Late last night the Senate defeated the Big 3 bailout on a procedural vote of 52-35. In order to pass, the bill needed 8 more votes. After the final tally, the Senators had an opportunity to voice their opinions in closing remarks. As one would surmise, the Democrats took the partisan position and cast blame to the other side of the aisle for the defeat of the $14 billion bailout. The exchange between Senator Durbin and Senator Specter below is enlightening, especially given the fact that Senator Specter supported the bailout.
Excerpt from Senator Dick Durbin (IL-D) comments:
I don’t know if this rescue package would have worked. I am not sure. I don’t know if it would have been enough, or whether it would have failed, but I thought we owed our best efforts to try to save an industry that means so much to America in so many States, whether it is Michigan or Indiana or Ohio or Illinois, thousands of workers, in Missouri, 55,000 workers; so many workers depend on this industry. We had a chance to do something for them tonight and we failed. We failed because we couldn’t bring over enough votes from the other side of the aisle to come to the magic number of 60.
Excerpt from Senator Arlen Specter (PA-R) rebuttal:
Madam President, I have sought recognition to comment on the cloture vote and to give my reasons for voting in support of cloture. Before I do, however, I wish to comment about where the responsibility lies for failure to invoke cloture to move this bill forward, and my hope that we would avoid fingerpointing and trying to assess blame, each on the other side, as has become the pattern in this body during the course of the last 2 years of the 110th Congress and beyond.
The Senator from Illinois said there were not sufficient votes on the Republican side of the aisle. Well, there were sufficient votes on the Republican side of the aisle, had they been joined with sufficient votes on the Democratic side of the aisle. There were 10 Republican Senators who voted to invoke cloture: Senator Bond, Senator Brownback, Senator Collins, Senator Lugar, Senator Voinovich, Senator Warner, Senator Dole, Senator Domenici, Senator Snowe, and myself.
There are 51 Senators on the other side of the aisle. Had those 51 Senators–or 50 of them joined with the 10 Republican Senators, cloture would have been invoked. But it would be my hope that we would leave this evening without partisan blame and still seek some way to get the kind of economic assistance that would enable the Big Three to continue to operate.
Sad commentary on the Democrats inability to hold ranks and then have the audacity to point the finger at the Republicans for bringing this bill to its knees………..and a “partisan” in a pear tree!
This also goes to show why the next two years are going to be so scary. Snowe, Collins and Specter have not an iota of conservative principle within them. Throw in a couple of others like Coleman (if he gets seated) and it is hard to imagine any situation where 40 votes will cobble together to hold the Dems from what they want.
Could that crash have been intentional? This wouldn’t be the first time the Dems have intentionally crashed a bill in order to blame Republicans.
Intentional? Obviously! The Dems have no spine for making decisions and accepting the good or bad consequences. They want to make sure they can point fingers everywhere if it turns out to be a bad decision….which all of these bail outs have been!