Harry Reid to force a jobs bill cloture vote on Monday

  Harry Reid stunned Democrats and Republicans– as well as the president– when he decided to throw out the bipartisan jobs bill effort in favor of his own, slimmed down version. Now he is preparing to force a cloture vote on his bill on Monday.

  This slimmed down version excludes two provisions that Democrats have deemed vital to the American people– an extention of unemployment benefits and sending more federal money to the states. This does not seem to be a major stumbling block as Harry Reid has promised to address those issues in other upcoming bills. His strategy is apparently to pass as much as possible in multiple smaller bills instead of one big bill. The ommision of these two issues is not likely to stall this bill as Democrats are just hoping to pass anything at this point so that they can show some type of progress.

  There is still one notion that I can’t get past; and that is the fact that while this bill is being called a jobs bill, it is nothing more than a second stimulus bill under a new name designed to get the support of the American people. The American people as a whole have soured on the stimulus bill; they feel that it has failed and because of this congress is afraid to release the unspent stimulus money– most of the stimulus money has not yet been released, but with the anti-stimulus sentiment growing congress has decided not to release that money in favor of creating another stimulus bill under a different name in an attempt to fool the American people. 

  The stated goal of the stimulus bill was to stimulate the economy and to create or save jobs but unemployment is rising and the economy remains stagnant. So congress is now going to pass a “jobs bill.” What is the goal of a jobs bill? To create jobs. That description is too close to the description of the stimulus bill to be a coincidence. This is a second stimulus bill, but congress did not want to call it that because of the anti-stimulus sentiment. If the first stimulus bill failed and the American people know this, why would congress pass a second stimulus bill when most of the money allocated under the first stimulus bill remains unspent? They wouldn’t, unless they called it something else and that is the tact they have decided to take. They have decided that they are never going to release the rest of the stimulus money and have decided to pass another bill with the same goals instead.

  The Democrats’ mantra seems to be, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Are the American people going to be fooled by this renaming of the second stimulus bill? I don’t know, only time will tell, but I have to think that the American people will see that this is nothing more than a second attempt to pass the same type of legislation that failed the first time.

  What is that definition of insanity again?