ABC News reports that Bunning ends his Filibuster! Unemployment is extended.
Is the press lazy, or unprofessional, or is it that the press is just one-sided?
We all know what a filibuster is. The Senate needs 60 votes to pass legislation. This limits the majority party in the Senate from ignoring the minority party in the Senate. Simple enough.
And so the headline was confusing to me. One person can not filibuster, as a matter of fact it takes 41 Senators to filibuster so why the headline? By the way, the Senate had enough votes to pass the bill with or with out the Senator’s vote!
Right away I know the author of the article is giving me more opinion than the facts of the story.
One line of the story talks of Bunning’s “obstruction.”
How can one man obstruct a bill? Well ABC didn’t mention it, but I found out later that it is a Senate procedure called “Unanimous Consent.” I never heard of it either and ABC didn’t think it was important enough to include it in their article. What was important was that Senator Bunning is blocking people’s unemployment insurance.
What is Unanimous Consent? Since the press isn’t going to tell me, I’ll just find the link to the US Senate. Unanimous Consent is simply a procedure that a Senator (in this case Senator Reid) can request if he feels a bill must be passed immediately. If everyone agrees, that’s that, but if one Senator disagrees, then well, I guess you don’t have Unanimous Consent.
So Senator Reid was perfectly within his rights to request Unanimous Consent and Senator Bunning was perfectly within his rights to object. But if you listened to me there would be no story and no one to be called heartless!
Press here for ABC News acting very unprofessionally and blocking Bunning’s elevator on his way to the Senate floor to explain his objections.
The story to ABC news is why aren’t you spending money, how could you not spend money on something so important. This attitude reflects many in this country.
So what was Senator Bunning’s problem if everyone was ready to go along?
Senator Bunning’s best line was, “There comes a time when 100 senators are for something that we all support. If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for it, we’re not going to pay for anything.”
Now how are you going to argue with that! 100 Senators agree, but refuse to find the money in other programs and instead will kick the can down the road and add it to the deficit with all the other garbage.
Does Senator Bunning deserve all the bad press he is getting?
Is Senator Bunning heartless and doesn’t care who suffers?
I think we should listen to his words.
Our latest budget is 1 Trillion Dollars! Isn’t that a thousand billion dollars? Isn’t there 10 billion to cover this bill somewhere in there? How about reducing the dollar amount of the bill by eliminating some other things in the bill that are not related and passing a smaller bill? Have we used the word One Billion Dollars enough times now that it no longer has any meaning?
In my home One Hundred Dollars has meaning even though we can afford One Thousand Dollars without putting it on a credit card.
This Senator Bunning story points out a classic problem in society today. We want our government to spend money, our political representatives want to spend money, and so spend we will.
It is unimaginable that a day will come when there will be no one left to buy America’s debt, it is unimaginable that a day will come when the U.S. dollar just isn’t worth that much on the world market. It is unimaginable that a day will come when all the U.S. can do is print more money and the world will look at our dollar as just printed money, backed up by nothing.
Should I point out some things we thought unimaginable in the latest housing crisis? That was another post!
Senator Bunning was making a legitimate point that few are willing to listen to.
I never heard of Senator Bunning before, I don’t know his politics, I doubt if I would agree with him on most issues, but in this case Senator Bunning was tarred and feathered for no particular reason. I think that says a lot about our society and I think it is a shame.
CDsailor
