UPDATE: The Senate doesn't appear to be a fan of President Obama's sweeping job-creation proposals, regardless of how they are packaged.
Obama's latest jobs bill – a $35 billion package aimed protecting the jobs of teachers and firefighters – failed in the Senate late Thursday by a vote of 50-50, ten votes shy of the 60 it would have needed for passage.
Three members of the Democratic caucus – Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Ben Nelson of Nebraska – joined with the GOP to block the legislation, which would have been funded by a half-a-percent surtax on those earning more than $1 million.
The vote comes a little more than a week after the chamber rejected Obama's much larger $447-billion package, from which the smaller bill was broken off from.
The president has vowed to continue to push his proposals in small bites, but the rest of his jobs agenda appears unlikely to fare much better in the partisan gridlock of the Senate.
UPDATE Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 7:54 p.m.: As expected, President Obama's $447-billion jobs package failed to clear a key procedural hurdle in the Senate Tuesday evening, with two Democrats joining 46 Republicans in voting to effectively kill the bill in its current form.
Democratic leaders kept the roll call vote open late Tuesday evening in order to allow New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen to return from an event in Boston to cast the 51st "yes" vote in favor of the measure, the Washington Post reports. But it was clear that the measure would fall well short of the 60 votes needed to break the GOP filibuster.
Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana were the two Democrats who joined the GOP in blocking the bill. As Politico notes, Democratic leaders were able to find a simple majority only thanks to "yes" votes from Sens. Joe Lieberman, Jim Webb and Joe Manchin, who said they opposed the president's plan but nonetheless voted to break the filibuster in the spirit of holding a debate.
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