Credit Where Credit is Due

Harry Reid put the Paul Ryan budget up for a vote in the Senate, and it lost, with all the Democrats voting against it, but 40 Republicans voted to kill Medicare, 41 if you count Rand Paul, who voted no because he thought that it was not radical enough:

The Senate on Wednesday resoundingly rejected a budget sponsored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that calls for significant cuts to future Medicare benefits.

The 40-57 vote came one day after Republicans suffered an upset defeat in a special election in upstate New York where Democrats made Medicare cuts the primary issue.

Five Republican senators voted against a motion to take up the ambitious House budget plan, which suffered only four Republican defections when it passed the lower chamber earlier this year.

Four centrists voted no: Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who favored larger budget cuts than what was proposed in Ryan’s budget, was the fifth no vote.

Every Democrat voted no except for Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), who did not vote.

By forcing a vote on this, Harry Reid did the right thing, and by forcing the Senate Republicans to choose between normal voter in the general election, and teabagger in the primary, he put the 'Phants between a rock and a hard place, which is a very good thing.

BTW, my guess as to why Murkowski voted no, she has 5 years until her next election, and she knows that the teabaggers in Alaska will hate her no matter what she does, so this was the safer course for her.