Republicans Kill President's Jobs Bill (Again)

In the past few years, Congress has let our transportation infrastructure go to seed, and now we are left with far too many crumbling bridges and roads. While other nations, such as China, are spending large sums to improve their infrastructure, the United States is letting its crumble away. After all, the Republicans had other uses for that money -- two unnecessary wars and tax cuts & subsidies for the richest Americans and corporations (who repaid their country by exporting American jobs and laying off American workers).

Now we are left with not only a crumbling infrastructure, but about 20 million unemployed workers. President Obama is trying to take the first steps toward solving both problems. Even though the Republicans had already killed his larger jobs bill, and then blocked an effort to save teacher and first responder jobs -- the president keeps trying. This time he introduced a bill to spend about $60 billion on repairing and improving our transportation infrastructure.

The president's bill would not have increased the yearly deficit or the overall national debt, because it would have been paid for with a small increase on those making more than $1,000,000 a year. A majority of Americans supported this bill -- both the putting people back to work to renovate our infrastructure and the raising of taxes on millionaires.

But the Republicans killed the bill in the U.S. Senate by blocking a cloture motion which would have allowed the bill to come to the Senate floor for debate and a vote. The bill needed 60 votes, but was able to get only 51 votes. Every Republican, except Sen. Snowe (Maine), voted against the bill. Two blue dogs Sen. Nelson (Nebraska) and Sen. Lieberman (Connecticut) voted with the Republicans to kill the bill.

The Republicans couldn't claim the bill was a "budget-buster" since it was revenue neutral, so why did they vote against repairing the infrastructure and creating jobs? As usual, it was to protect the rich from having to pay their fair share of taxes. They decided that allowing the rich to keep from paying taxes was more important than creating jobs or renovating our crumbling infrastructure.

Once again, the Republican Party has shown that it is the party of and for the rich -- and couldn't care less about the rest of America. Any American making less than $250,000 a year would be a fool to vote Republican, because the Republicans in Congress never vote for them.

By the way, can anyone remember the last time that Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who claims to be a Democrat, actually voted with the Democrats on anything? Why does the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee keep giving him money?