The Republicans in the U.S. Senate (with the notable exceptions of Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) voted last week against the extension of unemployment insurance for millions of American workers who lost their jobs and are out there looking for new jobs. This vote happened in two stages: first the Senate voted to stop a Republican filibuster against the unemployment benefits. Then, 30 hours later, the Senate voted to finally pass the unemployment benefits package on to the White House for President Obama’s signature.
The Republicans insist that they care about people who are unemployed and like the idea of an unemployment insurance extension, but just don’t want to spend money on accomplishing that goal. It’s a deficit thing, they say. We might be a bit dubious about this claim, considering how many Republicans in the Senate voted to start two wars in the last decade without considering the impact on the deficit, or how many Republicans in the Senate voted more recently to spend billions of dollars on subsidies for the record-profit oil industry and billions more on the construction of new C-17 transport planes that the Defense Department said it didn’t need or want.
We also might be dubious about this claim for a more procedural reason. Recall that there were two votes required in the Senate to pass the unemployment insurance extension bill, two votes separated by 30 hours. There’s a provision in Senate rules that allows a minority to delay final passage of a bill by 30 hours if they so choose. Usually this provision is waived. Last week, the provision was exercised by Senate Republicans.
The delay of final passage of the bill by 30 hours didn’t save the money for unemployment insurance from being spent. After the first vote occurred, final passage was guaranteed, so the insistence on a 30 hour delay didn’t further the supposed goal of deficit reduction. What the GOP’s delay did accomplish was a further 30-hour delay in laid-off American workers getting their unemployment insurance checks.
If the Senate Republicans really did care about unemployed American workers, then when it became clear the insurance extension bill would pass, they ought to have stopped standing in the way, stopped with their delays, and helped Senate Democrats expedite the arrival of the insurance checks in Americans’ mailboxes. But instead, the Senate Republicans (again, with the notable exceptions of Senators Collins and Snowe) exerted themselves to delay help’s arrival, with no effect whatsoever but the further passage of time. It is hard to reconcile the Republicans’ claim that they really do care with their callous behavior on the floor.
