Senate Rejects Obama's State Government Bailout

From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama and his allies in the Senate promise to press ahead with separate votes on pieces of his failed $447 billion jobs measure despite unanimous opposition from Republicans. But there also are signs of slippage among Democrats and evidence the strategy isn’t working with voters.

Future votes on individual pieces of the measure, however, aren’t likely to fare better than a pared-back jobs measure designed to boost hiring of teachers and first responders that Republicans and a handful of Democrats scuttled on Thursday.

Obama’s revised plan failed on a 50-50 test vote that fell well short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. Three Democrats abandoned Obama on the vote and two more who voted with the president said they couldn’t support the underlying Obama plan unless it’s changed.

Thursday’s $35 billion measure combined $30 billion for state and local governments to hire teachers and other school workers with $5 billion to help pay the salaries of police officers, firefighters and other first responders. The White House says the measure would “support” almost 400,000 education jobs for one year. Republicans call that a temporary “sugar high” for the economy and say it’s a taxpayer-funded bailout of state and local governments.

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