McConnell Spoiling For a Fight Over Jobs Bill, House Passes Budget Extension
Amid prognostications that the jobs bill is "dead" -- including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's announcement that the House won't vote on the bill in its entirety -- Senate Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell said today that he's just itching for a vote on the Senate floor.
Yes, it's a tactic to make Obama look bad.
McConnell knows that the Democrats don't have the votes yet to pass the bill in the Senate. He says he's tired of the president blaming the Republicans for inaction, when no one benefits more from gridlock than the White House.
"How else do explain the fact that the president's spent the past few weeks running around the country demanding that Congress pass his so-called Jobs Bill 'right away' even as leading members of his own party admit that Democrats wouldn't have the votes to get it through Congress even if it came to the floor?" McConnell said.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, for his part, says he's "disappointed" in McConnell for "playing games." Reid says he's planning to bring up the bill this month.
In other Congressional news, the House easily passed a "continuing resolution" to fund the government for six more weeks. And what will happen in six weeks? Another continuing resolution, you can be sure!
Congress has moved forward on some budget bills for FY2012 (which has already begun), but the pace has been lackadaisical. After all, there never was a real budget for FY2011, just a warmed-over FY2010 budget with a lot of bites taken out of it. And if you've been paying attention to the Congressional stalemating that got the country's credit rating reduced, you probably know that the outlook isn't much better for this year.
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