On the recordFebruary 23, 2010
I rise to address the jobs issue and the bill before the Senate. Part of it is to show to my fellow Senators and the American people that the Democratic leadership has a different view on this bill before us that is a partisan bill, particularly in regard to the absence of tax extenders being in that bill, compared to what they have over several of the recent years, which was very supportive of these tax provisions that are left out of this bill. I will explain it this way. Although the Senate Democratic leader was highly involved in the development of the bipartisan bill, he arbitrarily decided to replace it with a bill now being jammed through the Senate. From the start, this was something Senator Baucus and I were working on with both leaders of the Senate. Somehow, that didn't seem to work in the end, as we thought it was working very well as we were moving along. As much as I was surprised by the Democratic leader's disregard for bipartisanship, I am even more surprised by the explanation given by him and his people who speak for him. Perhaps the most significant change between the bipartisan package Chairman Baucus and I helped put together and the package we voted to move to is the package of expired tax provisions has been removed.
