Some good news for the people who were left hanging this month (but no new benefits tier to help those who ran out entirely). But at least this will help some people, and hopefully it will pass uneventfully:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday that the Senate would vote move forward with reauthorizing unemployment benefits on Tuesday morning, after the replacement for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has been sworn in.

Republicans and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson have been preventing a final vote on the bill because of its $33 billion cost. Reid said the GOP filibuster, which has prevented more than 2.1 million people from receiving checks, is designed to crater the economy. "They're betting on failure. They think the worse the economy is come November, the better they're going to do election wise," said Reid. "Almost two million people who are long-term unemployed. These are not numbers. They are people."

Congress allowed extended benefits for people who've been out of work for longer than six months to lapse at the beginning of June. Since then Senate Democrats have repeatedly failed to muster 60 votes to overcome the deficit reduction demands of the Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and the Republican party. In the final vote just after Byrd's death at the end of June, Democrats came up just one yea short.

And in other news, all the Republican senators have embraced the formerly-deplored position of Jim "Tough S**t" Bunning. I think I will start referring to them as "T.S. Republicans."

However, most voters are on the side of those without work:

Two national polls released Tuesday revealed that registered voters think it's more important to help the unemployed than to reduce the deficit.

Voters are generally wary of government spending to boost the economy, but they nevertheless told ABC News and CBS News that the deficit is no reason not to help the unemployed.

Fifty-two percent of voters told CBS that Congress should extend unemployment benefits "even if it means increasing the budget deficit," including 35 percent of Republicans. Sixty-two percent of registered voters told ABC Congress should extend benefits despite concerns that doing so "adds too much to the federal budget deficit."

In a Bloomberg survey, 70 percent of voters said reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit. But only 47 percent said Congress should reauthorize extended benefits, which in some states provided the unemployed with up to 99 weeks of checks.

A poll commissioned by the National Employment Law Project in June found that 74 percent of voters think helping the unemployed is more important than reducing the deficit.

Of course, the rank hypocrites in the Republican party are lining up to try to force retention of the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts in exchange for support on extending unemployment benefits. (And the deficit worries suddenly fly out the window, just like that.)

In other words, it will be at least another week before we see a vote:

Senate Democrats will remain one vote short of the 60 needed to reauthorize unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless at least until the end of the week, as West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin says he wants to wait until the state legislature has cleared up the law on how to fill the Senate seat left behind by the late Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).

Manchin previously said that he could name a replacement as soon as the beginning of the week, but on Monday his office told HuffPost he'd make his announcement by Sunday at the latest and Friday at the earliest.

"He intends to make the appointment by week's end," a spokesman said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has repeatedly said that Senate Democrats need Byrd's replacement to break the filibuster by Republicans and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, whose approval -- had he decided to give it -- would have ended the endless debate that has already cut off unemployment checks to some 2.1 million people.

By the time Byrd's replacement is sworn in, more than 2.5 million people who've been out of work for longer than six months will have missed checks they would have received had Congress reauthorized the stimulus programs it allowed to lapse at the end of May. President Obama's 2009 stimulus bill and subsequent legislation gave the unemployed up to 99 weeks of benefits in some states. With the federally-funded extended benefits lapsed, in most states the unemployed are eligible for only 26 weeks of state-funded benefits.

Now we have to wait to see if Harry Reid will schedule a vote this year, before three of the Senators supporting the change leave office:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Saturday she's secured the votes to force a rules change ending the Senate's practice of secret holds.

McCaskill said on Twitter that she had secured the support of two more senators to give her the 67 votes necessary to change the rules in the Senate to abolish the traditional practice of being able to anonymously hold up nominees to positions requiring Senate confirmation.

Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) were the last two signatories.

McCaskill tweeted Saturday:

First battle won!With Sens Bond and Brownbeck now have 67 Senators on my letter calling for the end to secret holds.Now gotta get a vote.

66 senators have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in support of the rules change, and Reid has said he supports the change, too, but did not sign the letter since it was addressed to him.

McCaskill said earlier this month that she was two votes shy of ending the practice, which gives minority party senators the ability to hold up nominees. Republicans have used the privilege to some effect against President Barack Obama's nominees, most notably senior Sen. Richard Shelby's (R-Ala.) hold earlier this year on 70 of the president's picks for various positions requiring federal confirmation.

This is starting to look like a pattern. First Mark Kirk, now Jan Brewer. Governor Brewer's effort to stir sympathy for her cause seems to have backfired on her.

Via the Arizona Guardian:

Gov. Jan Brewer said in a recent interview that her father died fighting Nazis in Germany. In fact, the death of Wilford Drinkwine came 10 years after World War II had ended.

During the war, Drinkwine worked as a civilian supervisor for a naval munitions depot in Hawthorne, Nev. He died of lung disease in 1955 in California.

Brewer made the comment to The Arizona Republic while talking about the criticism she has taken since signing SB 1070, the new immigration law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that... and then to have them call me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced," Brewer said in the story, published Tuesday.

How exactly does one stretch work for a munitions depot stateside into "fighting the Nazis"? Evidently by making the claim that the lung disease that killed her father was caused by toxic fumes at the munitions factory.

Her claim that she didn't mean to embellish the story rings hollow to me. The phrase "my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany..." clearly intends to convey the impression that he fell in combat in Germany fighting Nazis. If she had intended to convey otherwise, she would have framed it as the result of the country's war with Nazi Germany. She did not.

Of course, she is now trying to spin as a simple misinterpretation on the part of the reader, which points directly to my overall problem with the faux patriotism candidates put on under the guise of military service. We live in a country where service is voluntary (despite our unenforced draft laws). Serving or not serving is not a benchmark measure of anyone's patriotism.

As far as I'm concerned, military service should not be a marker of a candidate's qualification to run for or hold office. When it starts being pimped as some kind of extra qualifier, or when candidates use their family's service as a qualifier (as Brewer did), it's an insult to every member who is or has served in the military today.

Brewer just keeps proving her ambition and lack of qualification for office. Arizona, you can do better than this.

I can't figure out Scott Brown. He's supposed to be against politics as usual, right? And yet he cuts a special deal to cut off debate for some mutual funds in his home state?

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted 59-39 late Thursday to pass a sweeping rewrite of financial-sector regulations.

The 1,500-page bill includes an array of curbs on banking and finance, aimed at creating new consumer protection rules, providing more scrutiny of big bank operations, and insulating taxpayers from future bailouts of financial companies. Opponents argued throughout lengthy debate that the measures will over-regulate the financial industry.

Democrats secured support from a handful of Republicans to win final passage. The measure is a major part of the domestic agenda of the Obama administration.

Lawmakers must now reconcile differences between the Senate bill and a similar measure that passed the House of Representatives in December.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) won the support of Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown Thursday for the vote to end debate, a key step in moving the bill forward.

Mr. Brown voted against shutting off debate Wednesday. But he supported the effort Thursday after winning assurances that major Massachusetts-based mutual-fund companies—including Fidelity Investments and State Street Corp.—would be shielded from trading limits the bill would impose on big banks.

Via Huffington Post, here's the real dirt:

The Senate passed the bill without the Merkley-Levin amendment, an addition that would have imposed stricter language on the "Volcker Rule." Named after Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker, the "Volcker Rule" bars commercial banks from using taxpayer-backed money to trade for their own gainw. Without the Merkley-Levin amendment, sponsored by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Carl Levin (D-MI), regulators who were blamed for their lack of oversight preceding the financial crisis will be empowered to shape the "Volcker Rule" and possibly water it down.

Levin and Merkley's amendment was never debated on the Senate floor. Instead, "last-minute maneuvering" killed it. Levin said that it showed "the power of Wall Street," reports Reuters:

Last-minute maneuvering on the Senate floor killed two controversial amendments: one to tighten proposed restrictions on risky trading by banks, and another exempting car dealers that do not finance their own lending to auto buyers from oversight by a new federal consumer watchdog.

Republicans withdrew the auto-dealer amendment, offered by Senator Sam Brownback, so that the bank trading amendment, offered by Democrats Jeff Merkley and Carl Levin, would not come to a vote. It is firmly opposed by major financial firms.

Since Russ Feingold and Maria Cantwell didn't vote for it, I'm not doing the happy dance just yet.

Can we afford to put bipartisan compromise with these people over actual and effective financial regulation reform? Pardon my cynicism, but it looks like we won't have much of a choice:

Key members of both parties said Wednesday that they are close to agreeing on the main elements of a bill to overhaul the nation's financial regulations, raising the prospect that the Senate could begin formal discussion of the landmark legislation early next week.

"I'm more optimistic than I've ever been," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the lead Republican negotiator. "I think we can put a bill together pretty soon." His counterpart in months of talks, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the banking committee, agreed that they were on the cusp of a consensus.

If no last-minute hurdles arise, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) plans to hold a test vote Monday, aides said. If he gets 60 or more votes, he could move ahead with formal debate on the bill, which among other things would create an agency to protect consumers against abuses in mortgages and other loans, set up a council of regulators to watch for risks to the financial system, and give the government power to wind down large, troubled financial firms.

The likely emergence of a bipartisan consensus is a notable departure from the fractious debate over health-care legislation, which passed last month without a single Republican vote. This time, some Republicans say they are looking forward to supporting the financial bill, which arose out of an economic crisis that has left millions of Americans angry and bereft of their jobs, homes and savings.

With both parties eager to claim that they are tackling financial excesses, Republicans have been focusing their objections on specific tenets of the legislation rather than on its overall thrust, allowing for more compromise.

In keeping with Frank Luntz's talking points, Mitch McConnell will block Wall St. reform -- by claiming to reform Wall Street. Hey, why not? It's not as if gobblety gook hasn't worked before! And I'm sure it had nothing to do with his recent meeting with Wall Street bankers:

Mitch McConnell has rounded up the necessary votes to block Democrats from bringing Wall Street reform to the Senate floor, a spokesman for the Senate Minority Leader said on Friday afternoon.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Thursday he planned to bring the bill to the floor next week where it would be debated and amendments added. McConnell has now persuaded 41 Republicans to vote against debating reform.

'We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to continue to subsidize this 'too big to fail' policy. We must ensure that Wall Street no longer believes or relies on Main Street to bail them out. Inaction is not an option," McConnell writes in a letter to Reid that was provided to HuffPost.

Democrats have been battering McConnell all week for his firm opposition to the Democratic reform effort.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley told HuffPost that Reid will be moving ahead regardless.

"Congratulations. I hope they feel good," said Manley. "They've got 41 signatures on a weak, watered-down letter that simply calls for more negotiations. If they are at all serious, they will simply let us go to the bill next week and let the amendment process begin."

Manley said the bill will be brought up for a vote on a motion to proceed to debate later this coming week.

Mitch McConnell is doing his best to kill financial regulatory reform by Luntzifying his "just say no" position on the financial reform bill that's being worked on in the Senate. He says he has the votes to kill it on the floor. What cowards and Wall Street hacks.

Mitch McConnell has rounded up the necessary votes to block Democrats from bringing Wall Street reform to the Senate floor, a spokesman for the Senate Minority Leader said on Friday afternoon.

Senate Majority Leader Harry (D-Nev.) said on Thursday he planned to bring the bill to the floor next week where it would be debated and amendments added. McConnell has now persuaded 41 Republicans to vote against debating reform.

'We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to continue to subsidize this 'too big to fail' policy. We must ensure that Wall Street no longer believes or relies on Main Street to bail them out. Inaction is not an option," McConnell writes in a letter to Reid that was provided to HuffPost.

Democrats have been battering McConnell all week for his firm opposition to the Democratic reform effort.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley told HuffPost that Reid will be moving ahead regardless.

"Congratulations. I hope they feel good," said Manley. "They've got 41 signatures on a weak, watered-down letter that simply calls for more negotiations. If they are at all serious, they will simply let us go to the bill next week and let the amendment process begin."

Manley said the bill will be brought up for a vote on a motion to proceed to debate later this coming week.

Different reports say that the Republicans might not stay united.

One report says:

But one Republican financial lobbyist predicts a domino effect if Republicans get on board: “If one goes, 20 will go. It will be ‘open the floodgates.’”

That's more of a dream than reality though and I don't doubt that right now McConnell has his 41. He seems to me to be bloviating a little too much at this point though.

Paul Krugman responds to McConnell's antics and hits him hard:

Well, Mr. McConnell is trying. His talking points come straight out of a memo Frank Luntz, the Republican political consultant, circulated in January on how to oppose financial reform. “Frankly,” wrote Mr. Luntz, “the single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout.” And Mr. McConnell is following those stage directions.

It’s a truly shameless performance: Mr. McConnell is pretending to stand up for taxpayers against Wall Street while in fact doing just the opposite. In recent weeks, he and other Republican leaders have held meetings with Wall Street executives and lobbyists, in which the G.O.P. and the financial industry have sought to coordinate their political strategy.

And let me assure you, Wall Street isn’t lobbying to prevent future bank bailouts. If anything, it’s trying to ensure that there will be more bailouts. By depriving regulators of the tools they need to seize failing financial firms, financial lobbyists increase the chances that when the next crisis strikes, taxpayers will end up paying a ransom to stockholders and executives as the price of avoiding collapse.

I agree with mcjoan when she says:"As long as Dems are feeling like bringing a fight to Republicans on financial reform, then they should go all in, and include a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency."

Simon Johnson and James Kwak have penned a great op-ed in The Hill saying that we need to have a strong CFPA and the threats that are in its way:

We have been and remain advocates of a strong, independent CFPA for familiar reasons: the increasing use of product complexity as a way to hide fees; the vastly unequal bargaining power between consumers and the oligopolies that dominate many financial products; the need for uniform standards that apply to non-bank institutions as well as traditional banks; and the abject failure of existing regulators to enforce those laws that did exist....

Given the political appeal of stronger consumer protection, it may be difficult for opponents to take a strong line against a new agency (although the Chamber of Commerce has done its best). So opposition will most likely focus on weakening consumer protection behind the scenes...read on

It's a great piece. I'm not an economist so I try and link the bright people on this topic and weigh in more on its political ramifications, but just for the sake of the nation, we need real financial regulations. A complete economic meltdown has already happened and it will happen again unless a strong CFPA and strict regulations are implemented to watch over the financial sector. Mitch McConnell and the GOP are acting like true paid-off shills for their Wall Street brethren. They could have taken the high road on this one issue, but that's impossible since it's all about the 2010 midterms now instead of the people who elected them.

I don't think this mean old snake is used to being under the gun like this. I'm glad it's finally over:

Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) one-man filibuster ended on Tuesday.

Bunning agreed to stop blocking legislation to extend benefits and COBRA health plan subsidies to the unemployed after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) agreed to allow him a vote on an amendment to pay for the $10 billion bill.

It’s the same deal Bunning was offered last week, but Bunning at the time decided to continue his fight. He’d been holding up an extension of the benefits since Thursday.

However, 205,000 households will now face delays in their unemployment checks. Thanks, Jim!

Best wishes for a full recovery to Sen. Lautenberg:

New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) has cancer and will begin receiving chemotherapy to treat it, his office announced Friday.

"After several days of hospitalization and testing, Senator Lautenberg's doctors have diagnosed that he has a B-Cell Lymphoma of the stomach," his office said in a statement. "This is a curable tumor, and will require treatment over the next few months."

Lautenberg's treatment means he will not be on hand Monday for a key procedural vote on the Senate, on Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) $15 billion jobs bill, Lautenberg's office confirmed.

B-cell lymphoma is more commonly known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that starts in the body's lymphatic system, according to the American Cancer Society.

[...] Lautenberg was hospitalized Monday after falling in his Cliffside Park, N.J., home, and underwent surgery Tuesday for what was thought then to be a bleeding ulcer. At 86, Lautenberg is the second-oldest senator currently serving, behind only Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).