Word: bille
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...could only go on for so long before he would bring the package to the floor for a vote. "As I have explained to people in that group, they cannot hold the President of the United States hostage," said Reid. "If they think they're going to rewrite this bill and Barack Obama is going to walk away from what he is trying to do for the American people, they've got another thought coming...
...this point, Nelson has found a kindred spirit in Obama, who hosted the Nebraska Senator for a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday. (Senator Collins had a similar meeting on Wednesday as well with the President.) On the table was not just passing a bill with the prerequisite 60 Senate votes to overcome the threat of a filibuster but establishing a mutual preoccupation with a durable centrist coalition. Obama "is interested in partnership here," Nelson said. "And for us to truly have a partnership, we're going to have to have people on both sides...
...Nelson first started thinking about gathering a group together last week as he became increasingly appalled by the contents of the Senate bill. "I thought, 'Whoa, there needs to be jobs, jobs, jobs,'" Nelson said. He approached his old friend Collins, and the two met over coffee in Nelson's offices on the 7th floor of the Hart Senate Office Building Friday morning. There they agreed to explore interest among "some of our colleagues in a process of scrubbing and changing, reducing the amount of the package so it wouldn't be a runaway tsunami of spending," Nelson said...
...Senate majority leader Reid's spokesman Jim Manley said that while Reid supports the process Nelson is spearheading, there's a chance that some items that may fall out of the bill because of the compromise, such as the education provisions, could be reinserted in negotiations with the House over the final version. Nelson is aware of the risk but plans to fight tooth and nail to protect his deal. "The President wants bipartisan support," he noted. "And to get it, you have to maintain something comparable to what we're talking about...
...also reasonable to assume that the economic downturn is causing greater competition for jobs and rising frustration among locals. British workers have protested the use of foreign workers. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has asked Microsoft to fire foreign workers first when layoffs arrive. The Italian Senate approved a bill Thursday that encourages doctors to turn in illegal immigrants who they've treated. Put simply, bad times fuel xenophobia. "History is full of cases of scapegoating triggered by economic crisis," says Francesco Billari, a professor of demography at Milan's Bocconi University. "Immigrants make an easy scapegoat...