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#3 |
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Originally posted by BeBro
Just heard it in the news, he gets the 700 billion USD thing for 690. Or so. ![]() ![]() |
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#4 |
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somewhat related
McCain Skips Vote on Spending Bill By Paul Kane One of the Senate's longest-running streaks hit 115 today. After returning to Washington early this morning, ostensibly to help with congressional negotiations on bailout legislation, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) missed a pair of votes on a massive spending bill that keeps the federal government running for the next five months. When the roll call on final passage occurred, McCain was at his campaign headquarters in Crystal City, Va., five miles from the Capitol. Aides said he is engaging in phone calls with Republican leaders involved in the talks to approve legislation creating a massive $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry, talks that McCain threw himself into at a White House summit Thursday, then retreated from Friday for his presidential campaign debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). "I just talked to him. I don't know where he's at," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), after casting one of just 12 'nay' votes against the bill. In missing today's votes, McCain passed up the opportunity to critique a bill that -- as he said in last night's debate -- has more than 2,200 special spending provisions known as earmarks, most of which have never seen the light of day until the legislation was released late this week. McCain, who has not voted since April 8, has now missed five-and-a-half months of roll calls in the Senate, during which 115 votes have been held. According to a database created by washingtonpost.com, McCain has missed more than 64 percent of his votes in the 110th Congress, more than any other senator. Obama also has a dismal voting record, missing 46 percent of his votes since January 2007, the third worst attendance record in the chamber. Other than McCain, only Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) -- who missed most of last year while recuperating from a brain aneurysm -- has missed more votes than Obama, who also didn't appear for the rare weekend Senate session. Obama's voting is better than McCain's because, to some degree, his presence is required more often than McCain. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) frequently needs to round up 60 votes to move legislation, and if he has close to nine Republicans supporting him, Reid will call Obama and demand his presence because he needs all 51 members of the Democratic caucus to hit his magic number. As a member of the minority almost always opposing Reid, McCain is never needed. By rule, an intransigent minority only needs one senator on the floor to object and force the majority to find 60 votes. So, during McCain's streak, Obama has appeared in the Senate to vote on at least a half dozen days. To be fair, McCain's record is quite similar to that of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who was also in the minority when he secured his party's presidential nomination in March 2004. Over the same timespan as McCain's current streak, from early April 2004 through September of that year, Kerry voted just one day -- June 22 -- on a Pentagon spending bill that was authored, ironically enough, by McCain, who was chairman of the Armed Services Committee at the time. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the..._spending.html |
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#6 |
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Originally posted by DRoseDARs
If you're talking about the $634bn spending bill, that's completely separate from the "bailout" deal. The spending bill is just the yearly budget of the US. It's one of the few must-pass bits of legislation that go through Congress. I made this threadi two days ago. How in hell should I know what it is about now. I didn't even know it when I made it ![]() |
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#7 |
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