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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

You Call This Family Values?

The Senate has voted to approve the stimulus bill and it is on it’s way to President Obama’s (doesn’t it feel great saying those words) desk.

But something about this really stinks.

The final vote was 60-38.  It only became law because Sen. Sherrod Brown left his family in Ohio, realing from the death of his mother, to cast a vote, a vote that would not have been necessary if Republicans had not tried to filibuster this bill.

Let’s be clear on this.  If they had abandoned the filibuster and allowed a formal vote, it would not have been necessary for Sen. Brown to leave his family at a time of grief to return to Washington.  But the GOP attempted a filibuster that THEY KNEW WOULD FAIL and forced him to leave his family, greiving after his mother lost her battle with leukemia, to return to cast a vote.

What kind of “family values” are we witnessing here?  Who does this to a colleague?


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/ 23 Comments

23 comments

  1. the national gadfly

    “selfish, lying pricks; bent only on funneling wealth from 99% of America into the pockets of .001% of the country.”

    But, hey…I’m sure that if I was a different person, a better person, a worthy person (like a CEO of a Fortune 100 company that manufactures arms, drugs, banking or insurance), then I would have a much more enlightened and patriotic view of these descendants (literal or figurative don’t matter) of slaveowners and plantations.

    In closing, I’d like to say that they are on the wrong side of history…and they suck.

    -gadfly

  2. sricki

    and it’s appalling. But the fact is, Republicans are focused right now on saving their careers, not making ethical decisions. It’s interesting — one would have hoped to see a subtle shift toward more moderate GOP policies in the wake of devastating defeats in November. Not so, as it turns out. In fact, it seems that much of the party is running in the opposite direction. The leader of the Republican party right now is effectively Rush Limbaugh.

    The few Republicans in the House and Senate who had the guts to stand up and do the right thing may pay for it politically. Setrak posted an excellent diary on DKos with a quote from Specter:

    “When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today,” said Specter, “one of my colleagues said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ My Republican colleague said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ I said, ‘Are you going to vote with me?’ And he said, ‘No, I might have a primary.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know very well I’m going to have a primary.'”

    When asked how many Republicans he thought secretly “supported” the bill, Specter stated:

    “I think a sizable number,” he said. “I think a good part of the caucus agrees with the person I quoted, but I wouldn’t want to begin to speculate on numbers.”

    Being the 60th and deciding vote isn’t easy for a centrist who will likely face a more conservative primary challenger and then a more liberal general election opponent.

    “I’d feel less uncomfortable about being the sixty-first and even better about being the sixty-seventh, but I’ll take ’em one at a time,” he said.

    So granted, it’s cold-hearted and shameful. But for the most part it’s just fear, with no consideration for anything or anyone else.  

  4. nrafter530

    the 60 vote threshold is not due to a filibuster, but rather a Senate concurrent resolution in the Budget Act that requires 3/5 majority to spend on a deficit.

  5. Kysen

    They are not asking anything of others that they’d not do themselves.

    After all, Newt Gingrich left the bedside of his wife when she was in the hospital with cancer…oh…wait…that was to F*ck another woman. Nevermind.

    Seriously, though, the string of colorful names that comes to mind to call these ______’s…is rather taxing on my brain at 4:30am.

    Family values my ass.

    /head explodes

  6. HappyinVT

    but it would have been classy for Sen. Voinovich to cast an “aye” vote while noting his objections to spare Sen. Brown the need to come back and then go back for the funeral.

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