Much Ado About Nothing

The recently-passed Senate “jobs bill” might as well have been nicknamed the Senate “let’s-keep-our-jobs” bill. With 70 Senators voting for the $15 billion legislation, including 13 Republicans, the verdict represented welcome progress for the stalled, embattled body. However, it would be a mistake to view the passage of this bill as a bipartisan victory. Along such lines, the media has covered Mass. Senator Scott Brown’s reach across the aisle to support the bill as though his actions were notable. However, voting in favor of such a relatively insignificant piece of legislation does not make Brown a maverick; rather, it highlights the unacceptably polarized state of the Senate today.

Brown’s vote on this bill has been widely analyzed as a heroic political move. The Christian Science Monitor wrote, “In his first big votes this week for a $15 billion jobs bill, Sen. Scott Brown stunned some conservative supporters by siding with Democrats.”

The Boston Herald crowed, “Her campaign tried to label Sen. Scott Brown a ‘lockstep’ Republican, but Attorney General Martha Coakley is now praising Brown’s decision to break with the GOP to support a Democratic-sponsored jobs bill.”

The Hill, a Washington tabloid, announced the passage of the bill with the headline, “Brown helps Reid Win on Jobs Bill.”

However, it is far from encouraging that Brown’s action has been termed such a radical show of “bipartisanship.” In fact, this perception speaks to the outrageous level of factional division in the Senate. Thirteen Republicans voting for a minor bill is barely worthy of discussion, historically speaking. In years past, legislation regularly passed by such margins and garnered little media attention when it did. Yet, today, every measure seems split on party lines. Hostility and blind partisanship are the going order, and, as such, Brown’s adherence to basic representational duties has been mistakenly considered noble.

With the understanding that senators are held hostage by larger political dynamics, Brown’s true test of bipartisanship will come when he casts his vote in favor or against a number of larger pieces of legislation—including those focused on health-care, immigration, climate change, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and financial regulation, to name a few. We encourage Brown to choose carefully in these upcoming votes and to carve out an identity as a bipartisan senator in the future. As a Republican representative from historically Democratic Massachusetts, he has unique potential to bridge the ideological divide, and we hope he uses the opportunity wisely.

With regard to the Senate as a whole, we congratulate the body for working incrementally toward change. As the stalling of health-care reform has shown, major overhaul may be difficult or impossible to achieve under the current state of affairs. Given this reality, passing many small-scale bills may be the best way forward. However, if they hope to create a noticeable impact, senators must move quickly to pass a number of additional, minor bills. While any progress is better than none at all, it remains disappointing that the factional atmosphere polluting Washington today makes larger change unlikely.