The Murray-Feinstein amendment to the Senate Stimulus bill failed 58-39. Because of Senate rules, the Amendment needed 60 votes to pass without a “budget point of order”. Two Republicans voted yes, Kit Bond (R-MO) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), and one Democrat voted no, Mary Landrieu (D-LA).  Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) didn’t vote because they were not present.

The next chance to beef up the transit portion of the bill is a Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sponsored-amendment that increases transit funding to close to the House amount.

10 Replies to “Senate Stimulus Update”

  1. If the amendment were revenue neutral, i.e. it shifted funds from elsewhere in the bill, it would have only required a simply majority.

  2. there is really no reason to add on to the stimulus bill, $800+ billion is plenty of money for now.

    just remove other less effective programs from the main stimulus bill and replace them with these items. I am not republican but there is a lot of worthless sh*t in the main stimulus bill with regard to actual economic stimulus. Infrastructure spending needs to be the priority for stimulus spending particularly transit, government buildings and public works.

    1. Okay, convince 50 senators to do that. There’s a reason we’re adding on rather than subtracting and adding – subtracting means people who already agreed to add something have to change their minds.

      1. poncho is merely being honest. Adding to one area always subtracts from another. TANSTAFL.

        Hazlitt:

        A frequent proposal of this sort in Congress is for more credit to farmers. In the eyes of most congressmen the farmers simply cannot get enough credit. The credit supplied by private mortgage companies, insurance companies or country banks is never “adequate.” Congress is always finding new gaps that are not filled by the existing lending institutions, no matter how many of these it has itself already brought into existence. The farmers may have enough long-term credit or enough short-term credit but, it turns out, they have not enough “intermediate” credit; or the interest rate is too high; or the complaint is that private loans are made only to rich and well-established farmers. So new lending institutions and new types of farm loans are piled on top of each other by the legislature.

        The faith in all these policies, it will be found, springs from two acts of shortsightedness. One is to look at the matter only from the standpoint of the farmers that borrow. The other is to think only of the first half of the transaction.

        Now all loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually be repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first.

  3. If we get Franken sometime soon, that would be nice. Then we could have had 59, and Kennedy would have made it 60. I don’t know that we could re-vote on this, but where the hell is Franken?

      3. I think the Senate can still have Franken seated if they want to since the results have already been certified. No other confirmation is necessary.

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