U.S. Senate approves debt ceiling “deal”

By a vote of of sev­en­ty-four to twen­ty-six, the U.S. Sen­ate has put its stamp of approval on the Barack Obama/John Boehn­er debt ceil­ing “deal”.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Mur­ray, Cantwell, Wyden, Begich, Bau­cus, Tester, Risch, Crapo, Murkowski

Vot­ing Nay: Merkley

As not­ed above, Jeff Merkley was the only sen­a­tor from the Pacif­ic North­west to cast a vote against the debt ceil­ing vote. We thank him for that. Here’s an excerpt from his strong, well-rea­soned state­ment against the deal:

I have spent the last sev­er­al days immersed in the details of this bud­get deal, try­ing to under­stand its real-world impact on Oregon’s mid­dle class and small busi­ness­es. I have a sin­gle, sim­ple mea­sure to eval­u­ate this pro­pos­al: is it going to cre­ate greater oppor­tu­ni­ties for pros­per­i­ty and suc­cess for work­ing Amer­i­cans? Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I have con­clud­ed that it will not, and so I can­not sup­port it.

He adds:

Our unsus­tain­able deficits are absolute­ly a long-term chal­lenge that we must address.

But mil­lions of Ore­go­ni­ans and Amer­i­cans are out of work right now. And with at least 5 mil­lion fore­clo­sures loom­ing, with the expi­ra­tion of extend­ed unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits fore­cast to cost half a mil­lion jobs next year, with the pay­roll tax hol­i­day end­ing and cost­ing anoth­er esti­mat­ed 900,000 jobs in 2012, we should be relent­less­ly pre­oc­cu­pied with how to cre­ate more jobs.

Instead, this pack­age will add to the job loss­es, repeat­ing the mis­takes that have caused pro­longed eco­nom­ic slumps in this coun­try and elsewhere.

We’ll be post­ing addi­tion­al excerpts from Merkley’s state­ment against the debt ceil­ing deal through­out the day on In Brief.

Ordi­nar­i­ly, on the occa­sion of a sig­nif­i­cant vote such as this, we would include the pres­i­den­t’s reac­tion. But we know what that’s going to be: more plat­i­tudes and emp­ty promis­es. So instead, we’d like to salute one of the oth­er five Democ­rats besides Sen­a­tor Merkley who vot­ed no: Sen­a­tor Robert Menen­dez of New Jersey.

Sen­a­tor Menen­dez deliv­ered a pow­er­ful, thought­ful, inspir­ing speech against the debt ceil­ing deal on the Sen­ate floor just a cou­ple of days ago. Here’s one of the best parts of his address, which reviews why the deal is flawed:

Mr. Pres­i­dent, there is no bal­ance in this agree­ment — no com­pro­mise. It sim­ply does not force shared sac­ri­fice as the Amer­i­can peo­ple have demanded.

Oil com­pa­nies will keep pick­ing the pock­et of Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers with ridicu­lous hand­outs while they earn $143 bil­lion in profits.

Ethanol mil­lion­aires will be off the hook with this deal.

There is no bal­ance in this deal.

There is no fair­ness. There is noth­ing but con­ces­sions to the rad­i­cal right wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty that is hold­ing the Amer­i­can econ­o­my hostage – a gun to its head – threat­en­ing to the pull the trig­ger if they don’t get their way.

And yet, no one on the right seems to be hap­py. They want more. They don’t believe they have got­ten enough.

Mr. Pres­i­dent, when is enough – enough?

How far do we have to bend before we break?

How much do we have to give of our val­ues, our beliefs, our vision of America?

How much do we have to give of the promis­es we have made as a nation to the hard-work­ing mid­dle class fam­i­lies strug­gling to make ends meet …strug­gling to pay the bills, the mort­gage – pay for health care and tuition to put their chil­dren through col­lege and give them a chance at a bet­ter life?

How about those whose lives would be shat­tered except for the government’s protection?

We are their voice… and I speak for them when I say this is not a fair deal, but it is the deal before us.

The debt ceil­ing deal was cer­tain­ly nei­ther fair nor square.

Barack Oba­ma keeps talk­ing about bal­ance, keeps talk­ing about ask­ing bil­lion­aires and mil­lion­aires to pay their fair share, keeps say­ing the plans offered by Repub­li­cans are one-sided, and yet he was­n’t any able to secure any new or restored rev­enue as part of the deal that he nego­ti­at­ed. Repub­li­cans came away crow­ing that they got “nine­ty-eight per­cent” of what they wanted.

Their atti­tude tells us all we need to know about this deal. It’s capit­u­la­tion on the part of the pres­i­dent and all the Democ­rats in Con­gress will­ing to go along with him — includ­ing, sad­ly, our own Sen­a­tors, Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell.

POSTSCRIPT: The oth­er Democ­rats who vot­ed no were Kirsten Gilli­brand of New York, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Frank Laut­en­berg of New Jer­sey, and Ben Nel­son of Nebras­ka. Bernie Sanders of Ver­mont, though not a Demo­c­rat, was also a no.