U.S. Deficit Increased to $1.3T in Fiscal ’11

It does prove it. Specter gave the dems 60. You deny history but I would expect nothing less.

 

The Republicans only had 40 votes - not their problem.

Let me fix my statement:

That would only occur if Progressive Democrats were running a radical enough agenda to cause less progressive non-Republicans to became "bipartisan".

 

Let's consider the two independents:

Bernie Sanders: Caucuses with the Democratic Party and is counted as a Democrat for the purposes of committee assignments.

He may not be a democrat, but he is really close.

Joe Lieberman: A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.

He used to be a democrat and is still really close.

It is hard not to gang these independents with the democrat party when they are so closely tied. Counting them, the democrats did have a filibuster-proof majority.

More importantly, since you insinuate that the independents make it so the democrats didn't have a filibuster-proof majority, lets look at cloture votes.

Of the failed cloture votes, only 4 were lost by only one or two votes. The rest were lost by numbers that ensured at least one and often more failed to support the cloture motion. In all four of the close votes, both Lieberman and Sanders voted with the democrats for cloture. In fact both "independents" voted with the democrats in almost every cloture motion.

This is why most analysts considered the democrats to have a filibuster-proof majority during the 111 congress. They could almost always count on having the two independent votes, giving them the 60 required for cloture. The only times cloture failed was when democrats voted against their own party, proving the analysts to be quite accurate. The democrats could actually count on the independents better than they could rely on their own party members.

 

You forgot to mention that due to the crash of 2008 revenue had decreased from 2.7 Trillion to 2.1 Trillion (500 Billion) in lost revenue

That the Dow had crashed from 14,000 down to 6500
The financial system was a wreck and,
The Housing market was destroyed.

Bush was handed a balanced budget and in his final budget deficit was 1.4 Trillion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

Obama was handed a big mess.

I am a fiscal conservative but to deny the mess that Bush created is to deny reality.

 

It is filibuster proof if the bills are not out of the mainstream and there is enough leadership to hold the party in unity.

The problem was both of these things were lacking

 

Actually, the point is the Democrats were trying to pass legislation that couldn't be justified come the next election.

The Progressive agenda was not accepted by the voters. Those that worried about getting re-elected, were right to be worried.