Back to gridlock

For a fleeting moment, it looked as if Washington was getting back to work in the service of the public interest. Sixty U.S. senators, including six Republicans, supported a procedural vote Tuesday to advance legislation to restore unemployment benefits to more than a million Americans.

On Wednesday, unfortunately, it was back to gridlock as usual on Capitol Hill. The measure appears stalled in the House, and remains tenuous in the Senate, which still must take a final vote.

The issue should be about as noncontroversial as it gets. About 1.3 million people had their unemployment checks cut off on Dec. 28. The federal government had been providing extended benefits to Americans who had exceeded their states’ timelines.

But nothing is easy in Washington these days.

The sticking point between Republicans and Democrats is whether the $6.4 billion three-month extension should be accompanied by a commensurate level of cuts in other federal programs.

On a talking-point level, the Republicans are insisting the extension should be “paid for” through other savings while the Democrats want to restore a fiscal lifeline to the jobless with no strings attached.

On closer inspection, there is a dose of unreasonableness in the details of each side’s position. The Republicans have been proposing conditions that are nonstarters with Democrats, such as delaying the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate for a year, denying a certain tax break for children of undocumented immigrants or even approving construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The Democrats have shown a curious stubbornness of their own for a party claiming to be so deeply concerned about the plight of the jobless. If restoration of benefits truly is a priority — as it should be — then surely the self-avowed champions of the poor can find $6.4 billion in a mammoth federal budget to make it happen. Their slowness in coming up with a plausible option only enhances suspicion that election-year politics is in play.

This is what’s wrong with Washington: the mentality that everything is a bargaining chip, and that being able to blame the other party for failure is just as good if not better than actually getting something done.