Our newly elected Senator Pat Toomey likes the the fact that President Obama accepted tax cuts for the rich. However, he is bothered by the extension of unemployment benefits, which he says need to be offset by other spending cuts.
This guy will be Pennsylvania’s senator for six years.
Pennsylvania, the new Oklahoma! Toomey will feel right at home with Tom Coburn and James Inhofe. The Vapid Triumvirate. Nothing matters in the Senate however. Even if the Dems went down to 41 Senators in 2012, they can just threaten to filibuster anything the Republicans suggest. I remember in the sixties, during the civil rights legislation, television showed Senators actually filibustering parts of the bill, straight through the night, they had to keep going to keep the filibuster alive. In the last two years, the Republicans did not actually filibuster anything, they only threatened to filibuster, and Harry Reid never made them go through with it, where I am sure there would have been some wonderful soundbites from Republican Senators filibustering universal health care. The Senate is an arcane, antiquated and archaic institution that gives far too much power to sparsely populated states, like Oklahoma. It is the most undemocratic institution in a democracy.
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