Sen. Olympia Snowe: "No jobs for you!"

(Source: Jason Reed/Reuters)

Democratic leaders have changed the ingredients of, chopped up and sweetened President Obama’s jobs package in an effort to lure Republican votes. It hasn’t worked, triggering the question: What will it take for even one or two Senate Republicans to vote for anything in the president’s plan? That is what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been pondering in recent days after repeated efforts to pick off a GOP defector have failed. [...] Two of the Democrats’ targets, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), said they would likely vote against the infrastructure bill because it would raise the income tax. [...] "I'm not sure I understand the mindset of being intractable and intransigent. If they truly wanted to be working on a bipartisan basis, why aren’t they willing to work with Republicans to figure out alternative offsets?" asked Snowe. The Maine centrist, who has been targeted by Tea Party activists in the 2012 primary, said she could support ending tax breaks for oil and gas companies, or ethanol production. But she has balked at raising taxes on families earning over $1 million, which Republicans say would affect job-creating small businesses.

Today, the Senate is talking about whether they should vote to debate a jobs bill. Another Republican filibuster looms, in which the Republican Senate won't even vote to allow the Senate to debate and vote on doing a little something to try to save this economy. In this madness, Democratic leadership hopes to at the very least shame Republicans and possibly get a few of them to peel off from the Republican agenda of wrecking everything in sight and stealing all the rest.

Pffft. Snowe is protecting a tiny handful of "families" who would end up paying "less than one half of one percent" of their income, 1/217th in additional taxes. That's total bunk from Snowe, and she very well knows it. She's trying to save her political skin at the expense of jobs.

Reid says it's because she, and all Republicans, are controlled by Grover Norquist, but there's something a lot more base in it. It goes right back to Mitch McConnell's job one, defeating President Obama in 2012, country be damned.