Thanks to Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, 400,000 Americans will forego unemployment benefits and another 2,000 federal transportation workers will be out of work. On the Senate floor today, Bunning defended his unsurprising, yet damaging decision. "Anybody, 100 of us, can object to anything that is brought to the floor of the U.S. Senate," he said.
On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, guest host Lawrence O’Donnell asks Nation DC Editor Chris Hayes if this is a new low for the senator. Undoubtedly, it is. "There are real, genuine human consequences to what he’s done," Hayes says. "I mean, a lot of it is contingent on whether everybody can get together and pass something in the next two days that’s retroactively operable…But there’s hundreds of thousands of people there and a projected 1.2 million people not getting unemployment if they don’t get this done by the end of the week."
As Hayes explains, Bunning is doing nothing more than following the "modus operandi" of the Senate Republican caucus and their penchant with "No." Following in Bunning’s footsteps, Senator Jon Kyl had claimed those with unemployment were enjoying being unemployed-another example, Hayes says, that the Republican caucus truly does not care.
—Clarissa León
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