For the past 117 years, the U.S. Senate has celebrated George Washington’s birthday with a public reading of his farewell address to the American people.
This year, that address rings particularly poignant and timeless. In it, he warned against the evils of political parties. The first president feared that powerful parties could lead people to put their partisan politics ahead of their patriotism and the pursuit of what is best for the country.
“The common & continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain. It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded Jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another,” Washington wrote. “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
A couple of hours after the reading of those words last week, the Senate assembled to vote upon a $15 billion jobs creation bill that would provide tax credits to businesses that hire unemployed people. The legislation would give companies that hire unemployed Americans an exemption from paying payroll taxes on those workers through the end of this year. The plan also would provide a $1,000 tax credit to employers who keep new workers on the payroll for at least for 52 weeks.
The Republican leadership in the Senate prepared to vote against cloture and once again filibuster a bill that had the support of the Democratic President Barack Obama. This Congress has used the filibuster more than any Congress in history.
But a funny thing happened on the way to this particular filibuster. Newly elected Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) broke ranks and voted with the Democrats in favor of the bill to give tax credits to small businesses for new hires.
The bill then advanced to a straight up-or-down vote two days later. Eight Republican senators who had voted against cloture or were absent (which in a cloture vote is the same as a no vote) on the bill earlier last week, then voted for the bill.
In other words, eight GOP senators refused to support allowing a vote on the bill but then voted for the bill.
The hypocrites who switched their votes were: Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), George LeMieux (R-Fla.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). Those who voted “yes” after being absent for the cloture vote were Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.)
The jobs bill passed with a 70-28 vote.
Brown showed that he is bold enough to do the right thing, rather than be a sheep who falls in line behind his party’s leadership.
For his courage, he was called “Benedict Brown” by members of the Tea Party. Conservative commentators Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck denounced him, and his Facebook page was flooded with nasty, vile remarks.
Step back and think about this for a moment. What kind of a Republican would vote AGAINST giving a business a tax cut for hiring an American worker?
To be sure, this kind of behavior has been happening on both sides. For years. House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has shown that she can be just as politically conniving, divisive and shrill as her predecessors.
Ole’ George was right.
Steve Jagler is executive editor of BizTimes Milwaukee.
6 Comments
The private sector creates jobs, but the government can provide incentives for that to happen, and that is precisely what this jobs bill does. It is good government. Cut taxes for companies that hire new employees. What a concept! It is shameful that the Republicans, who are constantly howling about taxes, would be against a bill like this ONLY because it was proposed by a Democratic president. The Republicans are trying to fillibuster everything because they don't want Obama to accomplish anything, to have anything to put on his resume for re-election. It's unpatriotic to put your party ahead of the well-being of your country.
Let's talk about hypocrisy. President Obama and the Democrats, justifiably worried about their exploding reputations as spend-thrifts, pass, and then grandly trumpet their "pay-go" (pay as you go)legislation that requires that tax breaks be coupled with revenue savings. Then they exempt this so-called jobs bill from the pay-go requirement. Senator Bunning attempts to demonstrate the Democrats' hypocrisy, using procedural means to pause and question why the Democrats did not provide the spending offset that they had pledged to attach to tax cut legislation.
The purpose of the filibuster was to attempt to insert into the discussion consideration of the fiscal responsibility that the Democrats had paid lip service to and to point to their refusal to abide by their own fiscal rules. The news media, for the most part, neglected to mention that purpose, as did the above blog post. The Senators who joined Senator Bunning in the protest are called hypocrites when they, having made their point, voted for the legislation.
By the way, the National Federation of Independent Business, the largest trade group for small business did not favor the Democrats' grandstanding tax credit bill. They pointed out that, if customers are not buying their products, a tax credit will not cause them to hire. The NFIB stated, "The bottom line is that these proposals, if passed, are unlikely to have a wide-reaching impact on job creation. The best way to spur small business hiring is for Washington to provide small business owners with certainty that the cost of doing business will not increase."
Those six Republicans were, indeed, hypocritical. But their hypocrasy pales in comparison with that of the Democrats.
By the way, Mr. Jagler, it's a bit of a stretch to characterize absence at the cloture vote followed by a vote for the underlying bill as hypocritical. George Washington might perceive an unseemly measure of partisanship in such a strained propagation of what I would characterize as one party's spin.
George Washington was a prophet in many ways, not the least of which was his warning about the dangers of partisan politics. Washington's warning was not partisan as your argument is Steve. Your hypocrisy seems to forget about history. You forget about the many federal judgeships' left unfilled because the Democrats would not allow the nominees to have an up or down vote. As to nominees left in committee, it needs to be said that Bill Clinton, at the end of his eight years in office, had named close to half the federal judiciary. He got a higher percentage of his judicial nominees confirmed than did either Presidents Reagan or Bush '41. In fact, Reagan and Bush together had 12 years in office and combined they had only a small percentage more of their judges confirmed than Clinton did in eight years. "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension," George Washington; Clarence Thomas and Judge Bork weren't put through the ringer by the Democrats were they? Steve, did you read HR 2847? I did read the bill and the 117 amendments proposed for the bill; most of which had nothing to do with jobs and almost all of the accepted amendments being Democrat pork. $100,000,000 for Allen Mollohan D. West Virginia, $5,000,000 for Jerold Nadler, D. New York and $4,000,000 for Gwen Moore D. Wisconsin to name a few. George Washington was not prophetic about politicians ability to pass pork. "Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession."
George Washington; Hey Steve Try opening both eyes for a change.
Some of the comments to this blog are sadly and pathetically predictable. It has become near impossible in this country to have an objective analysis or serious debate about any public policy issue. The Obama-haters are so obsessed, they have lost all objectivity about specific issues. One here just signed his name as "T.J.," does not have the stones to even use his own name. No matter. I can guarantee you this: They are white. They angry. And they are male. Get a grip. This is a bill to give small businesses (like mine), a tax advantage if I hire more people. This shouldn't be a partisan thing. It's an American thing. And it's a good thing - even if this president you hate proposed it. You people are proving Geroge Washington to be right! No matter what this president does or says, you will hate him. Even at the expense of reality.
To vote no on cloture (to prevent a bill from being voted on) and then to vote for the bill anyway IS the ultimate in political hypocrisy and cowardice.
If I read correctly, the common thread is our representatives are embarrassing and have long forgotten what we pay them to do. Right, Left or Middle; can we all agree these people MUST go?
Vote and do it carefully.