A 90 to 5 vote is a good show of bipartisan legislation, right?
Well, yes and no…
From CNN:
The Senate on Tuesday voted 90-5 to approve a bill that will make it tougher for credit card issuers to raise fees and interest rates starting early next year. [...]
The bill will now go to the House, which is [...]

Okay, that’s not really what they said, but it’s certainly the net effect. Because there will be no bailout money forthcoming for this industry.
More from the AFP:
The White House on Monday expressed “concern” and “sadness” over the state of the ailing US newspaper industry, but made clear that a government bailout was not in the [...]

From today through mid-week, I’m in Houston attending the Offshore Technology Conference. I’m here on the sponsorship of the American Petroleum Institute which has brought in a cadre of bloggers, presumably to help generate coverage and discussion of petroleum issues. Since I believe energy and climate change policy will be some of the most important [...]

A deadline has been set and it looks like something will be passed by the middle of October.
Also, at that point, it won’t need 60 votes to pass. Just a simple majority will do.
Who here thinks that the man in the picture is the one organizing it all?
From New Republic:
The reonciliation instruction specifies a [...]

In the wake of the Iowa Supreme Court decision last week, combined with the subsequent Vermont legislative passage of same-sex marriage, there’s been a lot of talk, even amongst more conservative pro-same-sex marriage folks, about judicial activism and whether it’s the appropriate role of the courts to get involved in deciding social hot-button issues. [...]

And this time it was done through the legislative branch. So this is a much more significant win for equal rights advocates because people can’t pin this on “activist” judges.
From WCAX:
The Vt. Senate voted to override the governor’s veto of the same-sex marriage bill. This morning, the Senate voted 23 to 5 to override that [...]

Having more volunteerism in our communities is undeniably a good thing and the Senate just passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act by 78 to 20. So a big win for bipartisanship today.
Here’s more from CNN:
Among other things, the bill would more than triple the number of positions in the AmeriCorps program, from 75,000 [...]

No surprise here, and expect this to be a brutal fight.
From NY Times:
WASHINGTON — The House and Senate approved budgets of about $3.5 trillion for the government on Thursday with no Republican support, a sign of deep partisan tensions likely to color Congressional efforts to enact major policy initiatives sought by President Obama.
On the heels [...]

Looks like the Republican’s “budget” presentation last week was little more than a PR stunt after all. And I’m not sure why they even bothered. Because all it did was make them seem even less credible when it comes to fixing the economy.
Not smart.
From The Note:
According to a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, [...]

A lot of people are making fun of the fact the Republican plan (.pdf) doesn’t contain any numbers, and after all of the grief they’ve been giving Obama and Geithner for not providing the appropriate amount of detail, the scorn is deserved.
Still, it’s what’s in the outline that’s important.
First, they cut a bunch of funding [...]

Politifact tracked 513 promises Obama made during the primaries, and yesterday took a look at his top 10.
Of the 10 promises, 1 has been fully kept, 1 has been kept via compromise, 5 are in the works and 3 have had no action taken on them.
I’ll have more on those last 3 later, but first [...]

While President Obama has often criticized his predecessor’s frequent use of signing statements meant to alter the effect of new laws, our new president didn’t take long to issue a signing statement of his own, tacking one onto the spending bill he signed today.
[In the signing statement,] he objected to provisions of the bill that [...]

After months of pleas from the small business community, the New York Times (the so-called paper of record) finally decided to cover some of the central elements of the legislation. Except that it was not an article discussing the potential costs of the legislation; nor was it even an article discussing the debate over [...]

The topics?
Why is bipartisanship dead? And why is Obama so non-bipartisan.
Of course I kid. It’s all about the stimulus bill passage. Axelrod obviously touts the job creation in the bill, and I think it’s pretty clear at this point that 2012 will be all about this bill.
Check it out…

What did you think? How many jobs [...]

The $787 billion stimulus bill passed and Obama explains how the spending will be tracked and the information will be made publicly available for everybody to see…

Already, Republicans who didn’t vote for the bill are praising pieces of it…
Rep. John Mica was gushing after the House of Representatives voted Friday to pass the big stimulus [...]

The vote was 61-37, and the procedural vote yesterday made this margin all but certain.
But this doesn’t mean it’s all sewn up. There’s still some debate to be had.
Politico digs into the specifics…

—Both House and Senate bills provide close to $87 billion in increased federal aid to help states meet their healthcare bills under [...]

Thhis is a bad recession. About in the middle of pack as far as recessions go. The graphic points out an interesting aspect of recessions. They all end. And, surprisingly, they didn’t all need a trillion dollar stimulus bill from the Feds to end them. In fact, all of them combined up to now did not need a trillion dollar stimulus to end.

After failing to rally bipartisan support for the stimulus package, President Obama is taking to the road to rally the people behind his plan.
The president will visit two areas hard hit by the recession: Elkhart, Indiana, and Fort Myers, Florida. The question is, will Obama’s trip be nothing more than the kind of cheering-crowd photo [...]

On my Meet The Press post on Sunday I lamented that John Kerry was being put out there to argue the stimulus package. He’s just not up for it because he doesn’t seem the least bit passionate anymore. Plus, he’s from Massachusetts and nothing says tax-and-spend like a senator from the far east.
Instead, I argued [...]

They ask for more of it and then they block it?
Who’s playing politics again?
From AP:
WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked Democrats from adding $25 billion for highways, mass transit, and water projects to President Barack Obama’s economic recovery program.
Already unhappy over the size of the measure, Republicans insisted additional infrastructure projects be paid for [...]