Reply #137: As has been said repeatedly, the votes don't matter.

[jeff47]

The point is to ask for what's needed, not what's passable.

When you only get what's passable, you celebrate. But you can also make an argument to come back for more. You also have a built-in defense for when the too-small stimulus proves insufficient.

Since the administration pitched the stimulus bill as 'just right', they have no coherent argument to ask for more. To ask for more they have to admit they were wrong, which means they shouldn't be trusted to be right this time. And they also have to fight the charges that the stimulus was a failure.

They should have asked for the $1.2T that was calculated as the necessary amount, and fought mightily against turning half the bill into a tax cut bill. When they "only" got $700B with it 1/2 tax cuts, they'd now have a leg to stand on when fighting for more stimulus.