Thursday, December 02, 2010

How's That Bipartisanship Working For You?



The Republicans have been busy practicing it:

House Republicans have temporarily blocked legislation to feed school meals to thousands more hungry children.

Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to try to amend the $4.5 billion bill, which would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier. First lady Michelle Obama has lobbied for the bill as part of her "Let's Move" campaign to combat childhood obesity.

House Democrats said the GOP amendment, which would have required background checks for child care workers, was an effort to kill the bill and delayed a final vote on the legislation rather than vote on the amendment.

Because the nutrition bill is identical to legislation passed by the Senate in August, passage would send it to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature. If the bill were amended, it would be sent back to the Senate with little time left in the legislative session.
So much for the school lunches. The Republicans are not at all opposed to children eating, by the way. They simply don't want to pay for those meals, however poor the children happen to be.

Then Scott Brown, hobbling along in Ted Kennedy's shoes as the Senator from Massachusetts blocked the extension of unemployment benefits:

Scott Brown, the senator from Massachusetts who briefly captured the imagination of the tea party movement when he won Ted Kennedy's old seat, came under attack from his own constituents Wednesday after blocking a bill that would have extended jobless benefits due to expire this month.

Brown placed a hold on the $56-billion bill that came up on the Senate floor Tuesday, effectively preventing it from coming to a vote before the end of the lame-duck Senate session.

The result is that two million people currently collecting jobless benefits from the federal government will lose their benefits sometime over the next few weeks, depending on the state they live in. In Brown's home state of Massachusetts, an estimated 60,000 people are expected to lose their unemployment checks this month.
The Republicans quite like the unemployed, by the way. They just think that jobs are plentiful and only lazy people choose to stay unemployed.