Senate Clearance Sale

So the Senate passed START and a watered-down 9/11 first responders bill. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been signed into law, and a lot of other stuff got done at the last minute. One might ask why the Senate didn’t hustle and get this stuff done sooner. Ezra has a theory:

DADT repeal passed because Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Scott Brown voted with the Democrats. The tax deal went through because a host of Republicans voted with the Democrats. Same for START, the food-safety bill and the DoD authorization. If the bill helping 9/11 responders get medical benefits passes, that too will be because of Republican support.

The question is why the Republicans didn’t just drag their feet and let things expire and then come back to everything in 2011, when they’ll have more allies in the Senate and control of the House? …

… The answer, I think, is that there are plenty of Senate Republicans who aren’t too comfortable with the class of conservatives who got elected in 2010.

I think some Republicans were shamed into supporting the 9/11 responders bill, although the one passed likely will prove to be inadequate. The objection I have is that, as I understand it, the program runs for only five years. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers released thousands of tons of toxic substances into the air, and the diseases these substances can cause are not going to disappear in five years. Some of them, especially the cancers, develop very slowly; symptoms may not show up for another ten or twenty years, or even longer. But at least the responders who are sick now will get some support.

10 thoughts on “Senate Clearance Sale

  1. Maha, what do you know about Mitch McConnell? He is evidently “triangulating” with his sudden aversion to his own earmarks, but will the new ‘bagger congresscritters (thanks, Molly Ivins) accept his leadership? And how long can his “no second term for Obama” program continue in the face of its evident power-at-all-costs derivation? Is Mitch going to be able to do what he did until the last two weeks in the next session?

  2. On the weakened 9/11 bill – it they get help for the next 5 years, and we preserve Obamacare, then there should be ongoing coverage.

    It looks to me like the GOP is in the classic predicament – “Be careful what you wish for – you might get it.” For the last 6 years we wondered what the GOP was doing as they pushed all moderates OUT. This gave the GOP ultra-right the chance to write the slate of candidates. This is not a gang who will be able to work together or make remotely rational choices. (Scott Brown being the exception that proves the rule.) The only thing these critters have in common is a hatred for all things liberal.

    BTW, Obama’s approval rating is up to 56%. Democratic congresscritters poll higher in approval than the Republicans. Go figure, considering the last election.

  3. I think Ezra has a good point. None of this could have passed prior to the midterms, due to posturing. It was all anti-Obama and the Democrats all the time. And maybe it’s true that the Republicans who do care at all about the country figured out that food safety and reigning in loose nuke’s are good things, that helping 9/11 responders a bit would make them look better than not doing it, and allowing gays to openly serve in the military wouldn’t cause any more harm than simple cases of agida for easily agitated homophobes in and out of uniform, and if not now, when? Too bad The Dream Act couldn’t have passed along with the others (and what were the 5 Democrats thinking? Tester? Hagan? Huh?)

    Bill,
    Mitch will remain titular head, but Jim “Demented” DeMint will be the defacto head of the old school hard-liners and the even nuttier new teabagger contingent. We’ll see how that changes the Senate’s dynamic. Not in a good way, for sure.
    Demint is a dangerous man – he’s deluded and he’s growing more and more powerful. If the people in his own party don’t work to neuter him, he can cause a lot of damage, and that’s even without a Presidentilal bid, moving politics ever further and further right and to a country where ‘God and Country’ won’t be a unifying cry when under duress, but an accurate description of the political state of this nation. God AND Country. God forbid!

  4. Bill,
    Sorry, I know you didn’t ask me. But I figured I’d throw out my 2 cents. In the words of the late, great Jackie Gleason, “I’m a blaaabermouth. A blaaaaaaaah, blaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabermouth!”
    Say, speaking of “The Great One,” I hpoe channel 11 in NY does iits annual “Honeymooners” retrospective this New Years Day. I live for that day.

  5. My take on it is that Republican leadership saw too many of their own go down in flames thanks to Tea Partiers, who jumped the corral fence and headed off into lunacy land. The strategy of voting “No” on everything won them the house, but now that they actually have to produce something in the way of decent legislation the spotlight is on them. Which may prove as difficult or near impossible a feat as the Dems trying to work with the Blue Dogs.

    By passing some good legislation now, before possible weirdness takes over, Republicans will at least be able to say, “What do you mean, we didn’t do anything? WE repealed DADT, WE ratified START, We voted in the Food Safety Bill, WE . . . yadda, yadda, yadda.” They know we have short memories and are easily confused.

  6. I think the few republicant’s that decided to actually govern, decided now is the time to exert their power (particularly in the senate). Once the teabagger republicant’s join with McChinless, McCain, and the rest of the perpetually angry say no crowd these few senators in the middle are going to have all the power. They will be able to get whatever they want from leadership on both sides. We already know they are willing to just say no (last two years) now they are just sending a message to McChinless that they can just go along with the godless heathens on the other side. Or it could just be Christmas miracle!

  7. As yet Republicans have gotten away with sound and fury signifying nothing. With their majority in the House now, those days are over. Fore instance, defending the tax cut for the rich ($700 billion added to the debt over a ten year period) when a Democratic bill didn’t need defending. But when part of a Republican bill?

    Responsibility is a two-edged sword.

  8. This all feels like victory-lap analysis, and I gotta say I don’t buy it.

    The GOP got a two-year extension on tax cuts for rich people. Tax cuts for rich people are the only the only thing the GOP has ever really wanted. It’s the only principle they’ve ever stuck to and never sold out.

    And they got it for two years. They wanted that even more than they wanted a permanent extension. Now we get to go through all this again during the 2012 campaign.

    They cared a little about DADT because they have to throw the evangelicals a bone once in a while. They don’t care about anything else. Not the deficit. Not real (i.e., non-bombing-people) national security. Nothing.

  9. Rick, I agree with everything you said. Way I see it,though, Obama and actual non-corporatist Dems are getting as many crumbs for the poor and middle class as they can squeeze out of the powers behind the big money curtain. Not only was Obama stuck with a steaming pile of major financial meltdown, two wars, corporate control of the media, and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, he’s had to walk a narrow line between helping the “little people” while not offending the money players in the game. Who would, quite frankly, have brought all their power to bear on crushing him had he not made concessions.

    It’s not Obama we should focus upon, but the silent, secret, wealthy multinational players, who hold their cards tight to their chests and have a plethora of aces up their sleeves. They do not have our best interests at heart. To them we are simply rubes and marks. Or, at a more basic level–pawns.

    And, by damn, that really pisses me off.

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