In case you missed it, the Bunning travesty of last week ended relatively happily yesterday, at least in the big picture of Senate battles.
The Senate approved $140 billion in extended tax breaks and unemployment benefits on Wednesday in a largely partisan vote.
The bill was approved on a 62-36 vote, with six Republicans joining most Democrats in backing it....
Most of the cost in the bill approved by the Senate goes toward prolonging increased levels of federal unemployment aid and COBRA healthcare benefits for the jobless through the end of December. The cost of those extensions is about $80 billion.
The House has some issues with this bill, namely that it doesn't include the infrastructure spending and aid to states and localities that were included in the $154 billion bill passed last December by the House, and that it relies heavily on tax cuts. Reid says he will bring up a jobs bill that includes those measures eventually, but given the pace of the Senate, the House seems skeptical.
As for the bill the Senate just passed, "Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said it’s “an open question” whether House members will force a conference to resolve differences between the two chambers." But what the forward movement on this bill shows is that, at least on jobs, Republican obstruction can be broken.