Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s vote to break a Republican filibuster of President Obama’s jobs bill last month may have gotten him into hot water with the Tea Party set, but now it seems he is trying to make amends with the GOP’s ultra-right fringe by speaking up for his colleague and least popular member of the U.S. Senate, Kentucky’s Sen. Jim Bunning.
Brown went out of his way to praise Bunning’s five-day block on extending jobless benefits and COBRA subsidies for millions of unemployed workers in today’s Washington Post:
(T)he newest Republican senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, said Bunning had done the right thing in holding up the measure “I don’t think it’s about party, it’s about good government,” said Brown, who was elected in January vowing to promote fiscal discipline.
Bunning’s action not only put the economic future of millions of Americans at risk, it also led to the forced furlough of more than 2,000 federal workers – drawing ire from millions of working families and even members of his own party.
But not Brown:
The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that’s being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself.
While Bay State voters may have thought that they were getting a moderate Republican in the mold of previous Northeast GOP leaders, Brown’s formation of a one-man cheering section for Bunning’s stunt certainly does “speaks for itself,” about what kind of Senator he will be.
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Discuss
2 Comments . Comments are closed.Washington *is* broken
if it allows one old coot the power of stopping 99 of his colleagues from doing the business of the American people.
Is this REALLY how it works, though?
I need a crash course in Senate rules. I was under the impression that institutional courtesy compelled at least the party of the holding Senator to back him up, but that it was not actually REQUIRED that they do so in the rules. I get the concept of unanimous consent, but I assumed that an objection would not stop it in its tracks, but rather require that a vote be taken. At that point if Bunning's vote is the only one opposed he would be out of luck.
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