Reid is having a hard time finding a Republican who think jobs are more important than tax cuts for rich people.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lacks the votes to begin debating his targeted jobs bill, according to sources monitoring the legislation.
Reid needs 60 votes to open debate on the $15 billion jobs bill. The vote is scheduled for Monday, when lawmakers return from the Presidents Day recess....
[S]ince he announced his smaller jobs bill, it has been under siege by Republicans and Democrats alike. Absent political arm-twisting by Senate leaders to bring their rank-and-file in line, opposition to the bill is expected to be bipartisan, sources said.
Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) called on Reid to "reconsider" the move and urged him to move the Baucus-Grassley bipartisan proposal.
"I hope the majority leader will reconsider," Lincoln said in prepared remarks. "This bill was carefully crafted to achieve significant bipartisan support and contains several important measures to spur business growth and encourage new hires."
The centerpiece to Reid’s bill is a $13 billion tax credit employers can claim for hiring employees who have been out of work for more than 60 days. But not all Democratic senators support the initiative.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has raised the concern that a shortage in customer demand could render the tax break useless.
"There’s a question of whether that puts the cart before the horse," said Nelson. "If I don’t have enough customers for my product, hiring more people is not going to help and tax credits are not going to be to my advantage."
Actually, Ben Nelson is right on that one, as Harkin argues in the story, by noting that the CBO says that extending unemployment insurance would do more to create jobs, by creating demand, than would tax credits. What would really create jobs is significant government spending, but that would surely be rejected by Lincoln and Nelson, too.
Meanwhile, Republicans are meeting with lobbyists to plot out a course for killing the jobs bill [sub req.].
Senate Republican leaders are hoping to persuade waffling members of their Conference to block Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) $15 billion jobs bill by arguing that Reid has brushed aside minority rights in bringing it to the floor, aides told a gathering of lobbyists Wednesday.
Although Reid’s decision to abandon an $85 billion bipartisan bill negotiated by Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in favor of his targeted approach has upset Republicans, aides acknowledged there is still no consensus within the GOP on how to vote on a cloture motion Monday to begin debate on the measure....
Given the divisions within the GOP Conference — and the fact that Republicans have largely backed most of the bill’s provisions in the past — leadership aides told lobbyists that the GOP plans to attack Reid’s bill over process, rather than policy.
Force the vote, Reid. Make every one of those Republicans stand up and vote against a jobs bill. And then every Democrat who has access to a microphone has to tell the country that the Republicans prevented a jobs bill from being passed.