Two key votes today, one in the House and one in the Senate, both exposing the GOP agenda for corporate America.
Corporations won the Senate because of a Republican filibuster. The last ditch attempt to pass transparency rules for corporations funding political advertising failed to reach cloture, 59-39 (roll call will be posted at that link shortly). In any sane world, a 59% majority would be, you know majority wins. Not in the Senate. So Citizen's United stands unchanged. The millions of corporate dollars pouring into (mostly) Republican congressional campaigns won't have any fingerprints.
On the other hand, the Democratically controlled House did pass legislation to help the real small businesses. This is the bill that retiring Senate Republicans Voinovich and LeMieux finally broke ranks on to get out of the Senate. It contained $12 billion in tax breaks and a $30 billion fund to expand credit access to small businesses in community banks. Some experts predict the loan fund could spur as much as $300 billion in lending. It passed 237-187. That would be Republican votes = 01.
But this was for real small businesses, and not Small Business™.
So at 10:00 a.m. the GOP unveiled an agenda mentioning small business 18 times. At 2:30, they voted against help for small business, en masse.