SENATE DEMS BREAK GOP FILIBUSTER; MILLIONS TO RECEIVE JOBLESS BENEFITS

WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Today the U.S. Senate cleared the way to extend long-term unemployment benefits, breaking a partisan stalemate that has caused more than 2 million jobless Americans to lose the weekly checks that help them stay afloat.

By a vote of 60 to 40, Democrats overcame a Republican procedural hurdle and moved toward a final vote, expected later today. The House of Representatives is expected to approve the measure on Wednesday and send it President Barack Obama to sign into law.

With congressional elections looming in November, the Senate had been locked in a partisan standoff for weeks over how to pay for extending benefits for those who have been out of work the longest.

Democrats, eager to show voters they are doing all they can to bring down the 9.5 percent unemployment rate, tried to extend the benefits when they expired at the end of May.

But they were blocked by Republicans who said the $34 billion price tag should be covered by cuts elsewhere rather than more borrowing that would add to a trillion-dollar budget deficit.

Nearly half of the 15 million Americans out of work have been jobless for more than six months, the highest level of long-term unemployment since the government began keeping track in the 1940s. Nearly a quarter of the unemployed have been out of work for more than a year.

Democrats broke the deadlock shortly after swearing in the new senator from West Virginia, Carte Goodwin, who gave them the 60th vote they needed to overcome the Republican procedural roadblock in the 100-seat chamber. Goodwin succeeds Robert Byrd, who died last month after 57 years in Congress.

Moderate Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe voted with the Democrats, while centrist Democrat Ben Nelson voted against the extension.

The fight over jobless benefits is the latest skirmish in a broader debate over whether Congress should spend further to stimulate the economy or start making the painful cuts needed to bring down record budget deficits, which hit 9.9 percent of GDP in the last fiscal year.

The GOP are a bunch of foolish hypocrites

On Monday, President Obama sought to cast his Republican opponents as hypocritical for having voted for extensions of unemployment benefits when his Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, was in the White House, but not now.  He accused Republican leaders of subscribing to what he called a misguided notion that providing unemployment aid to people lowers their incentive to look hard for a job.

"That attitude, I think, reflects a lack of faith in the American people," Obama said.

The GOP really want the 2010 election to be about spending and the deficit. They say they want to run on their fiscal conservative credentials -- which is a framing that Democrats should welcome.

Here's how the national debt has increased under Republican and Democratic presidents.  On the Democratic side, the national debt went up 42 percent under Jimmy Carter and 36 percent under Bill Clinton. On the Republican side, it went up 189 percent under Ronald Reagan, it went up 55 percent under George Bush senior, and it went up a whopping 89 percent under George Bush Jr.

So, is that the record of fiscal conservatism that Republicans want to run on?  Please, be my guest.  God forbid the truth gets in the way of GOP messaging.  Democrats and working families should welcome that debate.  It should make our jobs that much easier come November.