Job Bill Passes

The last few months have been quite hard on Congress, and the Democrats in particular. Now, finally, the Democrats and the rest of Congress have something the cheer about - the passage of a jobs bill. The boost on hiring in the United States is expected to be modest, but the passage of the bill shows that a bipartisan agreement can actually be made on something. The GOP was planning to filibuster the bill, but five votes from Senate Republicans kept the bill from being filibustered; the bill ended up passing because of this. One of the key votes came from Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, who is quite new to the legislative process. One of the only reasons many of the other Republicans voted against the bill was because of the "heavy hand" method Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada used. Otherwise, support for this bill was quite strong. This fact is a relief, because it shows that Congress can actually come to a decision on some pieces of legislation. One can only hope that this progress is a good sign for partisan relations in the time coming. One thing that this shows is the fact that a small number of votes in the Senate can make quite the difference - only a few people need to be swayed in order to create a majority. This thought makes a stalemate in the Senate all the more interesting. The link to the article is here.