Bunning Blocks Jobless Aid in Senate

The Senate clash over the unemployment benefits ended just before midnight Thursday with Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, refusing to lift his objection, meaning the jobless aid – for however short a time – will run out Sunday night unless a deal is reached Friday.

As the fight drew to a close, Mr. Bunning complained he had been ambushed by the Democrats and was forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game. He said Democrats caused their own problems by dropping the program extensions from an earlier bipartisan jobs measure.

And while he said the Senate spent almost three hours “telling everybody in American that Senator Bunning doesn’t give a damn about people who are on unemployment,” he assured those still watching that he was indeed interested in renewing the programs as long as it can be done to his satisfaction.

Senator Richard Jr. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said he intended to try to break the impasse again Friday morning but Mr. Bunning indicated he would again be on hand.

Senator Jim Bunning, the conservative Kentucky Republican, insisted that the jobless pay due to run out Sunday night should be paid for rather than added to the deficit as an emergency. During the debate, Mr. Bunning stood rigidly at his desk in the back row of the Senate and objected to repeated Democrat attempts for agreement to extend unemployment coverage through April 5.

“I believe we should pay for it,” declared Mr. Bunning, who said he was determined to remain to thwart the Democrats. “I’ll be here as long as you are here.”

Democrats, in unusually personal terms, challenged Mr. Bunning, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, for denying aid to tens of thousands of Americans struggling in a bad economy, even reading letters from Kentucky residents about their own problems.

“I just don’t think one senator ought to be able to heap this kind of suffering and misfortune on people who are already struggling in this economy,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said, chastising his Republican colleague. “This is a wild pitch you are throwing tonight because it is pitch that is hitting somebody in the stands.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/bunning-objects-over-and-over/