Everybody Hates Jim Bunning

Are there any McClatchy newspapers in Kentucky? Oh it doesn't matter. Bunning's a lame duck.

Short of pitchforks and torches, it looks like every major political problem in America begging for a solution comes down to either sudden enlightenment in the old slaveholding states or-- more likely-- something akin to the British Parliament Act of 1911, which profoundly changed, and democratized, the British legislative branch by removing the veto from the anti-democratic upper chamber. It wasn't easy. In fact, it was more "impossible" than it would be to reform the U.S. Senate. It even took the death of a king to finally get it done. But they did get it done, and the British government became far more responsive to its citizens as a result.

The filibuster, which is being abused by a radical right GOP opposing Change and refusing to recognize Obama as a legitimate president, is a tool of obstruction against the will of the people. An analysis by A.P. yesterday concludes that conservative obstructionism in the Senate is making the nation ungovernable.

Opposition Republicans are using the delaying tactic at a record-setting pace.

"The numbers are astonishing in this Congress," says Jim Riddlesperger, political science professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

The filibuster, using seemingly endless debate to block legislative action, has become entrenched like a dandelion tap root in the midst of the shrill partisanship gripping Washington.

But the filibuster is nothing new. Its use dates to the mists of Senate history, but until the civil rights era, it was rarely used.

A tactic unique to the Senate, the filibuster means a simple majority guarantees nothing when it comes to passing laws... As a matter of political philosophy, the concept of the filibuster arises from a deep-seated, historic concern among Americans that the minority not be steamrolled by the majority.

It is a brake and protective device rooted in the same U.S. political sensibility that gave each state two senators regardless of population.

The same impulse gave Americans the Electoral College in presidential contests-- a structure from earliest U.S. history designed to give smaller population states greater influence in choosing the nation's leader.

Given recent use of the filibuster by minority Republicans and the party's success in snarling the legislative process in this Congress, Democrats say the minority has gone way beyond just protecting its interests.

The frequency of filibusters-- plus threats to use them-- are measured by the number of times the upper chamber votes on cloture. Such votes test the majority's ability to hold together 60 members to break a filibuster.

Last year, the first of the 111th Congress, there were a record 112 cloture votes. In the first two months of 2010, the number already exceeds 40.

That means, with 10 months left to run in the 111th Congress, Republicans have turned to the filibuster or threatened its use at a pace that will more than triple the old record. The 104th Congress in 1995-96-- when Republicans held a 53-47 majority-- required 50 cloture votes.

The latest eruption of populist anger and liberal angst against the Senate has been caused by senile and retiring Kentucky crepuscular Jim Bunning's one-man circus act-- an act very much supported by his party behind the scenes, if not openly-- to halt a planned extension of unemployment and health insurance benefits for unemployed people. 11.5 million Americans have been thrown out of work, largely due to wrong-headed conservative policies Bunning and his party implemented-- with a vengeance-- while they had Bush in the White House with a signing pen. They've done nearly as much damage to America as the combined efforts of Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover did in the 1920s, and for the same ideological mania: unregulated, antisocial greed and selfishness.

It turns out that the GOP's tantrum is a tactic to get the Democrats to agree to lowering the tax rates on the 400 richest families in America at the time when wealth is passed between generations (i.e., the estate tax, the bane of plutocracy). Bunning's stunt has also caused an abrupt halt on Highway Trust Fund expenditures for 30 days-- no pay for any of its programs or its employees. 

So, the Department of Transportation as of Monday morning, furloughed 2,000 federal workers. DOT says that number could climb if this stalemate over funding drags on. Employees affected include federal inspectors overseeing highway projects on federal lands. If the inspectors aren't there, the projects must shut down.  DOT says that will affect 41 critical construction projects from Alaska to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“As American families are struggling in tough economic times, I am keenly disappointed that political games are putting a stop to important construction projects around the country,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “This means that construction workers will be sent home from job sites because federal inspectors must be furloughed.”
 
Without the highway trust fund dollars, the federal government also cannot reimburse states for any ongoing construction projects. There is usually a federal-state match and the states get reimbursed on a real-time basis. States are scheduled to get some $768 million dollars from the feds this week. They will get the money eventually, but will have to figure out how to make do without, for now. 

The GOP bullshit also led to a 21% fee cut for already strapped doctors who accept Medicare, furthering GOP ambitions to destroy the system entirely.

The American Medical Association warned of this last week: "A Medicare meltdown now seems certain, as the U.S. Senate has left early for the weekend, abandoning seniors, military families and baby boomers," reads an AMA statement from Friday. "The Senate failed to repeal the Medicare physician payment formula that will cause a drastic 21 percent payment cut to physicians who care for Medicare and TRICARE patients. On Monday, the 21 percent cut goes into effect, forcing many physicians to limit the number of Medicare and TRICARE patients they see in order to keep their practice doors open."

Another big victim of Republican game-playing and Bunning's psychosis is the job the Small Business Administration is doing to resuscitate the economy by helping small businesses. As voters are starting to grow furious with Bunning, the GOP is beginning to withdraw the support they've been surreptitiously giving him. But the two right-wing loons running for Bunning's seat in Kentucky, Rand Paul and Trey Grayson, have both publicly endorsed his idiocy.

Late last night Ryan Grim at HuffPo exposed the Republican caucus' anti-working-family jihad. Arizona extremist Jon Kyl, second in command at the GOP, who's been cheering Bunning on from the sidelines, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working."

Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended.

Update: It Isn't Just Bunning-- It's Out-Of-Control Conservatism's Worship Of Greed And Selfishness

This morning Roll Call pointed out that even some Republicans-- they singled out mainstream conservative Susan Collins of Maine-- were running away from the Bunning disaster as fast as their hind legs could take them.

Senate Republicans sought Tuesday to insulate themselves from the damage caused by Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) filibuster of a bill that would extend unemployment and health benefits and highway programs.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) took to the floor Tuesday morning to ask that the Senate vote within hours on the bill so that thousands of furloughed federal highway workers could go back to work and the unemployed could see a resumption of their jobless benefits... Collins said she was proffering the request on behalf of herself and “numerous” other GOP Senators with whom she had spoken.

Collins pointed out that "there are 500 Mainers whose benefits expired on Sunday," A friend of mine from Auburn, John Lavoie, who was laid off from a great manufacturing job because of criminal trade policies perpetrated by the Bushes and Clinton and crooked corporate-backed congressional scumbags on both sides of the aisle, is far more angry at Bunning than Ms. Collins. But no one is as angry as New Yorkers.

New York State is the biggest loser if the Senate fails to renew unemployment benefits soon.

The Labor Department projects that 54,300 claimants in the Empire State will lose their coverage if Congress fails to act on extending jobless benefits by Mar. 13.

The mistake being made by the media is to buy into the solo gunman theory. This isn't about a senile and hateful old kook from Kentucky. It's about the heart and soul of American conservatism. I like the way Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, framed the issue:

“Hard-working Americans facing a tough economy don’t deserve this. Putting benefits in jeopardy for hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions, of unemployed workers for the sake of a partisan political argument is an abuse of power, and should be treated as one... When it’s this easy for one person to make a bad situation worse, voters are right to be angry. Playing politics with peoples’ economic security, their homes, their children’s welfare and their livelihoods isn’t leadership and shouldn’t be tolerated by any party that claims to represent the American people. This is not an abstract debate about principle or philosophy. These are real people who are trying hard to find work and get back on their feet. Cutting off badly needed assistance at a time like this will only spread insecurity and greater hardship. Sen. Bunning did himself, his state and his country a great disservice and his colleagues should prevail upon him until he relents.”