AP reported this evening that Obama's trimmed-down Jobs Bill was voted down in the Senate by a 50/50 vote. I believe that's 'bipartisan' with Nelson, Pryor and Lieberman voting alongside Republicans, but something not overly spotlighted in the media (surprise).
After the failure of the jobs measure last week, Democrats vowed to try to resurrect it on a piece by piece basis, even though the strategy doesn't seem to have any better chance of success. But Democrats are trying to win a political advantage through repeated votes.
Yeah, good luck with the class warfare angle, guys...doing wonders for ya thus far. Some interesting quotes came from Senators on both sides:
"The fact is we're not going to get this economy going again by growing the government. It's the private sector that's ultimately going to drive this recovery," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. "Look, if big government were the key to economic growth, then countries like Greece would be booming right now."
"This bill fails to give taxpayers any guarantee that this money would actually be used to hire teachers and invest in our schools," Jon Tester (D-MT) said. "States would get loads of money with little guidance that they spend the money on teachers."
And Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said the stimulus-style jobs bill spends money the country doesn't have and takes revenues away from a special "supercommittee" charged with cutting the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the coming decade.
With Obama's Jobs Bill in the proverbial File 13, so may be Obama's job, which we all know is what this maneuvering and bus tour/campaign has always been about.
