Blog - Articles Tagged 'Carte Goodwin'

UPDATE, 9:45 p.m.: I'm traveling, so a little late with the updates here, but it looks like this finally passed earlier this evening by a vote of 59-39. The bill now moves back to the House of Representatives for one more vote. They are expected to hold that vote tomorrow and the bill will most likely be signed into law tomorrow as well.

UPDATE, 5:45 p.m.: The Senate is voting right now on 5 Republican amendments to the bill and will vote on final passage of the bill after these votes. None of the amendments are expected to pass. Under Senate rules, the final vote on passage must happen before 9 p.m. this evening. You can follow along with the votes live on C-SPAN 2.

Original post below...

After 6 weeks of failure and delay, the Senate this afternoon finally voted to end a Republican filibuster of the unemployment insurance extension bill, allowing it to move forward towards final passage and becoming law. The Senate still has to take one more vote on the bill, but the motion they passed this afternoon was the big hurdle that, until now, they had been unable to overcome. The bill is now virtually guaranteed to be signed into law this week.

Read the rest of this post for everything you need to know on what's in the bill, what isn't, and what happens next on its journey towards becoming law.

As some of you have noted in the comments, in my post last night on what's been going on with the unemployment bill, I came to the wrong conclusion about which bill -- H.R. 4213 or H.R. 5618 -- would be getting a vote on Tuesday. Because, as I explained, Senate Democrats had been setting up the procedure for bringing H.R. 5618 to the Senate floor directly (skipping the committee process), I figured that was the bill they were planning to move forward with. However, shortly after publishing the post, new information was posted on the Senate calendar that indicated H.R. 4213 would actually be the bill getting a vote.

The Associated Press is reporting that West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin will appoint his former chief legal counsel, Carte Goodwin [D], to fill the seat of the late Sen. Robert Byrd [D, WV] for the rest of this session. Manchin is scheduled to make an official announcement on the appointment later this afternoon.