The big political news of the day was the Senate’s passage of a $15 billion jobs bill with not one, not two, but five Republicans on board. The five Republicans who voted for it were the three Northeasterners (Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, and Massachusetts’ Scott Brown) and two retiring members (Sens. Kit Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio). In other words, considering the bill was largely made up of tax cuts that the GOP would normally vote for, it was still an astoundingly weak show of Republican support.
But it’s undeniable that the appearance of Republican Senate votes is a change from the dismal pattern of recent months. Does the vote herald a new day for the Senate? Too early to tell, of course — but it does give a hint of how Senate Democrats’ plan to break up their job-creation initiatives into smaller pieces and forcing Republicans to vote against them could work.
Brown, in a statement following his vote, said, “I came to Washington to be an independent voice, to put politics aside and to do everything in my power to help create jobs for Massachusetts families.” How did Brown’s vote go over with conservatives? Take a guess. In the months to come, the breakup between Brown and the Tea Partiers — because, let’s face it, Brown is a moderate Republican — will make for compelling political theater.
More important than Brown’s vote is what effect it might have on the Maine senators. You may recall that Collins and Snowe were two of three GOP votes for the stimulus bill. Snowe also gave a vote to the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill. Will the appearance of another Northeastern moderate Republican embolden them to break off more often from their party’s obstructionist game plan? If so, then bipartisanship actually comes back into play for Democrats in the Senate.
While the jobs bill is too small to have much of an effect, it is, in the words of economist Mark Zandi, a “good first step.” Reid’s idea was to have votes on a succession of job-creation measures that would force Republicans to either keep saying “no” on bills that should be popular with the public or join Democrats in getting something done. The question now is whether the Democrats can follow through. To be continued.
