The Party Of No

California GOP legislators blocked 20 bills after demands were unmet!!!!!!!

Source: LA Times
Among the lost bills were keeping domestic-violence shelters open and helping counties prepare for swine flu. Republicans wanted free tax preparation for poor people eliminated.
By Shane Goldmacher and Patrick McGreevy
Reporting from Sacramento - A plan to keep dozens of domestic-violence shelters from closing sailed out of the state Assembly late Friday night with nary a no vote. Yet hours later, the bill lay in the legislative trash heap, one of many lost to politics as lawmakers reached the deadline for completing their work this year.
Republicans in the Senate blocked more than 20 bills -- all needing GOP votes to pass, many approved by the lower house with bipartisan or near-unanimous support -- to leverage a trio of unrelated demands. Chief among those was the elimination of a program that allowed mostly low-income Californians to have the state do their tax returns free, something the maker of TurboTax has been trying to achieve for years.
The other demands, which Democrats say they were willing to meet, were putting a Republican name on a popular bill and tweaking corporate tax breaks passed months ago.
"This is what they hold out for?" exasperated Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said shortly after 3 a.m. Saturday.
One by one, bills to keep the shelters open, help counties prepare for the next swine flu outbreak and blunt the effect of the state's raid on local funds, among others, fell as GOP senators refused to vote.
There's no policy dispute, most involved agreed, though Republicans said the blockade wasn't so much about the demands as the principle of trust. Democrats, they said, broke promises that had sealed the summer's budget pact.
"The point here is not one, two or three issues," said Senate GOP leader Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta). "The point is one issue: We have to be able to abide by agreements." LinkHere