Here’s the latest Republican obscenity: Senate GOP blocks jobless aid extension

Senate Republicans on Thursday once again blocked legislation to reinstate long-term unemployment benefits for people who have exhausted their aid, prolonging a stalemate that has left more than a million people without federal help.

With the Senate apparently paralyzed by partisan gridlock, the fate of the aid, as well as tax breaks for businesses and $16 billion in aid for cash-strapped states, remains unclear. …

Republican lawmakers — joined by Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska — maintained a unified front to sustain a filibuster of the $110-billion bill. The vote was 57 to 41; the majority was three short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and bring the bill to a final vote.
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It was the third time in two weeks that Democrats failed to circumvent unified GOP opposition, despite making a series of changes to accommodate complaints about deficit spending.

The latest bill was a pared-back version of the $140-billion measure approved by the House. Last week, Democrats agreed to slash unemployment benefits by $25 billion to cut costs. In the latest version, Democrats scaled back funding for Medicaid aid to states.

The Labor Department estimates that more than 1.2 million long-term unemployed will have lost their benefits by the end of this week.

So millions of long-term unemployed will lose their benefits. The economy, which has barely been managing to keep moving uphill, will once again start losing traction. Everybody will get screwed just a little more than they already were.

All because the clowns who added trillions to the national debt without blinking or thinking suddenly chose to get that old-time religion when Obama came to power. And by now they have their whole electoral strategy riding on a weak and tepid economy. So they’re going to fight to keep it weak and tepid every which way they can.

The only thing Republicans have opposed in this debate are job-killing taxes and adding to the national debt,” (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) said.

The unemployment extension would add about $30 billion to the national debt. Democrats say all the provisions in the bill are offset by spending cuts and tax increases except the jobless benefits, which Congress traditionally has approved as an emergency without looking for a way to pay for them. Benefits for the long-term unemployed lapsed at the end of May because of the congressional stalemate.

It’s pretty transparent what Republicans are up to. May they collectively rot in hell for it.

Time to update the car-ditch metaphor:
These guys put us into a car, and drove us into a ditch, and then just walked away, refusing to lift one damn finger to help us get out of the ditch. These same guys want to persuade us to get back into the same car with them, so that the same drivers, in the same impaired state, can drive us down the same damn road again. Meanwhile, the car is still in the ditch. And now these guys have decided that they won’t even let the tow-truck through. Because what passes for their brain has told them that if we stew in the car-in-the-ditch long enough, maybe that will make us willing to get back in the car with them. (And we might just be collectively dumb enough to fall for it.)