[Cross-posted at Congress Matters]
I share the frustration of many in the liberaloblogerospherico concerning how things are progressing with the stimulus, how we still[!] see more Republicans on our teevees and wonder whether our Democratic congressional leaders will manage to fail us, again, somehow.
But not all of the news is bad, take heart! It's fun to watch them posted, as the Republican amendments offered today to teh stimulus get rejected one after another after another [edit: those subject to a roll-call vote, that is]. So far they're 0 for 7. [Update: Now 0 for 8] Most importantly, there appears to be a comfortable 60+ vote consensus (including, for various amendments, Specter, Snowe, Collins, and/or Voinovich) for the core of the stimulus bill, poorly written WaPo stories to the contrary:
http://www.senate.gov/...
Vitter amendment LOSES 32-65
DeMint amendment LOSES 36-61
Thune amendment LOSES 35-62
McCain amendment LOSES 44-53
Inhofe amendment LOSES 38-59
Cornyn amendment LOSES 37-60
Bunning amendment LOSES 39-57
McCain [#2] amendment LOSES 31-65
Vitter, which got 65 votes against, would have stripped 25+ billion in spending from the bill. Cornyn, which was a tax cut mania provision, got 60 votes against. I know we're all nervous, but based on this, it would seem that there are 60 who could easily coalesce around the core of the bill as it now stands.
-- Stu
[9:27 Update -- added some more vote totals posted]
[10:34 Update -- to be more accurate, there were a couple relatively uncontroversial Republican sponsored amendments that were agreed to by a voice vote Isakson's on housing (co-sponsored by Lieberman) and Bond's on low-income housing (co-sponsored by four Democrats: Dodd, Kerry, Kohl, and Jack Reed.)]