There is only one party that has shut down the government. There is only one party that has ever held 320 pieces of legislation off the Senate floor by filibuster or by holds or parliamentary moves in a single legislative session. There is only one party that has filibustered initiates to help put Americans back to work even though they originally came up with the initiate. The Party of No! name has never before been attached to any party. The Republicans have totally earned that name. If Obama proposed it, they would be against eternal life.
Of course, one expects opposition to things a party honestly opposes when that party is in opposition. But opposing legislation they themselves proposed, that takes a Party of NO!. Republicans have made a cold calculation that if they can obstruct enough and hurt the economy enough, cause enough unemployment, voters will blame Democrats and Republicans gain control of the House and Senate this November.
The evidence of this was made clear yet again today. There is a section of the Stimulus bill that has actually enjoyed broad bipartisan support. The TANF Emergency Fund has put 240,000 Americans to work. It is about to expire. Both parties agree it works. Even arch conservative Republican Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, head of the Republican Governor’s Association, said it had created m2400 jobs in his state.
House Democrats easily passed a one year extension to TANF months ago. But in the Senate, on three separate occasions when Democrats tried to the extension bill up for a vote, one single Republican Senator objected and put a hold on it. So today it expired, and nearly a quarter of a million Americans will lose their jobs this month thanks to that. That’s not loyal opposition, it is putting partisan politics above the good of the nation.