NationalJournal.com – Obama Jobs Bill Dies in Senate – Tuesday, October 11, 2011 http://mobile.nationaljournal.com/congress/obama-jobs-bill-dies-in-senate-20111011
Republican opposition had assured defeat of the jobs bill for some time but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has worked for weeks to try to unify Democrats in support of cloture on the package. Democrats hoped their relative unity would highlight GOP opposition to a measure that polls well. After inserting a provision to pay for the bill by raising income tax rates by 5.6 percent on people who earn more than a $1 million a year, Democrats accused the GOP of blocking the legislation both to deny Obama a victory and to protect millionaires at the expense of the rest of the country. “Folks should ask their senators, why would you consider voting against putting teachers and police officers back to work?” President Obama said in a speech Tuesday in Pittsburgh. “Ask them what’s wrong with having folks who have made millions or billions of dollars to pay a little more.”
Update:
The $447 billion plan died on a 50-49 tally that garnered a majority of the 100-member Senate but fell well short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive.
Republican filibustered it. You remember Bush’s original tax cuts that started this mess? They passed with the same vote count (it was 50-50 with Cheney being the final straw), except Democrats aren’t total assholes that put party politics above the Constitution.