No More Legislation

The Party of No continues to block everything as predicted, including the START treaty with Russia and the oil spill bill.  Me, July 10 on the START treaty ratification in the Senate:

Why it almost seems like Lugar is determined to actually vote for something Obama did.  Any Republican Senator not from Maine or not named Lindsey is actually news if they do it.  Of course, it looks more like Lugar is covering his own ass as ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Romney may have drawn first blood, but Lugar is going to be under a lot of pressure to scuttle this treaty, or at least delay it for as long as possible.

Republicans will not give Obama any more success stories between now and November.  Count on that. 

And lo and behold:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, postponed a vote on a strategic arms treaty with Russia until mid-September.

Shocker, I know.

"In consultation with Senator Lugar, I chose to reschedule the vote to be responsive to the concerns of our members so that we can build bipartisan consensus around a treaty that our military leaders all agree will make America safer," Kerry said in a statement Tuesday.  

Kerry doesn't have the votes to even get this out of committee.  Meanwhile, the oil spill legislation is also dead in the water.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday yanked the oil-spill response bill for the summer, giving Democrats a talking point about GOP obstruction even though some of their own members were blocking it.

Reid had planned to hold debates and votes on competing Democratic and Republican spill plans Wednesday, less than a week after the House passed its own spill response package.



But in announcing plans to push consideration of the bill until at least September, Reid said: “It’s clear Republicans were going to be determined to stand in the way of everything.

“It’s a sad day when you can’t find a handful of Republicans to support a bill” that holds BP accountable for spill liability and creates green jobs, he told reporters.

Neither bill was expected to be able to overcome the necessary 60-vote threshold, fueling Republican arguments that Reid’s intent all along was to give Democrats ammunition for the stump ahead of midterm elections in which the GOP is expected to rebound. 

Of course, oil state Dems are helping block the plan too.  They know where their money comes from in their states, and it's not the people, it's Big Oil.  Can't blame them there:  if they don't block this bill, they get swamped by unlimited campaign ads against them thanks to the Supreme Court.  Of course, they'll get swamped anyway.

The Financial Regulation bill may be the last piece of legislation that President Obama signs into law in his first term.  Cheery thought, eh?