As I write this, the Senate is poised to pass a bill extending unemployment benefits - sort of. Yesterday's headlines trumpeted the success of Senate Democrats but jumped the gun slightly. What happened on Tuesday was a cloture motion, breaking the Republican led filibuster that had bottled the bill up, and allowing for an up or down vote on the bill itself, which will easily pass.

But there is still a delay, one that will likely push the open vote back at least one day. While this may seem insignificant, the extension applies to people whose unemployment insurance has already expired, some of whom are living off of short term high interest loans. It's a terrifying position to be in and every day really does matter. The delay is due to a rarely invoked rule regarding cloture - following a successful cloture motion, the minority has the right to take up to 30 additional hours for post cloture debate. This time, Republicans are invoking that rule as a delaying tactic. This follows the log jam created by the filibuster itself, which similarly increased the length of time unemployed Americans have had to wait before they could resume receiving benefits.

It would be easy to portray the Republicans as obstructionists, or callous representatives of big business unconcerned with the plight of the working class, but that would require glossing over the main objection that Republicans have to this bill. The filibuster was in response the refusal of Democrats to amend the bill to include offsets. In other words, the Republicans wanted spending cuts to go along with the benefit extensions. They plan to use the 30 hours of post cloture debate, which will also interfere the Senate's ability to conduct other business, to make their case.

There is validity in the Republican objection to the bill, even if it is somewhat hypocritical in light of the Bush tax cuts that were not paid for by matching spending cuts. However, now that the filibuster has failed and there is no rational expectation that 30 hours of floor debate will change the final outcome, there is no reason to delay passing the bill as quickly as possible.

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