Denny Rehberg is fast becoming the only reason for Democrats to vote for Jon Tester. President Obama’s jobs plan is not the strongest possible medicine for economic recovery, but what he’s prescribing is hardly an ineffective dose, and for that reason it’s worth supporting.
Most Senate Democrats agreed — except for Ben Nelson and Jon Tester who joined with every Senate Republican this evening to oppose cloture on the bill.
According to Susan Crabtree at Talking Points Memo, Nelson provided this explanation for his vote:
“It’s less about what the spending’s about,” Nelson said. “[The] point is, it’s raising taxes to engage in more spending in Washington. That’s not what people back home want. They want to see the cuts, and we’re not seeing any cuts.”
And here’s Tester’s explanation:
“The things I support in this bill are outweighed by the things I can’t support,” Tester told reporters afterward.
Those are world class weasel words. And if he continues uttering such gibberish, he’s going to become known as a world class weasel.
Right now, however, he needs to explain to Montanans, especially to those out of work, just what’s wrong with creating jobs with revenue raised in part by higher taxes on the wealthy? The last I checked the median household income for Montana ranked near the bottom, in the neighborhood of the median household incomes in the cheap labor states of the old Confederacy, states like the workers’ paradises of Mississippi and Alabama.
Tell us, Senator, exactly how does opposing Obama’s job bill help put your constituents back to work? And exactly what are the details of that better plan you presumably now intend to introduce as the jobs bill that will put people back to work without spending money or raising taxes?