Once Democrat Carte Goodwin is sworn in Tuesday to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd, Senate Democrats will have the votes to try again to extend unemployment insurance to the jobless.
Washington – For congressional Democrats – especially in the often-gridlocked US Senate – this week marks a sprint to wind up a large, unfinished agenda in time to sway midterm elections.
Big-ticket items range from energy and campaign-finance reform to decisions over expiring Bush-era tax cuts, war funding, and 12 spending bills for fiscal year 2011, which begins Oct. 1. On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court, with a full Senate vote expected later in the week.
With the swearing-in on Tuesday of Democrat Carte Goodwin to fill the seat of the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Democrats say they have the 60th vote needed break a Republican filibuster and approve a long-stalled $34 billion extension of unemployment benefits.
Highlighting the unfinished Senate agenda in his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama charged Republicans with “filibustering the nation’s economic recovery” and making a stand “on the backs of the unemployed.” Most Senate Republicans oppose the measure on the grounds that Democrats have not identified offsetting spending cuts to pay for it.
“We’re all for extending unemployment insurance. The question is, when are we going to get serious … about the debt?” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We recently passed a $13 trillion cumulative deficit threshold. When are we going to get serious about this? This administration has been on an incredible spending spree.”
Back in February, when maverick Sen. Jim Bunning (R) of Kentucky launched a one-man bid to block a $10 billion, temporary extension of eligibility for unemployment insurance, 78 senators opposed him, including 19 of his GOP colleagues. But since then, Senate Republicans, with the exception of Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, have rallied around the theme of reining in federal deficits, even at the expense of unemployed constituents.
“There’s bipartisan support for the idea of helping the unemployed. The Democrats missed a great opportunity to pass a bill showing that we could also control costs,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina.
At the same time, Republicans say there is no need to offset the cost of extending the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, now set to expire Dec. 31. If these cuts expire, the highest income tax bracket jumps from 35 percent to 39.6 percent; the lowest, from 10 percent to 15 percent. The top rate for dividends, now 15 percent, runs up to 39.6 percent. The top rate for taxes on capital gains rises from 15 to 20 percent. The estate tax, which dropped to zero for 2010, reverts to a top rate of 55 percent.
“We believe that the problem is not that we tax too little but that we spend too much,” Senator McConnell said Sunday.
Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to extend the Bush tax cuts for families with incomes less than $250,000 a year and for individuals earning less than $200,000 – a measure that Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimates will cost $300 billion annually.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.