Sunday, March 15, 2009

Hard Choices

ooooo… tough choice.  Vote to railroad through a massive pork-laden spending bill or vote to keep a pay increase for ourselves…. hmmmmm… I know!  Let’s vote for both!!!!

Sen. Herb Kohl had a difficult decision to make last week: Vote against putting an end to the publicly unpopular automatic congressional pay raise or possibly help sink a $410 billion spending bill that would bring his state millions in federal dollars.

Wisconsin’s senior Democrat chose the first option, even though the Milwaukee millionaire doesn’t need a raise and has consistently returned the automatic pay boosts back to the U.S. Treasury.

Senators, who already had decided to forgo this year’s scheduled increase, were presented with that stark set of options after a procedural maneuver by Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, forced the Senate to consider the pay raise issue as an amendment to the 2009 federal spending bill.

Congressional leaders had said they needed to pass the bill in the Senate without any amendments so they could quickly send it to the president for his signature. An amendment would have opened up the bill to further negotiations between the House and Senate and delayed the legislation further.

Vitter’s amendment failed, 47-52, with Kohl voting against it. His Wisconsin colleague, Russ Feingold, who has been critical of the spending bill because of the earmarks tucked away in it and has argued against the automatic raise in the past, supported Vitter’s amendment.

(6) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0927 hrs
Politics + Politics - General + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. Kohl is Doyle without the cajones.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 15, 2009 at 1617 hrs


  2. I was unaware that David Vitter had time to play parliamentary games with legislation, between the visits to the hookers and screaming at airport employees.  Anyway, might as well make some hay before he loses his reelection bid in 2010.

    Posted by Recess Supervisor on March 15, 2009 at 2037 hrs


  3. Kohl is Doyle with out any brains. or body for that matter.

    Nobody’s senators but nobody!

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 15, 2009 at 2051 hrs


  4. Great comment, RS!  Wow!  That’s really hard-hitting and on-topic!

    The more importatnt point is that Kohl obviously doesn’t care about other peoples’ money.  I grant that he’s very generous with his own - he can afford to be.  Just wish he wasn’t so generous with mine.  Rather make my own decision on that.

    OTOH, kudos to Feingold.  Of course he had political cover.  wonder what he would have done with the deciding vote.

    Posted by Steve on March 16, 2009 at 0452 hrs


  5. Just a simple statement of fact.  I would’ve figured Vitter would be busy with other things.  Sadly for you, ripping on my pithy comment doesn’t make your grand pronouncement of the obvious any more insightful or groundbreaking.

    Posted by Recess Supervisor on March 17, 2009 at 0024 hrs


  6. Just giving back what’s presented to me.  Again, Vitter isn’t the issue here.

    But nice try.

    Posted by Steve on March 17, 2009 at 0312 hrs


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