But How Did They Vote?

The easiest way to find out how your Congress members voted is to go to the web. A link to the Roll Call votes for both the House and Senate is HERE.

The Roll Call can provide insight beyond what is reported in the main stream media. A good example is Obama's Job Bill strategy.

Even though the full Jobs Bill failed to get pass a Senate filibuster, Obama has said that he would continue to put pressure on the Republicans by breaking up the Job Bill, and forcing a vote on each piece. Here are the results of the first two votes:

1) 10/11/2011, Full Jobs Bill, ROLL CALL

Vote Counts:	YEAs	50
	NAYs	49

2) 10/20/2011, Partial jobs bill for teachers and first responders, ROLL CALL

Vote Counts:	YEAs	50
	NAYs	50

At first glance it seems like nothing changed. But if you look carefully at the Roll Calls you see that the Democrats are actually losing ground. In first vote, Harry Reid voted with the NAYs, which was a parliamentary maneuver to allow the vote to come up again. But in the second vote, Harry Reid had to vote with the YEAs in order to get the critical 50th vote so they could claim the bill would have passed if it wasn't for the filibuster.  This means that Obama actual lost a vote in the second round. If he looses another vote in the third round, he will loose the claim that he has the majority.

If Obama wants to pursue his Jobs Bill, he needs to speak out against the Blue Dog Democrats who are providing the Republicans with cover.