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Senate Rejects Extending Jobless Benefits- Measure Fails By Kerry's Missed Vote
AP ^ | 5/11/04

Posted on 05/11/2004 5:34:48 PM PDT by 11th Earl of Mar

By MARY DALRYMPLE, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Senate by a single vote rejected an election-year effort Tuesday to extend federal unemployment benefits.

 

Democrats tried to attach the benefit to a corporate tax bill. On a 59-40 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, they fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome objections that extending the benefits violated last year's budget agreement.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the only senator who missed the vote. Kerry was campaigning Tuesday in Kentucky.

The amendment would have offered emergency federal unemployment benefits for six months, temporarily giving 13 weeks of extra assistance to people who exhaust their state benefits — typically 26 weeks.

The unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent last month as employers added nearly 300,000 new jobs. The Labor Department (news - web sites) has reported that payrolls have risen for eight months in a row, with almost 900,000 new jobs created so far this year, most within the last two months.

Republicans seized on April's employment report as evidence that more federal unemployment benefits are not needed.

"The employment picture in this country is looking up, by any measure," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "I believe it's time to end the program."

Democrats said the extended benefits are needed because the economic recovery still hasn't replaced 1.5 million jobs lost since President Bush (news - web sites) took office.

"Keep our social compact and extend these needed unemployment benefits," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

The amendment's sponsor, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said it would have cost $5.8 billion to offer the temporary benefits, which would have been drawn from $13.3 billion in the unemployment insurance trust fund. Republicans said it would cost $9 billion.

Kerry spokesman David Wade said, "John Kerry has fought again and again to extend unemployment benefits for workers left behind in the Bush economy. The reason we haven't succeeded is because George Bush opposes extending unemployment insurance and so do his allies in the Republican House of Representatives and 39 Republican senators."

Steve Schmidt, a Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman, said: "Last month, John Kerry was pushing for the extension of unemployment benefits. Today he had the chance to actually vote on that question but was too busy playing politics when he would have made the difference in the Senate."




TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: awol; haha; jeanfrancois; kerry; unemploymentbenefits
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
I guess it doesn't matter if Kerry is AWOL from the Senate this year, even to the DemoRATS. I wonder if anyone has thought about how Bush has been running a war and campaigning at the same time. Geez, Kerry can't even manage to make a simple vote. What a F'ing WUSS.
21 posted on 05/11/2004 6:06:36 PM PDT by PattonReincarnated (Rebuild the Temple)
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To: votelife
You know, in that picture of Kerry testifying during the 1970's, he looks just like Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo cartoon.

Guess Hanoi Jane really did lead him around by the leash....

22 posted on 05/11/2004 6:10:10 PM PDT by tenthirteen
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
I'm curious how Specter voted on this. Did he pay Bush back for his support? I doubt it. He never has before, and I don't expect he will if he is reelected.

I assume the 59 include the usual suspects--Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chaffee.
23 posted on 05/11/2004 6:11:19 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
hehehe. You can't make up a candidate as inept as this one.
24 posted on 05/11/2004 6:11:31 PM PDT by Darlin' ("I will not forget this wound to my country." President George W Bush, 20 Sept 2001)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
Har har! To quote Homer Simpson from the tomacco epsiode, "but what can I as one person do?"
25 posted on 05/11/2004 6:12:04 PM PDT by Puddleglum (Are you a Republican? ARE YOU? Lord Kerry demands an answer!)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
LOL!

New George Bush Ad:

Voice over: Kerry sure talks a lot about American's being unemployment yet, what is he doing to help the unemployed?

Cut to: Empty Senate chair while vote for the unemployment insurance falls short

26 posted on 05/11/2004 6:12:16 PM PDT by BossLady (What do your choices cost you????)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
Hell, when I first heard of this, I figured that Kerry's vote would just mean a tie and Cheney could break the tie.

But now I find that it was a cloture vote and KERRY MISSED IT.

Let's see how Partisan Media plays this in the morning. You can bet that I'll be looking at the NYT, Washington Compost, LA Times, etc..

Karl Rove should be able to ride this one at least through the election.
27 posted on 05/11/2004 6:17:04 PM PDT by jackbill
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To: votelife
"I was for unemployment extensions before I decided to not vote on it."

LOL LOL LOL Too funny!!!
28 posted on 05/11/2004 6:17:10 PM PDT by Lockbar
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
LOL! Kerry has sh*t in his own nest this time. Extending jobless benefits on and on is exactly what keeps the need for jobless benefits in demand. Thanks to you Kerry, the unemployed stay at home and sit on their assites, will have to seek employement that is plentiful and the whole damn world will be able to see that, it ain't the economy stupid, it's just the liberals, making sitting on your ass more profitable than working.

Thank you Senator Heinz-Kerry.
29 posted on 05/11/2004 6:20:40 PM PDT by F.J. Mitchell (Republicans who die between now and 2 Nov. will be voting for Kerry. Stay healthy!)
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To: Howlin
So much for the "he's cutting your benefits" argument!

If Kerry keeps this up, he's gonna have to have surgery on another body part soon

30 posted on 05/11/2004 6:21:05 PM PDT by Mo1 (Make Michael Moore cry.... DONATE MONTHLY!!!)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
What an idiot!
31 posted on 05/11/2004 6:21:34 PM PDT by LoudRepublicangirl (loudrepublicangirl)
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To: 68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub
In other words, Hanoi John is nothing more than a titless Hanoi Jane.
32 posted on 05/11/2004 6:24:08 PM PDT by F.J. Mitchell (Republicans who die between now and 2 Nov. will be voting for Kerry. Stay healthy!)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
He isn't the nominee - he knows it and doesn't care any more.

If he wants to shoot his mouth off about Iraq and the "scandal", he should at least who up for the hearings.

Now this with the unemployment? He isn't the nominee and he's bitter - wants to take down the ship is my guess.
33 posted on 05/11/2004 6:25:29 PM PDT by mabelkitty (Karpinski Six -- brought to you by the Media, Inc.)
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To: Howlin
So much for the "he's cutting your benefits" argument!




Ha!
Bump that straight to the top!
34 posted on 05/11/2004 6:26:05 PM PDT by onyx (Rummy's job is winning the war, not micro-managing some damn prison.)
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To: Mike Darancette
"That is delicious."

Better yet Kerry was busy campaigning in a state he's sure to lose by 15 points
35 posted on 05/11/2004 6:27:59 PM PDT by boxsmith13
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
Ironically, Kerry has been running an ad locally which says he cast the deciding vote on BClinton's job creation package around 1993.

Trouble is, from other reports, it was Bob KerrEy, not John Kerry, who held up the legislation until he got some perk and then cast the deciding vote.

Johnny must have gotten himself confused with Bobby.
36 posted on 05/11/2004 6:29:54 PM PDT by TomGuy (Clintonites have such good hind-sight because they had their heads up their hind-ends 8 years.)
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To: boxsmith13
Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck!!!
37 posted on 05/11/2004 6:30:20 PM PDT by livius
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
Realistically, this was probably a Republican trap for Kerry. I suspect that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had one or two Republican Senators in his pocket who he could have pressured into switching their votes to prevent cloture if it had been necessary.

If Kerry had returned to Washington, D.C. to vote on the measure, some Republican would have switched and Kerry's vote wouldn't have mattered. But in that case Kerry would have wasted a day (at least) of campaigning and disrupted his schedule for what would have turned out to be a pointless vote.

Instead Kerry stayed on the campaign trail and the Republicans made him look bad for missing a "decisive" vote. Frist probably deliberately encouraged some Republican Senators to vote for cloture just so that the absent Kerry would be the difference. And it also helped those Senators in close re-election races if they could say they supported more unemployment benefits.

If my analysis is correct, the neat thing is that the Republicans can play this game over and over. The amendment to extend unemployment benefits can be attached to other measures, forcing Kerry to again have to choose between interrupting his campaign or being blamed for the loss. If he comes back for a vote, one Republican Senator who previously voted for cloture will switch on the grounds that the amendment isn't "germane", but then say that he'll consider voting for it as an amendment to a more pertinent measure. And thus the game can continue.

38 posted on 05/11/2004 6:32:04 PM PDT by dpwiener
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To: Perlstein; Howlin; William McKinley; LS; Mark Felton; Willie Green
Shrum doesn't even know enough to count votes ahead of time in the Senate. Ouch. Poor Senator Kerry, he's got the worst political team in modern history.

Even freshmen Congressmen know to count who's voting for what before missing (or not) a vote or roll call.

Worse, apparently even political veterans and insiders like Senator Kennedy and Clinton aren't even calling to give him a heads up about the status of the Senate floor.

39 posted on 05/11/2004 6:35:24 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: All
Kerry the dweeb drives me nuts. The best I can do today is:

Hey John, why the long face? and

Teeny Tommy is totally ticked.

40 posted on 05/11/2004 6:38:15 PM PDT by Sacajaweau (God Bless Our Troops!!)
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