SENATOR BUNNING’S ONE MAN STAND HAS REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES FOR WORKING PEOPLE AND THEIR FAMILIES—2,000 EMPLOYESS AT DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION FURLOUGHED—5 MILLION LOSE COBRA MEDICAL COVERAGE—400,000 LOSE UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE—CONSTRUCTION WORKERS LAID OFF BECAUSE PROJECTS WERE HALTED. ALL DUE TO ONE MAN.
While Jon Stewart seemed optimistic about the progress made by last week's health care summit, the media's overall consensus was that nothing had been accomplished. But as he pointed out last night, it wasn't the only issue bogged down by Republican opposition. Stewart took on Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, mocking his repeated objections to a bill that would extend unemployment benefits for 30 days.
Making Bunning out to be a villain who'll obstruct anything from legislation to birthday pizza, Stewart noted that in the Senate it often takes 60 votes to get anything done, but "sometimes in the Senate it only takes one person to cock the whole thing up." How draining were Bunning's nine objections? Toward the end, Al Franken began to look like a broken down old man.
Stewart acknowledged that despite the Democrats' hopes that he'd get sleepy, Bunning was willing to stay up as long as necessary -- even if it meant missing the basketball game he'd planned on watching. Stewart summed up his ridiculousness: "You see that's the difference between Jim Bunning's pain and the pain of the unemployed. Jim Bunning's pain can be fixed by a Tivo."
The consequences of this blatant, partisan obstructionism at a time of economic need could not be clearer, and will be felt starting today:
For the first time in 20 years, thousands of construction workers across the country aren't at work today and major road projects are halted.
2,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Transportation are furloughed at a time when vehicle safety problems are threatening lives on our nation's roads.
Federal reimbursements to states for highway and transit projects--on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each day--will stop, which could force a halt in construction work and layoffs of construction workers in the middle of worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
An estimated 500,000 workers who lose their jobs will be ineligible for subsidies to cover the cost of health care over this month. Over the rest of 2010, an estimated 5 million workers will be ineligible for the Recovery Act COBRA subsidies that cover 65% of the cost of coverage. Without this assistance, many of these families will be forced to join the ranks of the uninsured.
Nearly 3,000 businesses this month will be denied access to the loans they need to run their businesses, to pay their employees and vendors, and to create new jobs.
400,000 individuals who cannot find work will lose their unemployment insurance. And within a month, that number of Americans who lose benefits will increase to 1.5 million and within two months nearly 3 million Americans will have lost their benefits.
If Congress fails to act quickly, payment rates for doctors in Medicare will be cut by 21.2 percent. These cuts will substantially impair doctors' ability to maintain care for Medicare patients. This will affect 600,000 doctors nationwide, including 8,105 in Senator Bunning's state of Kentucky.
There's nothing wrong with someone taking a principled stand for something they believe in, but Senator Bunning voted to extend these same benefits in 2008. And over the past decade, unemployment insurance extensions have been passed as emergency measures under Republican and Democratic Congresses alike. So what we're seeing right now is politics at its worst. It's a perfect example of why so many Americans are fed up with Washington.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Tuesday, March 2nd 2010 at 9:02AM
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