Omnibus Budget Bill Passes-- After A Week Of Hackish And Mostly Pointless Obstructionism

The Senate has been "debating" the Omnibus Spending Bill for the last few sessions. That has amounted to one crazed, obstructionist wingnut after another grandstanding with an idiotic amendment that gets voted down. McCain started the week off-- age before wisdom-- with his lame idea of humor and chest thumping stupidity, S.Amdt. 593,"to prohibit the use of funds provided in the bill." What a jokester! Especially with 53% of Americans feeling the country is either in or headed for a 1930s style Depression, something Paul Krugman pointed out in the NY Times is being exacerbated by ritual Republican obstructionism: "[T]he fact that Boehner’s idea of economics is completely insane matters." (Even conservative pundit David Brooks agrees that Boehner is part of the problem, not the solution.


McCain's asinine amendment-- something one could expect, in the midst of a recession or Depression, from someone who owns so many homes he forgets how many and whose father-in-law's Mafia-based fortune has given him a career and a life of ease-- was beaten... to a pulp. Only 32 sad-sack obstructionists bothered voting for it and even the few Republicans sticks-in-the-mud striving to be taken seriously, like Wicker, Shelby, Alexander, Cochran, etc joined all the Democrats (except twittering imbecile Claire McCaskill) in voting it down.

And that's how it's gone since then. A conga-line of obstructionist kooks and earmarkin' hypocrites-- from Kyl and Enzi to Cornyn and Thune-- stand up and waste the Senate's time while the nation teeters on the brink of insolvency with idiotic proposals about "counter-smuggling efforts" in Gaza (Kyl), anti-HIV amendments (Wyoming's contribution to the debate), rote Republican talking points targeting lawyers-- from Cornyn, of course, whose biggest donors are law firms, having collected $1,943,952 in legalized bribes from them since 1990-- and unions. All were handily defeated.

Then at 5:00 PM Thune-- with co-sponsors, The 3 Stooges (Jim DeMint, Jim Inhofe and Michael Enzi)-- brought up another version of the Rush Limbaugh Tribute Act, more anti-Fairness Doctrine malarkey. Fortunately, it was defeated, but only barely. Voting with every single Republican wimp were 7 Democrats, 2 conservative (Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson), 3 moderates (Mark Begich, Mark Udall, and Jim Webb) and 2 progressives (Russ Feingold and Amy Klobuchar). Just pathetic!

More fun and games from the clownish Ensign and at 6:47PM Reid called for a cloture vote to stop the madness. The de facto filibuster was shut down 62-35. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the twittering idiot (D-MO) joined the worst of the Republican obstructionists. (Feingold and the Missouri Twitterer are trying to make a point about making a point about how very very opposed they are to earmarks; Bayh is just a douche bag.) Eight Republicans voted to get it over with. The bill then passed with a convenient and cowardly voice vote.