It’s official. Tom Coburn is speaking on the Senate floor, officially blocking the unanimous consent request to move to a short-term, one-month extension of unemployment benefits and the COBRA subsidy. They’re absolutely not going to be able to stop Coburn from pressing forward on this. He’s been honing this rhetoric about deficit spending for years. He’s held up hundreds of bills since he’s come to the Senate on this exact issue. Making an example of him may be nice for a short-term poll bounce, but it will not deter Coburn from filibustering. No way, no how. He just doesn’t play that game.

For the sake of millions of people who are really struggling right now in this economy, the Senate Majority Leader needs to start the clock on cloture immediately. That’s the only way to pass this bill. Coburn will never allow unanimous consent.

Coburn just said that if the bill is not offset (specifically by eliminating “ineffective” programs), he will stand in the way of that.

UPDATE: Thanks to the indispensable Senatus, I see that Mitch McConnell actually filed cloture on a motion to proceed to a short-term extenders bill, paid for by unspent stimulus money. Harry Reid just moved to table the motion, and I suspect that will succeed. No word on what happens after that.