Republican Minority in the Senate Fails to Kill UI Extension

I’ve been told by numerous commenters since it happened that Obama got nothing for agreeing to a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts because the Republican Party could always be counted on to extend unemployment benefits without getting anything in return. Now that the Senate has let a UI benefit extension go forward, we can see if the belief of these commenters in bipartisanship and the fundamental goodness of the Republican Party was justified. Myself, I think the House doesn’t pass it (the deficit no Republican actually cares about will kill us all!) and McConnell let a decisive number of his conference vote against the filibuster because he knows the other house will do his dirty work, but we’ll see.