Boehner, A Captive To His Party's Sick Confederate Wing, Refuses To Allow A Vote On The Bi-Partisan Senate Unemployment Extension

Although the successful 61-35 cloture vote last week to break the Republican filibuster on extending unemployment benefits was the real test, yesterday the Senate officially passed the bill, 59-38, and sent it to the House. Boehner and Cantor have already decided that unemployed people and their families can die of hunger and cold for all they care and are refusing to allow the House to vote. Six Senate Republicans-- Dean Heller (R-NV), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)-- voted for it and there are enough Republican House Members willing to join the Democrats and pass it, but the Confederates who control the party refuse to allow it to be voted on and Boehner is too much under their thumb to let the bill go forward. Bernie Sanders summed the dilemma up perfectly: "After a long struggle here in the Senate, we managed to get a few Republicans on board to help us pass this legislation. Now, it goes to the House. After pushing for tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations, it would be unconscionable for the Republican House not to pass this legislation. If the House does not act, millions of jobless workers will be left out in the cold by the end of this year. That would be an outrage."

Endangered Republicans in normal, non-Confederate parts of the country-- Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Peter King (NY), Jon Runyan (NJ), Chris Smith (N.J), Chris Gibson (NY), Michael Grimm (NY) and Joe Heck (NV)-- are worried that this kind of obstruction from the GOP will further wreck the party brand and endanger their own reelection bids. They ran to the media frantically waving a letter they wrote to Boehner: "As many Americans continue to struggle without benefits, we respectfully request that the House immediately consider this bill or a similar measure to restore unemployment benefits to struggling Americans." Among the phony "moderates" refusing to sign the Republican letter were this dozen smug reactionaries. Bolded names are the ones the DCCC is giving free reelection passes (oh, almost all of them… what a coincidence!):

• Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
• Dave Reichert (R-WA)
• Richard Hanna (R-NY)
• Tom Petri (R-WI)
• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• Rodney Frelinghuysen IV (R-NJ)
• Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
• Charlie Dent (R-PA)
• Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
• Pat Meehan (R-PA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
• Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Jason Ritchie is the Democrat running against Reichert. Last night he was majorly pissed off that Reichert didn't join the Republicans pressuring Boehner to allow a vote. "Today," he told us, "I met with the Pierce County Labor Council and discussed how we can get Western Washington's skilled trades back to work. My union friends and co-workers have suffered under Rep. Reichert's unwillingness to move forward on any infrastructure reinvestment projects and his ignorance of middle class issues. Rep. Reichert isn't interested in helping local long-term unemployed families who are worried about making it another month. Moreover, he doesn't seem to grasp basic economic concepts like how renewing unemployment benefits helps stimulate the local economy.

"I am a job creator in the private sector, running on a platform of growing middle class living wage jobs that will pay down our debts and support our social safety net. Investing into our middle class is key to our economic recovery. Living wage jobs are middle class jobs and family jobs. We must renew unemployment benefits now to keep our skilled trades engaged and seeking new opportunities. We must move forward on infrastructure reinvestment and get our skilled trades back to work. With no jobs plan and no experience creating jobs in the private sector, it's time to retire Reichert."

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) spoke for their whole caucus when thanked the Senate for passing the bill and urged Boehner to put aside the ugly partisanship for once and just let the House vote. Grijalva: "Republicans seem to think everyone has exactly what they deserve and money is the measure of a person’s value. If you don’t have enough for their tastes, you’re out of luck and they have no interest in helping you. If you have a lot, they’ll go out of their way to make sure you get more at our expense. This damage this attitude has done to the American people is out there if Republicans care to take a look. Unemployment insurance is a fair system that keeps Americans out of poverty. Renewing it helps everyone and hurts no one. The only thing in the way is conservative ideology, and until Republicans start living in the real world, more families will continue to struggle for lack of a few votes in Congress."

Alan Grayson (D-FL) had a similar perspective, concerned about ordinary working families trying to keep it together in a difficult situation: "Unemployment insurance is a crucial lifeline for millions of Americans who are struggling to find work. When Republicans blocked an extension of the program in December, more than 1.7 million Americans-- including an estimated 73,000 Floridians-- lost that lifeline. Now that the Senate has passed legislation extending unemployment insurance, it’s time for the House to act. Millions of Americans are waiting on Speaker Boehner to allow a vote on this program, and they cannot afford to wait any longer." Earlier he had written to his constituents and supporters about the Ryan budget-- to which he submitted 8 amendments by yesterday's noon deadline:

[I]f you wanted to distill every form of right-wing economic lunacy into a 100-page document, then hypothetically, it would be the Ryan Budget… Tax cuts for the rich, the so-called "job creators." Tax cuts for multinational corporations, the other so-called "job creators." (Why don't they ever call them by their real name: the "job exporters"?) Cuts in middle-class tax benefits, like the deduction for pension benefits and IRAs, to pay for this. (Robin Hood in reverse.) Cuts in Medicaid and food stamps, because, you know, the Republicans want to make millions of sick, hungry poor people more self-reliant. A legal requirement to force the President to propose legislation to cut Social Security benefits and/or raise Social Security taxes, to make Obama do the Republicans' dirty work for them. Big jumps in student loan interest rates. And massive increases in military expenditures.

President Obama was right onboard with Grayson and Grijalva: "Today the Senate acted in a bipartisan way to reinstate emergency unemployment insurance for 2.3 million Americans who depend on it as they search for work. As I’ve said time and again, Washington needs to put politics aside and help these hard-working, responsible Americans make ends meet and support their families as they look for a job. Each week Congress fails to act on this crucial issue, roughly 70,000 long-term unemployed Americans lose their vital economic lifeline. I urge House Republicans to stop blocking a bipartisan compromise that would stem this tide, take up the bill without delay, and send it to my desk. Let’s remove this needless drag on our economy and focus on expanding opportunity for all Americans."

I want to add one more statement to the list of political leaders urging Boehner to act in good faith for once, Matt Cartwright (D-PA), freshman class president and a Member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. His statement was very simple and straight-forward: "These Americans lost their jobs-- and now their last lifeline, unemployment insurance-- through no fault of their own. They don’t deserve to lose their homes as well." Matt's 100% correct when he said "through no fault of their own." A failed European-style Austerity agenda pushed by Republicans is what put the economy in the toilet and forced millions of workers into unemployment. But the fact that this was coming from Matt is even weightier because GovTrack.us, a non-partisan watchdog group, just named him one of its "moderate Democratic leaders" because of his record of earning bipartisan support in Congress. Cartwright works across the aisle without ever selling out his progressive values-- or his constituents. I keep hearing from other Members that Matt is a potential leader for House Dems. Almost 2/3's of the bills he's introduced have received bipartisan support. That's rare in this obstructionist Congress, even for bills, like Matt's, that have included legislation to help schools retrofit to become more energy efficient, prevent elder abuse, improve mental health care for veterans, and provide greater flexibility for the families of deployed service members.