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… He doesn't need 60 votes, he only needs to stop the bill getting 60 votes. …
As you say, mustering forty-one votes does indeed prevent passage of the president's tax cut/stimulus plan but in doing so Sanders and those forty other Senators would be assuring that the unemployed don't have their benefits extended and that the middle class see there tax withholding go up immediately in January; the lowest income tax bracket would go from 10% to 15%, a fifty percent increase! The impact on the weakened economy would be immediate and profoundly negative.
That's an achievement that I don't think is admirable politically or morally. Indeed it is pure political obstinateness; something I trade in myself from time to time. Let's not have the Democrats so quickly assume the role of “the Party of No.” Let's recognize that indeed this compromise has a lot of good in it and move forward from there.