Dick Durbin: We, er, don’t have the votes in the Senate to pass Obama’s jobs bill

posted at 9:52 pm on September 29, 2011 by Allahpundit

Note well: It’s not because of a GOP filibuster either.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that, at the moment, Democrats don’t have the votes to pass President Obama’s jobs bill, but Durbin added that that would change.

“Not at the moment, I don’t think we do but, uh, we can work on it,” Durbin said according to Chicago radio station WLS…

“The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies, “Durbin said. “There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.”

Is this news? We knew on Sept. 14 that Democrats were leery of the bill when Reid insisted that they had other business to handle before taking it up. Two days later, we found out that Senate Democrats spent an hour and a half griping about the bill to White House aides in a meeting. Five Democrats — Begich, Webb, Landrieu, Mikulski, and Casey — were specifically named as opponents. Three days after that, Durbin told CNN not to expect any action on it until October at the earliest, a prediction that’ll end up being proved right. To the extent that his latest comments are “news,” it’s for two reasons. One: Despite having had two weeks to convince his own party’s congressional caucus to rally behind him on this extremely prominent measure, Obama’s still up shinola creek. That’s what happens when your job approval trend lines look like this. Two: We all realize, I hope, that the bill is chiefly a political ploy designed to show The One being proactive on the seminal electoral issue of the day. He expects Republicans to block it, at which point he’ll turn around and blame our endless economic malaise on the GOP. That’s perfectly straightforward — except that he forgot to craft the bill to make sure that it would attract the support of Democrats at least, which is essential if he wants to frame opposition to it as blind wingnut partisanship. I’m as confused as Dave in Texas is about that. If you want to isolate Republican obstructionism as America’s big problem, you should probably first double-check with your own guys to make sure they’re not being obstructionist too, huh?

Brand new from Fox News tonight: A clear majority of voters (52/38) say that if Obama were CEO of a company, he’d have been fired by now. I can’t imagine why.