Bunning the stubborn

Before he entered politics, Jim Bunning was a fiercely competitive Major League pitcher -- he even threw a perfect game as a Philadelphia Phillie in 1964. Now he is gaining notoriety as the stubborn, irascible senator who is playing games with, among others, jobless Americans.

Bunning is using Senate rules, which give any member outsized power to stymie the chamber, to block legislation extending unemployment benefits for up to 500,000 workers. Also affected are 2,000 workers furloughed by the U.S. Transportation Department, doctors who face a 21 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements, the jobless who rely on COBRA subsidies to keep their health insurance, states forced to suspend major highway projects and 1 million rural households that will lose access to satellite TV.

The Kentucky senator complains that the bill will add to the federal deficit -- he wants to use unspent stimulus money to cover the $10 billion cost. But other senators, including most Republicans, view the measure as essential and exempt from budget constraints.

Bunning's stance as deficit hawk would be more convincing if his conversion had come earlier. He had no qualms about adding to the deficit during the George W. Bush administration when Republicans enacted a costly Medicare prescription drug benefit and tax cuts for the richest and financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by, in effect, putting them on the national credit card.

Republicans are keen to end the impasse, which has distracted attention from the Democrats' health-care reform snarl, but they have minimal leverage over Bunning. He's not seeking re-election, at least partly because of pressure from his fellow Kentucky senator, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader. Democrats, meanwhile, are disinclined to arrange a graceful exit to the deadlock.

Bunning's feckless one-man crusade reinforces the Republicans' image as the cold-hearted "party of no" and, worse, inflicts unnecessary pain on real people.