Last month, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., was demonized for having the gall to demand that Congress reduce spending elsewhere in order to pay for unemployment benefits, in accordance with a budgeting law the Democrats had just passed.

Now Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has tried to do the same thing, although in a less confrontational way: instead of blocking the benefits until the Senate pays for them, he proposed a bill to pay for them. Democrats promptly defeated it on the Senate floor.