Today, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) continued his stand against extending unemployment benefits, once again taking to the Senate floor to object to a unanimous consent motion to move forward on a bill providing for a temporary extension. So far, Bunning has blocked the extension on eleven separate occasions, and when asked by reporters today to explain his obstruction, he responded by flipping them off.

Several Republicans, including Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Cornyn (R-TX), have supported Bunning’s intransigence. And today Bunning won one more supporter in Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who said that he respects Bunning for standing “like a solid rock” against extending benefits:

He stood like a solid rock and he didn’t give in. He said I’m not agreeing to it because you could pay for it and it’s increasing the debt on my forty-two grandchildren. And he didn’t agree to it. You know, every now and then somebody stands up in the Senate and says I’ve had enough and I’m not going to say yes this time. And I respect him for the courage he’s showed.

Watch it:

For the record, 400,000 workers lost their benefits over the weekend, and 1.1 million workers will see their benefits expire this month thanks to Bunning’s stand.

But it’s not only the unemployed who are feeling the ill effects of Bunning’s gamesmanship. By not passing the extension, 2,000 federal transportation workers were furloughed today. As the Department of Transportation explained:

Because of the shutdown, federal inspectors will be removed from critical construction projects, forcing work to come to a halt on federal lands. Projects span the country, including the $36 million replacement of the Humpback Bridge on the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, $15 million in bridge construction and stream rehabilitation in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, and the $8 million resurfacing of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. [...]

At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the furloughs will disrupt safety programs that operate in partnership with the states and advocacy groups, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

Bunning also received praise today from both of the Republicans vying to fill his seat when he retires at the end of the year. Republican Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, said he would “proudly stand up to ensure that programs are paid for,” while Republican Rand Paul said “more senators need to stand up for the taxpayers and against the big-spending career politicians in both parties.”

The Obama administration is currently studying a policy change that would alter the way in which the government awards federal contracts. If the proposal — known as the High Road Contracting Policy — were implemented, companies that pay their workers living wages and provide better benefits would gain a leg up, and more companies with labor and environmental regulation violations will be disqualified.

The idea is to encourage companies with better labor practices to compete for contracts, instead of the government endorsing a race to the bottom in terms of pay and benefits. This is actually a problem right now, as 20 percent of federally contracted workers earn poverty-level wages with no benefits. But the Big Business community is up in arms at the idea, with the Chamber of Commerce calling it an attempt at “rigging the government procurement process,” and a revival of “Clinton blacklist regulations.”

And the conservative media also can’t stand the thought of workers earning fair pay and having health insurance and pensions, as they have been slamming the policy for the last few days. CNBC’s Dennis Kneale said that it amounted to the government “looking for ways to spend more money.” The Weekly Standard’s Matt Continetti said “it’s a dangerous policy” that “shows Obama’s weakness.” CNBC’s Simon Hobbs even added that “this is just not the way to run an economy. If anything, wages at the moment should be falling.” Watch a compilation:

Not surprisingly, CNBC and its ilk are willing to go to bat for bankers receiving huge bonuses and tax evaders, but not for working Americans trying to earn a living wage. But there’s simply no reason for the government to award contracts to companies that pay their workers below poverty-level wages or that are found to have violated labor and environmental standards, which happens all too frequently.

Plus, as CAP’s David Madland pointed out, these standards can won’t necessarily raise costs for the government, as they will likely reduce payments on Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other programs used by workers receiving less than a living wage. And not having standards for contracts actually leads to companies with shoddier employee treatment receiving a competitive advantage:

When workers are poorly compensated on the front end, taxpayers often bear additional costs on the back end, such as for Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credit and food stamps. In practice, this amounts to something like a government subsidy for low-road companies, while high-road companies are placed at a competitive disadvantage.

This makes sense, as it’s certainly easy for an employer paying below minimum wage and foregoing benefits to bid low on a contract. And research has shown that, if higher standards are taken into account, more companies that treat their employees well will try to win contracts. For instance, one contractor in Maryland — which implemented a living wage standard for contracts — said that without strong labor standards, “the bids are a race to the bottom…[The living wage] puts all bidders on the same footing.”

Last week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) rejoined talks on financial regulatory reform with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). Dodd had been negotiating with Corker after reaching an earlier “impasse” with Shelby, but the newly reunited trio had been sounding hopeful that a deal was imminent.

However, as it has been for weeks, the holdup in the negotiations remains the creation of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect consumers from deceptive lending practices, which Republicans have called everything from “folly and dangerous” to a “non-starter.” Late Friday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) circulated a proposal that would place a consumer protection division with rule-writing authority and independent funding inside of the Treasury Department. But even this watered-down proposal was not enough to satisfy Corker and Shelby:

[I]n a setback for Dodd, his offer has been rejected by the banking committee’s top Republican, Senator Richard Shelby, and fellow Republican Senator Bob Corker. The sources said Shelby and Corker objected to the rule-writing power Dodd proposed for the consumer division, but not necessarily to the idea of the division itself being located in the Treasury Department or another federal agency.

At this point, it seems that Corker and Shelby are simply digging for reasons to object to whatever Dodd suggests, since, as Bloomberg reported, Republican alternatives to Dodd’s proposal “give the consumer unit the power to write rules, including banning unfair or deceptive practices.” The difference is that the GOP wants to house the consumer unit within an already existing bank regulator, with Shelby favoring the FDIC and Corker preferring the Federal Reserve.

The insistence on placing the consumer division within a bank regulator fits with the Republican mantra regarding the CFPA, which is that consumer protection can’t be divorced from the “safety and soundness” of banks. But the Fed already had consumer protection abilities before the crisis, which it utterly failed to exercise. Placing a consumer protection unit there simply perpetuates the status quo, and seems to be at odds with Shelby’s contention that the Fed “should have a limited range of responsibilities and that its main focus should be on conducting monetary policy.” The whole point of creating an independent agency is to have at least one place where the main focus is consumers, rather than banks.

As Felix Salmon pointed out, Dodd’s compromise proposal was very weak, as “its rules could be vetoed by the Systemic Risk Council, it would essentially be barred from enforcing its own rules on small institutions, let alone examining those institutions, and it would have to talk to bank regulators before enforcing any rules on bigger banks.” Yet the GOP still found it unacceptable. So at what point does Dodd give up what’s looking more and more like a useless game and simply force the GOP to vote against a reform bill, in the wake of a financial crisis from which Main Street is still struggling to recover?