Senate passes recovery bill.
By on Feb 10th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Senate passes recovery bill.
After overcoming a procedural hurdle yesterday, the Senate approved the recovery bill 61-37 today, as amended by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME). Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) recused himself, and Minnesota still has only one senator.
Announcing the “good news” to the town hall audience in Florida, President Obama explained why the Senate finally passed the bill today: “Because they knew I was coming down to Ft. Myers. They didn’t want to mess with people in Ft. Myers. They said, we don’t want folks in Ft. Myers mad at us!”
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This is good news. Now, hopefully, the House will know what to do with it. Ignore all the slander and noise coming from the GOP. Put what’s needed in the bill and take out what needs to be removed. We don’t need GOP support to pass this through the House and they won’t give it anyway. So don’t make changes to appease them.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:14 pmNow let’s see if the plan is effective. I think it was watered down too much, but I’ll wait and see. I think Obama gave away too much for the lousy three GOP votes.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:14 pmPart one passed. Now on to a spending bill that puts back all the stuff that was stripped out by the Grandstanding Obstructionist Phonies.
PEACE
February 10th, 2009 at 1:15 pmI’m glad this passed, and I hope the reconciliation between the House and the Senate versions don’t get too bogged down.
I’m sorry it took the Nelson and Collins changes to make it happen, but I’d rather put up with that than some of the other craziness offered — like McCain’s proposal. Besides, some compromise is to be expected. I’m realistic enough to accept this.
It’s a pity there are so many sour-faced Republicans who would never vote “yea” for ANYTHING benefitting the American people if introduced by a Democrat and/or proposed by Obama, no matter how many concessions were made to them. To them, “winning” is far more important than helping the country.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:17 pmFix the final bill and stop acquiescing to the demands of the American Taliban, and self-defined insurgent GOP! Remember, we don’t negotiate with terrorists!
PEACE
February 10th, 2009 at 1:22 pmIt was worth losing the stripped items to make the point that the Republicans will lie and stab in the back just because they can!
February 10th, 2009 at 1:23 pmNow the public knows that they have no intention of doing what is right for the country if it interferes with what they think is right for the party.
Those stripped items can always have their own legislation, or be added to future bills. And now Obama has shown that he tried, they lied, and he doesn’t have to hold out the hand to them again.
Game, set, match.
I wonder how long it will take until Minnesota decides to send their new Senator to D.C.? This election will forever sully the reputation Minnesota had for clean elections.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pmIt is a good start. God help us when the House and Senate meet to decide what to do to reconcile the bills, it may take a long time.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pmNow, if the ratio of 65% infrastructure spending, 35% tax cuts can be restored to this Stim Bill in committee…..
February 10th, 2009 at 1:44 pmWe’ll be good to go !
This election will forever sully the reputation Minnesota had for clean elections.
Why? It was a close election they are sorting it out carefully… sounds like they deserve that reputation to me.
On the stimulus- here’s hoping that the ‘adjustments downwards’ of Collins and Nelson are ‘re-calibrated’ to the house levels or something closer at least…
February 10th, 2009 at 1:50 pmThey are past “sorting it out.” This is stalled due to a frivolous Coleman legal challenge.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:59 pmIn Obama’s pleas of urgency, I really wish he had contrasted his very real interest in averting economic disaster with the ruse that Paulson/Bernanke/Bush pulled off last fall.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:59 pmjust heard on AP radio news:
“the massive economic stimulus package crafted by the democrats passed the senate…”
it’s all ours!
February 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pmThis was an important step, but it was just one step out of several. Now that the bill can move forward toward Conference, it can be re-written the way it should be.
I understand what the president is doing in reaching out to the Republicans. I almost admire him for wanting to continue doing it, despite what they did to him this time. I just wonder how many times he’s going to let them do this before he says to hell with them. He has told them that he is willing to listen to “good ideas”. The problem is that the Republicans are either so delusional or so wrapped up in their ideology that they fail to see that their ideas are not “good” ones.
This is how to deal with Republicans going forward: You tell them, “These are the things that are oging to be in the bill (infrastructure, education, so on), and these are the things that are not (tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate tax cuts). You can help us decide whether more money should go to infrastructure than to education or vice versa, but you’re not going to tell us to cut education spending and put in tax cuts for the rich.”
They’re going to vote against it anyway, so why make the bill worse by including Republican ideas that do nothing to stimulate the economy?
February 10th, 2009 at 2:04 pmWhat Obama seems to fail to appreciate is that Republicans fear success of the stimulus plan. They are working hard to poison anything that might resurrect the economy and augmenting their endeavors with disingenuous rhetoric.
Until the American public makes it clear that they are not buying the BS, they will continue on this path. Unfortunately, there remain too many people who actually believe that WND is a credible news source. Furthermore, the Evangelical leaders are in full dumb-them-down mode.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:05 pmGood news! Now when they finish tweeking and wrangling and pass the bill onto Obama’s desk he should give the Repukes a taste of their own medicine with a few signing statements that strip the bill of ANY tax breaks for the wealthy!
February 10th, 2009 at 2:12 pmWell that didn’t take long. The Family Research Council’s position:
http://www.tips-q.com/content/frcs-untimulating-stimulus-talking-points
February 10th, 2009 at 2:13 pmI think Obama knows the Senate pretty well. There is nothing he can say about Republicans that they can’t demonstrate better. He’s giving them plenty of rope.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:14 pmThe Republican senators are all in front of the cameras pulling out everything they can made sound like it won’t create jobs. And now John Ensign is saying that congress should hold all their meeting in front of the cameras for transparency. What a bunch of a-holes.
Why is it they never asked Paulson for transparency.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:19 pmRe: MN
Why? It was a close election they are sorting it out carefully… sounds like they deserve that reputation to me.
They are past “sorting it out.” This is stalled due to a frivolous Coleman legal challenge
The 2nd comment is accurate. Coleman’s lawyers managed to convince the State Supreme Court to re-admit 4,700 rejected absentee ballots for recount, just a week after they filed suit to have them rejected. What a Man!
Coleman’s team of D.C. lawyers’ plan is to drag this thing out as long as possible; perhaps another 2 months.
Franken has already lost any chance at seniority…given the backdoor deal done in N.H., where a Dem Gov agreed to appoint a Repuke in exchange for Gregg leaving his position.
Why aren’t you same people screaming about this from the rooftops? It sounds more like Blagoyavich than anything occuring in MN. We also don’t have the Governor making those decisions here. MN has one of the best election records in the country, but even we can’t plan on the American Taliban sneaking lawyers to disrupt the process.
Phuck Norm Coleman and the lawyers he rode in on…
February 10th, 2009 at 2:22 pmLet them obstruct. There’s another election in 20 months. We’ll see who’s left standing after the electoral dust settles.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:23 pmPhuck Norm Coleman and the lawyers he rode in on…
I agree, but because Coleman is ‘gaming’ the system at the behest of the R’s in Congress all elections are now somehow not ‘clean’?
This is an R tactic to cast doubt on all elections… therefore leading to increasing ’scrutiny’ (see: discouraging voters from voting- the only way Republicans win)
We saw this in Seattle where I live with the ‘dirty’ King County Elections Board… the state R’s were so ‘certain’ (read: hopeful and desperate) that Rossi had defeated Gregoire the first time around that when he lost, they simply started attacking the Elections Board… who didn’t deserve it.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:28 pmand neither does MN’s… Coleman deserves the blame for this one.
I didn’t make myself clear in my first post… I apologize… I never meant to indicate that I thought Coleman had a legitimate reason to drag out the process, only that I thought the process (re: the elections board itself) had been ‘clean’ for the most part.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:36 pmLTdan Says:
Republicans are obstructing all right, obstrucing the collapse of the USA.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
No, LTdan, Republicans are the reason it’s collapsing.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:49 pm“Republicans are obstructing all right, obstrucing the collapse of the USA.”
And where were the heroic Great Obvious Prevaricators when they told us we had to spend $12 billion a month in Iraq (that didn’t have WMDs) while giving their Wall Street crooks huge tax breaks? I guess none of that matters–we aren’t supposed to look at recent history and how the radical right has been ripping America off for 30 years.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:52 pm8 years of disaster and Dan somehow missed it.
WOW, Dan – you’re the Rip Van Winkle of our time.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:01 pmbelac,
Thanks for your comments; it’s appreciated.
Coleman IS the problem; the process worked just fine.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pmquestioneverything
February 10th, 2009 at 3:14 pmYou hit the nail on the head ! repugnicans ( like John Mccain ) would rather see this country bankrupt and destroyed. The zealotry, hatred, ignorance and selfishness holds a much higher value to them than the common good.
they’re disgusting !
watchdog,
First of all, in which newspapers did that ad run? Or did they just prepare an ad and put it on their website.
Secondly (and I bet you didn’t know this), the Cato Institute, which wrote that ad, will not publish any paper which proves that a government program works. They are so Libertarian, that they don’t even want government to spend money on the things that do work. They are hardly the people to listen to.
You provided a link to the ad, now provide us with which newspapers actually ran it. Thank you.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pmLink please. Your cred is not good enough without it.
February 14th, 2009 at 8:07 pm