McConnell's alternative bill fails on the Senate floor

Shortly after the Senate voted against moving forward on a $110 billion tax extenders bill, a Republican short-term alternative also failed on the floor. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered a one-month extension of unemployment insurance benefits, the COBRA subsidy, flood insurance program, a small-business lending program and 2009 poverty guidelines paid for with stimulus money used in the Democrats' bill to offset costs. 

"The only thing Republicans have opposed in this debate are job-killing taxes and adding to the national debt," McConnell said on the floor. 

"We’ve offered ways of paying for these programs, and we've been eager to approve them."

The cloture vote failed because "Democrats simply refuse to pass a bill that doesn't add to the debt," McConnell said.  

McConnell chided Democrats for objecting to his bill that would be paid for "with a Democrat-approved stimulus offset." 

"If the Democrats object to extending these programs using their own stimulus offset to pay for them, then they'll be saying loud and clear that their commitment to deficit spending trumps their desire to help the unemployed," he said. 

Meanwhile, Democrats blamed Republicans for hurting unemployed Americans and voting 'no' for purely political reasons. 

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said after tonight's vote that she wouldn't be "lectured to by the people who created the deficits" and those who refuse to help create jobs that would eventually reduce the red ink.