Repugican Bunning has dropped his filibuster, finally. The final vote to pass the bill was 78-19, a rather extraordinary margin, suggesting that the repugicans were not pleased with Bunning's ongoing charade.
It seems to be beyond the ability of political reporters to wrap their minds around it, but there was an important matter of principle involved in opposing repugican Jim Bunning's filibuster of unemployment payments. Reporters can't see beyond the political optics of the situation - clearly good for Democrats - but there is an economic principle that was reason enough not to cave to Bunning's temper tantrum.
The bill that Bunning was filibustering extended the provisions of the stimulus package for another month to fund various transportation bills, unemployment benefits, COBRA, etc. What Bunning wanted to do is pay for this extension with taxes or spending cuts taken out of... the stimulus bill!
In other words, he was trying to eliminate the stimulus effects of this spending. Deficit spending is what a stimulus IS. If we fully offset stimulus spending then WE DON'T HAVE A STIMULUS!!! So what repugican Bunning was trying to do was undermine the very ability of the government to stimulate the economy, and thus undermine economic recovery itself.
The repugicans were wrong when they wanted to do this in the 1930's and they are still wrong today. Channeling Herbert Hoover is not a good way to run our economy. (or even vacuum the floor ... oh, wait that's another kind of Hoover - never mind, please return to your normal activities)
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