It looked for a time like even Harry Reid’s stripped-down jobs bill might stall with less than the required 60 votes, but at least two Republicans — Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Olympia Snowe of Maine — have joined with the Democrats, which should be enough to advance the bill through this key procedural vote.
Late Update: The final vote was 62-30. The Dems lost Ben Nelson (D-NE), who voted against the bill; and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) is undergoing cancer treatment and did not vote. So that knocked the Dems from 59 votes down to 57, but they picked up five Republicans, Brown and Snowe, as I mention above, plus Susan Collins (R-ME), Kit Bond (R-MO) and George Voinovich (R-OH).
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.