Its beginning to look like President Obama’s stimulus package will face a filibuster in the Senate:
U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, said he is prepared to filibuster the proposed economic stimulus bill, but fears enough Republicans will side with Senate Democrats to override any attempt to block the bill’s passage.
Shelby’s remarks came during a county meeting Monday morning at the Wiregrass Rehabilitation Center in Dothan.
The Senate is expected to debate a proposed $900 billion stimulus bill this week. A similar measure passed the House last week. Shelby said the plan will not provide the quick boost the economy needs.
“Are we prepared to filibuster? Hope so,” Shelby said. “But I’m afraid we may have two or three (Republicans) that might jump ship.”
Perhaps, but for the moment at least, it seems unlikely that the stimulus bill will pass in it’s present form:
WASHINGTON (AP) – Republicans suggested overhauling the Senate’s stimulus proposal because they said it doesn’t pump enough into the private sector through tax cuts but allows Democrats to go on a spending spree unlikely to jolt the economy.
“When I say start from scratch, what I mean is that the basic approach of this bill, we believe, is wrong,” said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican. He added that he was seeing an erosion of support for the bill.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he doubted the Senate would pass the bill, contending that Democrats as well as Republicans were uneasy with it. He renewed a Republican complaint that Democrats had not been as bipartisan in writing the bill as Obama had said he wanted.
If Republicans are able to stay united on this, then Obama and the Democrats will be forced to modify the stimulus package; hopefully by toning it down from the nearly-insane level of $ 800 billion (money we don’t have by the way) and adding in the kind of tax cuts that will actually spur investment and job growth which, in the end, is the only thing that will turn the economy around.
