Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Split decision

The Senate giveth and the Senate taketh away.

There were votes on two bills in the Senate today.

In the first, the Senate caved and provided retroactive immunity to the phone companies who conspired with the Bush administration to violate the law with illegal wiretaps.

But in the second, in a surprise move, Senator Ted Kennedy flew in between his daily cancer treatments in Boston to vote to rollback the 10% Medicare cut which went into effect on July 1. His dramatic appearance, which caught the Republicans by surprise, was enough to swing the vote margin into the win column.

Needing 60 yea votes to defeat the 10% decrease, on June 26 with Kennedy and McCain's absences, the vote was 58 yea and 30 nay, with every Democrat voting yea except for Harry Reid who voted nay simply to preserve the bill for another day.

That other day was today and the vote was a veto proof 69 yeas to 30 nays, with 9 Republicans switching their votes once they saw which way the wind was blowing.

Of note is the fact that in the first situation, Obama switched sides and voted to extend retroactive immunity (Clinton held fast) and in the second situation, McCain once again took the coward's way out and failed to show up.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm disappointed with Obama.