The SBA and ending the recession one VOTE at a time

The Senate just ended debate for the night. A cloture vote is scheduled for 10:40 AM EST tomorrow.

Watching C-Span was not too encouraging because both parties were complaining about the other, and the bill was not brought to a vote tonight. The issue is that Republicans want to add their own amendments, and when they do, Democrats want to add more of their amendments. Republicans are objecting to the added Democratic amendments, and so on.

The two Senators that voted for cloture on the amendment(Lemieux and Voinovich) which added the $30B Small Business Lending Fund have threatened to withhold their votes for the overall bill unless Republicans were given the ability to offer amendments. It is unclear if this will be allowed. It is clear that these two Republicans were supporting their party, but you would have to guess that if they voted for the most controversial part of the small business bill, they would vote for the bill itself.