{"id":336306,"date":"2010-02-18T11:20:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T16:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"tag:http:\/\/www.economist.com,2009:21004886"},"modified":"2010-02-18T11:20:35","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T16:20:35","slug":"where-legislation-goes-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/336306","title":{"rendered":"Where legislation goes to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

IN THIS week’s print paper, I have a piece<\/a> on the mess that has become of the Senate’s effort to produce a jobs bill. It reads in part:<\/p>\n

\n

But since the release of the budget things have quickly come apart, wrecked on the treacherous shoals of the Senate. On February 11th Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley unveiled their own $85 billion jobs bill with bipartisan backing, and to much fanfare. Within hours, the White House voiced its support for the senators\u2019 bill. But later that day Harry Reid, the majority leader, scrapped the plan, declaring that the measure would do too little to create jobs. He had a point. Nearly half of the bill\u2019s value came from routine tax-policy extensions. It also contained a grab-bag of tax benefits for corporate interests (chicken producers and catfish farmers among them), designed more to attract Republican votes than to boost employment.<\/p>\n

In the bill\u2019s place Mr Reid has proposed a more targeted \u201cjobs agenda\u201d, made up of a series of pieces of legislation. The first instalment is to be a $15 billion package mostly comprising an employment-tax proposal considerably weaker than the one touted by the president…<\/p>\n

Other instalments should follow. Mr Reid\u2019s office is hinting that the collection will have a total value close to $80 billion. But other Democrats are concerned that by breaking up the bills, Mr Reid has increased the chance that other important items, like topping up aid to the states and unemployment benefits, may go down to defeat. The president has provided little direction, and seems to have been caught wrong-footed by Mr Reid\u2019s abrupt change of plan.<\/p>\n

That leaves nothing much on the table except for the Senate tax measure…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Are you ready for the punch line? Here<\/a>‘s the latest news from the Hill<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lacks the votes to begin debating his targeted jobs bill, according to sources monitoring the legislation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sigh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IN THIS week’s print paper, I have a piece on the mess that has become of the Senate’s effort to produce a jobs bill. It reads in part: But since the release of the budget things have quickly come apart, wrecked on the treacherous shoals of the Senate. On February 11th Max Baucus and Chuck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}