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: I heard Dems have the Senate and Repubs have the House.
Is this a good combo or a bad one for us in trying to get an extension passed after November ?
The Democrats still have a simple majority in the Senate, but not enough votes to override a filibuster by the Republicans.
Given that the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated that his objective is to make Obama a one-term President, it doesn't sound like the Senate Republicans plan to be any more conciliatory in passing legislation that has been sponsored by the Democrats or for which Democrats have set terms that the Republicans have been rejecting all along.
Before the election, it appeared that if the Senate passed unemployment extensions, the House would probably go along with it. But the Republicans in the House can no longer be viewed as a single entity -- since the Tea Party Republicans are vehemently opposed to extending government entitlement programs, especially those which add to the deficit.
which is why when they do go to extend "entitlement" programs they are going to have to be offset or included in with GOP liked bills.....such as extending the bush tax cuts
LOL! Because that strategy worked sooooo well with past extensions of unemployment benefits -- when the Republicans didn't dominate the House and the Democrats actually had a chance of breaking a Republican filibuster in the Senate! Like the Republicans need to negotiate with the Democrats in Congress now!
: I heard Dems have the Senate and Repubs have the House.
Is this a good combo or a bad one for us in trying to get an extension passed after November ?
yes its a good combination. Would be even better if Republicans has Senate and the House, with Democrats having the White House, but this is a beginning to the end of bad bills being rammed down societies throats that have un-thought of negative consequences..
The current benefit extensions expire at the end of November. It will be during the lame duck session + 1 Republican Kirk will replace Burris in Illinois. Over the summer we had a long filibuster battle in the Senate until Collins and Snowe of Maine broke the filibuster and passed the benefits.
Mark Kirk is a moderate and will likely be closer to Snowe/Collins wing of the GOP (Mike Castle was the only Republican in the House to have a lower conservative rating from the various conservative groups than Mark Kirk).
So a possibility exists that Kirk will vote for the extension of benefits. Hoeven is another fairly moderate Republican (newly elected in North Dakota), but not quite in the Snowe/Collins or Kirk wing of the GOP and he is representing one of the few states not hit all that hard by the crisis, so its hard to say what he will do. As for the others that were elected, Coates, Toomey. Boozeman and Johnson I doubt they would vote for it.
Though the republicans have the house, more importantly the democrats have the senate and are still calling the shots. The left can (and should) return the favor to the republicans with the filibuster as well as Obama has the power to veto.
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