Senate impasse puts federal employees out of work

Now I'm gonna give you one and only one guess as to what political party that senator belongs. Yep.

Hey, I used to work highway construction among other things and stopping its funding for a year is gonna piss off a lot of voters. It may also keep someone out of college as it would have me when that highway work was essential for me to buy books and pay tuition.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two thousand federal transportation workers were furloughed without pay on Monday, and the Obama administration said they have a Kentucky senator to blame for it.

Federal reimbursements to states for highway programs will also be halted, the Transportation Department said in a statement late Sunday. The reimbursements amount to about $190 million a day, according to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The furloughs and freeze on payments were the result of a decision last week by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to block passage of legislation that would have extended federal highway and transit programs, the department said. Those programs expired at midnight Sunday.

The extension of transportation programs was part of a larger package of government programs that also expired Sunday, including unemployment benefits for about 400,000 Americans.

Bunning objected to the $10 billion measure, saying it would add to the budget deficit. He didn't respond to a request Monday for comment.

The impasse has provided the administration with an opening to excoriate Republicans for allowing popular programs to run out, even if only for a short time.

And 400,000 unemployed and 2,000 federal employees too? Bunning isn't doing the goopers any good. What a way to make friends with several thousand voters.

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Sen Tim Johnson appears on the mend

Some good news for a change.

"Two months after he was rushed to the hospital with a brain hemorrhage," Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) "is easing back into his legislative work," the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports.

"The Democratic senator has been asking that work be sent to him at George Washington University Hospital, where he is undergoing physical, speech and occupational therapy six days a week... Johnson has been watching CNN, and for several weeks now, his staff has been sending him a daily packet of news clips from South Dakota newspapers and TV stations."

"Doctors were concerned that Johnson might have serious long-term problems. But the second-term senator has in recent weeks made significant strides and appears on his way to recovery."

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Republican Senators Block Debate on Iraq Resolution

Question: Did the Dems get exactly what they were after? Is that why they spent so much time drafting the resolution? After all, it was/is non-binding and thus unlikely to effect any change in Bush's head-long rush to attack Iran.

But they have forced 47 senators to go before the American public and admit they don't give a damn what the voters want. They will back the idiot-in-chief despite public opinion.

Forty-nine senators, almost all Democrats, voted to proceed with the debate, whereas forty-seven senators, nearly all Republicans, voted against - 11 short of the number needed under Senate rules on the issue.

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US Senate votes first hike in minimum wage in a decade

I'm gonna beat this dead horse one more time until I'm sure it can't get up.

The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade, a major promise of new Democratic congressional leaders.

Lawmakers voted 94 to three Thursday to raise the wages rate by 2.10 dollars per hour -- from 5.15 dollars an hour to 7.25 dollars.

That means the annual salary for a full-time minimum-wage worker would rise from about 11,000 dollars a year to about 15,000.

The House approved a similar measure on January 10, and the two bills will now have to be reconciled before going to the desk of
President George W. Bush, to be signed into law.

"We haven't resolved anything," cautioned Charles Rangel of New York, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

One major difference to iron out is that the Senate's version provides 8.3 billion dollars in Republican-backed tax breaks to help small businesses compensate for the impact of the wage hikes.

Senate's new majority leader Harry Reid said after the vote that the bill's passage was a long-deferred victory for the common worker.

"Democrats in both the House and Senate have kept yet another one of their promises to move America in a new direction, and we will continue to do so," Reid said.

"For the first time in 10 years, Congress voted in a bipartisan fashion to increase the minimum wage. In the time since the last minimum wage increase, household costs have risen -- including the price of gas, the price of food and the price of health care," the Democratic lawmaker said.

"This increase is long over-due and with today's vote, we have given hard working Americans, struggling to get by, the raise they deserve," he said.

Wow! Fifteen thousand fucking dollars! That's gonna put huge spikes in new car, housing and appliance sales.

With all due respect, Senator Reid, what you should have said is "We should double or even triple the existing minimum, but don't have the cojones because businesses who contribute to our campaigns need their serfs."

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Rookie Sen. Claire McCaskill not shy in making her presence felt

I don't know about you, but I love this lady already.

Rookie senator Claire McCaskill couldn't have planned her first Senate subcommittee hearing any better if she'd scripted it herself.

Campaigning for the Senate last fall when she was still the Missouri state auditor, she vowed to go after waste at the Pentagon. So who turns up at her maiden Armed Services subcommittee hearing but the Pentagon's inspector general, who described a culture where buildings were built without cost controls and where contracts were worked out afterward.

"When I read this, I don't know whether to laugh or cry," McCaskill told him. "Does somebody get fired when that happens?"

This is what new blood is all about.

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Well, he should be better than Gore and Hilliary at telling jokes

Al Franken throws in his hat.

Comedian Al Franken has decided to run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota in 2008, a senior Democratic official from Minnesota said Wednesday.

Franken told the official, who did not want to be identified because Franken has not made an announcement, that he had decided to run in a recent conversation.

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