links for 2010-12-03

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Friday predicted a Senate vote on the DREAM Act will be held next week.

"Sen. Reid is going to call it," Durbin told The Hill shortly after the chamber adjourned at 3:30 p.m. Friday. Two procedural votes are scheduled for Saturday morning on competing plans to address the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.
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Harry Reid wants a vote to pay back the Latinos who supported him in the last election.

If there is not a tax rate deal and START has been voted upon, Republicans will simply filibuster.

Democrats hoping to move forward with legislation other than tax cuts shouldn't look to centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to break the logjam.

Collins said again on Friday that, while she would vote with Democrats to end the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, she wouldn't do so until a debate over tax cuts has been resolved.

"Once the tax issue is resolved, I have made it clear that if the Majority Leader brings the Defense Authorization bill to the floor with sufficient time allowed for debate and amendments, I would vote to proceed to the bill," she said in a statement.

The statement is a sign that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (Ky.) Republican conference hasn't fractured in its insistence that the expiring tax cuts be dealt with prior to action on any other legislative business.

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Another sign that the votes scheduled for tomorrow will fail and are really just Kabuki Theater

Mr. Kyl later softened his public stance somewhat. In an interview on Fox News on Thursday night, he said that if Democrats cut a relatively quick deal with Republicans over extending Bush-era tax cuts and dispense with some other priorities for the lame-duck session, “then there might be time” to vote on the treaty. Still, he also held out the prospect of pushing it to the next Senate, with more Republicans, suggesting an agreement to bring it to a vote in early March.
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But, conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint may filibuster anyway.

Nine Republicans must join 58 Dems to pass the treaty

On Thursday, the California High Speed Rail Authority board unanimously approved the 65-mile "train to nowhere" that would link two tiny towns at a cost of $4.15 billion, all because the state didn't want to lose $2 billion in federal stimulus funds.

The rail line would connect two central California towns, Borden and Corcoran, with a combined population of 25,000. But that's merely an estimate from Democratic Rep. Dennis Cardoza, an opponent of the plan. In reality, the San Jose Mercury News notes, Borden "is an unincorporated community for which the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't even keep official population estimates."

The line is supposed to be the first part of an ambitious $43 billion project aimed at linking San Francisco and Anaheim, but the decision to start in such a low population density area even had members of the rail authority scratching their heads earlier this week.
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Big Government strikes California again.

President Barack Obama's bipartisan deficit commission failed to reach consensus on a far-reaching, tough-medicine deficit-cutting plan, falling three votes short of a 14-vote goal that might have pressured congressional leaders to vote on the sweeping bipartisan proposal as a package to bring down the massive federal debt.

With all three House Republicans voting no and Democratic lawmakers split, the 11-7 vote on the plan – which would cut $3.9 trillion from the debt over nine years through a combination of tax increases, entitlement cuts and a proposal to raise the retirement age past 65 – meant it is unlikely to get a vote on the floor of either the House or Senate.
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And, the report will probably not be heard of again.

We mock economists for using the adverb “unexpectedly” in response to almost every bit of bad news over the past two years, but today’s news that unemployment is back up to 9.8 percent seems genuinely surprising. About a half-hour after this morning’s numbers were released, one CNBC anchor closed a segment, “After the break, we’ll have your e-mails about signs of economic recovery,” the he paused and chuckled, motioning to the unseen teleprompter. “Yeah, that was written before 8:30.”

One of the economists made a compelling case that as the “discouraged workers” start looking for work again, the official size of the workforce will increase, and we’ll see the unemployment rate go above 10 percent sometime this winter.
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Not good news for the holidays