jobs, money for so-called green jobs and funding for infrastructure projects like roads and bridges.



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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/14/AR2010011403248.html

Ben Nelson again!

[DJ13]

1. Maybe if they visualized all those out of work as bankers and insurance CEO's

......they would find both the time and the money to support a jobless bill?

[bluestateguy]

2. Sounds like a lot of MSM crap

from a mousey Capitol Hill "reporter" who thinks he's brilliant.