Greg Sargent has the run-down of
Republican senators who are going to vote against themselves, or at least against their previous positions, to vote against cloture on the jobs infrastructure bill and for protecting the very wealthy.
Indeed, a number of GOP Senators in the past have explicitly endorsed infrastructure spending—in different contexts — as a good way to spur economic growth or maintain economic competitiveness:
* Senator Susan Collins has claimed that reparing the nation's transportation infrastructure is "essential to economic recovery and cannot be left solely to state governments."
* Senator Lindsey Graham has claimed that "if you're a Republican and you want to create jobs, then you need to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to create jobs."
* Senator Richard Shelby has said: "Infrastructure spending is essential to our long term economic stability and growth."
* Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson has claimed that an infrastructure bank is a "creative" way to spur "economic development and job growth."
* Senator Richard Lugar has asserted that "addressing the aging infrastructure of our roads, bridges and railways is critical to our nation's economic viability."
A spokesperson for Lugar, Andy Fisher, tells me he will vote against infrastructure bill this week, because he opposes raising taxes to invest in infrastructure. I’m waiting on other responses.
Sargent adds, in fairness to these senators, that these quotes come from varying different contexts. But let's not be fair: Every single one of them has gone on the record as supporting infrastructure rebuilding as a key component of creating jobs and economic stability, and now they apparently plan to vote against even letting this bill go to full debate on the Senate floor.
Either they're protecting the relative handful of millionaires who would face a 0.7 percent surtax to pay for it ("1/500 of American taxpayers," and just "an additional 1/217th of their overall income"), or they've thrown their lot in with their leader, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and are putting party above country by actively fighting against rebuilding the nation's economy in order to see President Obama lose in 2012. That's pretty clear.
Now why any Democrat would join them is a mystery.