Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s vote to break a Republican filibuster of President Obama’s jobs bill last month may have gotten him into hot water with the Tea Party set, but now it seems he is trying to make amends with the GOP’s ultra-right fringe by speaking up for his colleague and least popular member of the U.S. Senate, Kentucky’s Sen. Jim Bunning.

Brown went out of his way to praise Bunning’s five-day block on extending jobless benefits and COBRA subsidies for millions of unemployed workers in today’s Washington Post:

(T)he newest Republican senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, said Bunning had done the right thing in holding up the measure "I don't think it's about party, it's about good government," said Brown, who was elected in January vowing to promote fiscal discipline.

Bunning’s action not only put the economic future of millions of Americans at risk, it also led to the forced furlough of more than 2,000 federal workers – drawing ire from millions of working families and even members of his own party.

 But not Brown:

The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that's being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself.

While Bay State voters may have thought that they were getting a moderate Republican in the mold of previous Northeast GOP leaders, Brown’s formation of a one-man cheering section for Bunning’s stunt certainly does “speaks for itself,” about what kind of Senator he will be.

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Today, President Barack Obama will deliver a speech to Congress outlining his plan to move forward on health care reform. The president is expected to advocate the use of budget reconciliation.

Art Levine of Working In These Times warns that some centrist Democrats are already getting cold feet on reconciliation. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, went on TV to declare reconciliation impossible. These guys just don’t get it. It’s reconciliation or defeat. There is no other way. Without reconciliation, the bill dies. Without a bill, the Democrats get massacred in the mid-term elections.

Health care reform to date

Quick recap: The House and the Senate have both passed health care reform bills. The original plan was to merge those two bills in a conference committee and send the final version back to both houses of Congress for a vote. However, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate when Republican Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley in the special election in Massachusetts.

Once they recovered from their shell shock, Democrats reluctantly converged around Plan B: Let the House re-pass the Senate version of the bill, thereby skipping the step where the Senate votes on the conference report. However, the Senate bill could not pass the House in its current form. So, the Senate needs to tweak the bill to make it acceptable to the House—either before or after the House re-passes the Senate bill. In order to make those changes without getting filibustered, the Senate Democrats will have to insert the modifications through budget reconciliation, where measures pass by a simple majority. Whew!

Of course, the Republicans trying to paint Democrats as tyrants for using reconciliation. Nevermind that 16 of the 22 reconciliation bills passed since reconciliation was invented in 1974 were passed by Republican majorities.

Whither the Public Option?

Reconciliation would appear to give the public health insurance option a new lease on life. The House bill has a public option, but the Senate bill doesn’t. The public option was traded away on the Senate side to forge the original filibuster-proof majority. As a procedural matter, the public option could easily be reinserted during reconciliation because it has such a direct impact on the federal budget, i.e., it would save the taxpayer a lot of money. The White House claims to support a public option. Yet Obama didn’t propose one in his health care plan last week.

Some observers take that as a sign that the White House doesn’t think the votes are there. (Cynics say it’s proof the White House never cared about the public option in the first place.) Even Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) told radio host Ed Schultz that he can’t support a public option for fear of killing the health care bill, according to Jason Hancock of the Iowa Independent. Harkin has been taking a lot of heat from progressives for refusing to join with other senators in signing a letter calling for a public option.

Abortion Storm Clouds

Speaker Nancy Pelosi had little to say about how she plans to overcome resistance within her own caucus on abortion and immigration issues within health reform, as Brian Beutler reports for TPMDC. Pelosi needs 216 votes to pass a bill. The original House bill only passed by 5 votes. Rabid anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) claims to have assembled a coalition of like-minded Dems who consider the Senate’s slightly less restrictive rules for abortion funding “unacceptable.” There is no reliable public vote count on how many of these representatives, if any, would vote to kill health care over abortion. If they do, it would be purely out of spite. Abortion language can’t be tweaked in reconciliation because it doesn’t directly affect the budget.

Stupak and the myth of federal funding for abortions

In The Nation, Jessica Arons takes a closer look at Stupak’s radical and misleading anti-choice rhetoric. The federal government is already legally barred from funding elective abortions, and nothing in the Senate bill would change that. Arons explains that the Senate bill would allow plans that participate in the federally-subsidized exchanges to offer abortion coverage provided that customers buy that coverage with their own money, not with subsidized federal dollars. If the government pays 30% of the cost of the policy and the consumer pays 60%, the money for abortion coverage comes out of the consumer’s end.

There’s a long tradition of segregating government money. Both Planned Parenthood and Catholic hospitals get federal funds. By law, Planned Parenthood can’t use that money to perform abortions, but it can use it to do pap smears and offer other health care. By the same token, a Catholic hospital can take federal money to provide medical care, but not to proselytize to patients. Arons ably satirizes Stupak’s extreme position:

If everyone thought like Bart Stupak, a woman seeking an abortion:

(1) would not be able to take a public bus or commuter train to an abortion clinic, even if she paid her own fare;

(2) would not be able to drive on public roads to a clinic, even if she drove her own car and paid for her own gas;

(3) would not be able to walk on public sidewalks to the clinic, even though she paid property taxes;

(4) would not be able to put her child in childcare while she was at the clinic if she received a tax credit that offset the cost of childcare;

(5) would not be able to take medicine at the clinic that was researched or developed by the government, even if she paid for the medicine herself.

Bunning backs down

In other health care news, AlterNet reports that yesterday Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) ended his one-man filibuster of the extension of a bill that would have prevented a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursement rates and extended unemployment benefits while the Senate finalizes the jobs bill. Bunning caved under pressure from his own party. Even Republicans realized that there was no political percentage in stiffing doctors and the unemployed.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger

Through inaction and timid legislative negotiations, Congress just keeps letting the U.S. sink deeper and deeper into the economic abyss. Last week, Congress denied relief to the jobless and is currently poised to undercut a proposal that would rein in predatory lending. With unemployment out of control and banks pillaging citizens’ pocketbooks at every turn, the economy is in dire need of serious financial reform and a major jobs package.

More than one million have lost unemployment benefits

As James Ridgeway emphasizes for Mother Jones, over a million people receiving unemployment benefits ran out of financial rope on March 1 thanks to Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-KY) self-righteousness. As a result of bizarre Senate procedural rules, Bunning’s sole “no” vote was enough to stop a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits for those who are out of work. Of course, Bunning had plenty of moral support from his fellow Republicans. Ridgeway highlights a Think Progress post on Rep. Dean Heller’s (R-NV) preposterous argument that it is time for the government to cut off unemployment benefits, since there are so many bums.

“What makes Heller’s statement really stupid, of course, is that people could become hobos if Congress doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, rather than if they do,” Ridgeway writes. “Modest as they are, these weekly benefits are what’s keeping thousands—and perhaps millions—of families out of poverty.”

As Brian Beutler notes for Talking Points Memo, Bunning’s economic insanity also triggered a 21% cut in the fees doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. That’s a big “Screw you!” to seniors.

What happens when unemployment benefits dry up?

The degree of personal crisis attached to unemployment is also important. We’re talking about access to basic necessities. As Roger Bybee notes for Working In These Times, when a family runs out of unemployment benefits, the result is an absolute personal catastrophe in which there is simply no money left to buy food, pay rent, or meet electricity bills.

Yet when a major financial institution finds itself on the verge of collapse, the government is quick to come to the rescue. In addition to the one million people ran out of benefits on March 1, four million more are slated to run out by June—that’s roughly the combined populations of Los Angeles and Dallas. This is a tremendous national crisis. Here’s Bybee:

“There is plenty of bipartisan compassion in Congress when it comes to bailing out the wealthy and their banks. But when it comes to spending federal money to bail out folks … with unemployment compensation and a major jobs program, a bi-partisan consensus forms among conservatives in both parties eager to show ‘fiscal discipline.’”

As Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz emphasizes in an interview at AlterNet, the jobs crisis is so severe that the government needs to go much further than simply extending existing unemployment benefits. At minimum, it also needs to send a major package of fiscal aid to states on the order of $200 billion to allow states to hire teachers and cops, as well as prevent further layoffs.

Making the jobs bill accessible to all

While a new jobs bill is critical, it’s important to make sure everyone has access to its efforts, as Aaron Glantz explains for The Progressive. The economic stimulus bill that President Barack Obama signed into law last year has helped keep the economy from falling off a cliff, but it’s overwhelmingly neglected communities of color. The unemployment rate for blacks is 16.5%, nearly the double the 8.7% rate for whites, while Latinos face an unemployment rate 50% higher than whites. Not all of that disparity can be blamed on the stimulus, but the federal contracts awarded for new jobs projects overwhelmingly went to white-owned firms. We have to make sure that the funds Congress dedicates to unemployment relief are distributed fairly.

Save the Consumer Financial Protection Agency

After watching the government hurl trillions of dollars at faltering banks, it’s obvious that major financial reform is urgently needed. And one of the most important aspects of that reform is a new regulatory agency that defends consumers, not just bank balance sheets. As Tim Fernholz argues for The American Prospect:

“Shoring up our financial system to avoid new disasters remains popular with the public but only if it represents real reform. …That means closing loopholes and making clear that this bill has what it takes to protect average citizens as well as restricting banks’ bad behavior.”

And yet astoundingly, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the current Democratic leader of financial reform negotiations in the Senate, appears ready to drop Obama’s proposal to create an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

Instead, Dodd would house the regulator under the Treasury Department, and give the existing, failed bank regulators effective veto power over the CFPA’s moves. It’s a head-fake: We create a new regulator, but are instead giving that power to the same failed agencies who allowed the banks to pillage our pocketbooks, our retirement savings and our home values.

Failed negotiations with the GOP

This is supposedly all part of a set of negotiations with Republicans, but they aren’t really negotiating in any clear sense. Negotiating means going through some process of give-and-take. Right now, Republicans are just seeing how far Democrats will bend, and so far, there has been no limit. Ferhnolz is right. Voting for the banks and against taxpayers and consumers will be a very bitter pill for Republicans to swallow. Dodd and the Democrats need to make them do it instead of caving to pressure and allowing Republicans to vote for a weak bill that doesn’t protect the public from banker excess. Make the Republicans vote for real reform, or face the consequences at the polls for voting against it.

The public shame that is currently being heaped upon Bunning should prove that point. The American public wants jobs and financial reform. They want to go back to work and make sure that the bankers who tanked the economy can’t keep getting rich by hijacking their savings. Woe unto the politician who opposes that.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

As long-term unemployment continues to rise, unemployment benefits for many Americans will run out tonight because the U.S. Senate failed to pass a bill extending the benefits late last week. An estimated 1.2 million Americans stand to lose unemployment benefits during the month of March if Congress does not act. For reasons I don't understand, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid left the benefits extension out of the jobs bill approved by the Senate on February 24.

The following day, the House of Representatives approved a separate bill containing a one-month extension of unemployment benefits, federal subsidies for people on COBRA health insurance plans, current Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors, and a few other programs. Democrats tried to bring this bill up for a Senate vote right away, but retiring Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky repeatedly objected to motions for unanimous consent. Democrats promised to keep filing motions until Bunning broke down, but instead they adjourned near midnight on Thursday night.

Democrats have been slamming Bunning in public statements and e-mail blasts. Here's an example from Senator Tom Harkin's office on Friday:

“We need to act quickly to extend the safety net and make sure laid-off workers have access to unemployment benefits through the end of the year, at least,” said Harkin. “It is heartbreaking to see political games being played with the lives of hardworking people who are struggling to find a job, particularly when there has been strong bipartisan support in the past to extend unemployment benefits and other vital safety net programs.

“Unfortunately this is emblematic of the larger issue plaguing the Senate today: abuse of Senate procedure. We saw it in November as well. While Senate Republicans play games, families are sitting around their kitchen tables wondering how they will make ends meet.

“I intend to do everything in my power to fight this and hope other Senators will join me in this effort.”

[...] In November, Senate Republicans used a similar delay tactic to filibuster a motion to proceed to a bill to extend unemployment compensation. After delaying and grinding Senate business to a halt for nearly a month, the bill passed 97-1.

Bunning's behavior is inexcusable, and he even had the gall to complain about missing a college basketball game while staying on the Senate floor to block this bill.

At the same time, it is pathetic that Democrats adjourned instead of standing and fighting Senate Republicans all weekend long. Apparently one or two other Republicans showed up Thursday night to back up Bunning, but so what? Democrats should have refused to leave until the unemployment benefits bill passed. At the Congress Matters blog, David Waldman explained other ways Democrats could have handled Bunning's procedural roadblock. Chris Bowers looked at the big picture here:

Democrats are in charge, and they are going to get blamed for this. Democratic attempts to blame this on Senate procedure will ring utterly hollow. Not only do people not understand, or care about, those rules, but it simply sounds wimpy and pathetic for the people running the United States Government to throw their hands up in the air and say "our procedural rules prevented us from doing anything to solve this huge problem. Sorry."

Democrats did not have to adjourn. They could have kept fighting Bunning. Further, they all agreed to the rules under which the Senate operates, and most of them are still defending those rules. Blaming Senate procedure is not going to extend anyone's unemployment or COBRA benefits, and its not going to win many hearts around the country.

Sure, Jim Bunning is currently the biggest asshole in the country right now. However, if you think that procedure is a problem, then start working to change the procedure. If you think that unemployment benefits need to be extended, then don't adjourn for the weekend when those benefits are slated to run out.

Sometime this week, or perhaps later in March, Senate Democrats will break the Republican obstruction. But when that happens, "state governments will still have to deal with the extra administrative costs of shutting down and restarting the extended benefits programs."

Some Republicans, like Representative Steve King, are philosophically opposed to extending unemployment benefits, but they fail to acknowledge that extending unemployment benefits has tremendous "bang for the buck." The Iowa Fiscal Partnership recently calculated that that the unemployment benefits extension contained in last year's federal stimulus bill "produced $501.7 million increased economic activity and $112.1 million in income in 2009, while creating or saving 3,727 jobs" in Iowa alone.

First thing's first.  I'm not a doctor.  I'm not suggesting that Republican Chuck Grassley has any particular illness.  Simply, I have noticed that Chuck Grassley, over the last many months, has been making increasingly bizarre, aggressive, explicit, and violent remarks - and that such comments coincidentally happen to be early symptoms of dementia, particularly frontotemporal dementia.  It stands out to me because, as a political junkie, I have long considered Grassley to be among the most mild-mannered denizens of the Capitol.  2009 has apparently become the year that the 75-year-old Grassley (he turns 76 next month) has shed his mild-mannered image, perhaps by choice, perhaps not.

In response to the story this Spring about AIG executives receiving exorbitant bonuses after the company was rescued by a massive infusion of public dollars, Grassley said on March 16, 2009:

"I suggest, you know, obviously maybe they ought to be removed, but I would suggest that the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them [is] if they would follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I'm sorry and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."

Grassley added, "In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."

The comment was rude, racist, and extremely aggressive, even violent.

The next day, still critical of AIG executives, but in an attempt to tone down the violent "suicide" comment from the previous day, Grassley went the more sexually explicit route:

"From my standpoint, it's irresponsible for corporations to give bonuses at this time when they're sucking the tit of the taxpayer," Grassley explained.

When talking about government spending, "sucking on the teat" is not in and of itself bizarre rhetoric, but that Grassley used the more sexually explicit "tit" instead of "teat." In fact, such a nuanced difference might have flown under the radar entirely if not for a sexually explicit comment Grassley made at a budget hearing toward the end of the same month as his earlier comments, on March 26, 2009:

But yesterday he [Grassley] regained his bounce on the Senate floor, livening up an otherwise dull budget hearing with a joke about banging another senator's wife. His opening came after he pressed Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad to include an amendment of his to a budget resolution by bringing up the fact that Conrad owed him a favor.

"Oh, you are good," Conrad responded.

To which Grassley replied: "Well, your wife said the same thing."

Sure, this comment, in a vacuum, could be one Senator good-naturedly ribbing a colleague.  But a joke intimating sex with a colleague's wife, told, again, at a budget hearing, seems like bizarre behavior.  Further, when you add up these comments, what you have is a pattern of behavior.

Last week, Grassley's pattern of behavior was reinforced by his take on health care reform:

We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma.

In fairness, this one comment has become a sick talking point of many Republicans shilling for corporate interests.  Nevertheless, it particularly stands out for Grassley given that, when he is not flying off the cuff, he is one of the GOP's key negotiators on health care reform.  He should have had the self-control to avoid such aggressive rhetoric.  But that's been Grassley's pattern lately.

So what we have seen from Grassley in 2009 - and this is just in public; no telling what his comments and actions are in private - is a pattern of bizarre, rude, physically aggressive, sexually explicit, and even violent remarks.  Such a pattern even led The Iowa Independent to the headline: "Grassley: Strategic or just eccentric?" Eccentric may be putting it mildly.

Grassley is not the first Republican Senator in recent years to have his mental health questioned.  During his 2004 re-election bid, the Kentucky media began openly questioning Jim Bunning's mental health after a similar pattern of bizarre comments and actions.  Also, in 2006-2007, Pete Domenici's mental health was questioned after a pattern of erratic behavior including reportedly walking around the Capitol in his pajamas.  Subsequently, in late 2007, Domenici revealed that he had a degenerative brain disease and opted against a 2008 re-election bid.  Domenici was 75-years-old at the time of his 2007 diagnosis, the same age Grassley is now.

Now for the coincidental symptoms.  If you hop over to WebMD.com, best friend of the armchair hypochondriac, you can find a page that lists symptoms of dementia.  Such symptoms include "having trouble finding the right words to express thoughts,""having trouble exercising judgment," and "having difficulty controlling moods or behaviors" while noting that "agitation or aggression may occur." What especially caught my eye was the following passage:

The first symptoms of frontotemporal dementia may be personality changes or unusual behavior. People with this condition may not express any caring for others, or they may say rude things, expose themselves, or make sexually explicit comments.

Agitation or aggression?  Check.  Personality changes or unusual behavior?  Check.  Saying rude things?  Check.  Making sexually explicit comments (again, at a budget hearing!)?  Check.  Lack of inhibition? Check.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the 75-year-old Chuck Grassley has frontotemporal dementia.  I am, however, noting that Grassley's pattern of behavior over the last six months coincidentally happens to match the early symptoms of frontotemporal dementia.  With Grassley turning 77-years-old before Election Day 2010, it would not be unfair or unwise for Iowans to get a clean bill of health from Grassley before signing him up for another six-year term (at the end of which he will be 83-years-old).

For daily news and analysis on the U.S. Senate races around the country, regularly read Senate Guru.

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