The U.S. Congress has passed, and President Obama will sign into law, the budget and deficit cutting measure cobbled together in the nick of time to narrowly avoid a government shutdown last week. The vote in the House drew the support of 59 Democrats and 179 Republicans to pass by a margin of 260 to 167. Evidencing a fissure in the Republican party between more deficit hawkish Tea Party activists and the more pragmatic Majority leader John Boehner who helped craft the Eleventh hour agreement with the President and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, 59 Republicans voted against the compromise, mostly to protest what they saw as the agreement's not steep enough cuts to tackle the nation's burgeoning fiscal and debt woes.
The measure coasted to victory in the Senate by a vote of 81 to 19, with virtually all Democrats voting in favor, (48 out of 53), along with 32 Republican Senators and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, (Al Gore's previous Vice Presidential running mate who you'll recall Democrats tried to get rid of last time around in the primaries but fought back to regain his seat as an "Independent.").
Voting against the measure in the Senate were 15 Republican Senators along with several liberal/progressive stalwarts including Carl Levin (D-MI) and Senator Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), who previously and before passage had given an impassioned speech about the "immoral" budget cuts in the agreement to services for the nation's poor from the well of the Senate.
More details are available by clicking here or here. jp
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