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...impact of gays serving openly. Fifteen of 17 military personnel who testified at a hearing on the base that day strongly opposed lifting the ban. While opposition today isn't as high - and the public supports doing away with the ban - it remains a sensitive political issue, as Bill Clinton painfully discovered. He simply wanted to let gays serve by changing the regulation barring them from doing so. But Congress got so upset at that prospect that it passed the compromise "Don't ask, don't tell" law, which has allowed gays to serve secretly - that...
...extension of benefits - the yearlong extension has been held up as differences are worked out with the House - to tide over the unemployed until lawmakers can pass a more permanent solution. Coburn's objection is the same as Bunning's: that Democrats are not paying for the $10 billion bill. "I think it's unfortunate that potentially we may go home and not deal with it," Coburn said Thursday afternoon in a speech on the Senate floor. "I don't care how we pay for it as long as it's legitimate, as long...
...Democrats say that they consider this bill along the lines of (and much cheaper than) President George W. Bush's emergency war supplemental bills, which totaled trillions of dollars and were mostly unpaid for. "We really believe that unemployment situation is an emergency economic situation," Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters Thursday evening. "The Republicans do not accept that they want to cut off unemployment benefits or pay for it using stimulus funds which are being used to create jobs. It's a very shortsighted approach...
...Republican leaders have not totally dug in their heels. They have actually agreed to proceed with a vote on the unfunded bill - but most Republicans are expected to vote against the bill, and Dems will need at least one Republican to reach the magic threshold of 60 to overcome Coburn's filibuster and pass the bill. Even if they managed that, however, it'll take at least until Sunday evening to procedurally bypass the filibuster, and many Senators are impatient to go home or depart on long-planned trips abroad (the security for which is expensive to rearrange). (See pictures...
...while Reid and Coburn are trying to hash out an agreement - Bunning eventually settled for a vote on an amendment that would have paid for the bill using unused stimulus funds, which failed - other Senators are looking at leaving and then passing legislation when they reconvene April 12. "Whatever we do will be retroactive if we don't get it done now," Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters...