single minded

I appreciate how the economy is very important. I do. But how many congressmen/women do we have? At the federal and state level?

Vermont's Senate has just overwhelmingly passed a bill that will allow same sex marriage in the state of Vermont. From here, it goes to the house, where the judiciary committee has a week's worth of testimony on the issue. It's expected to pass there as well. This is significant because it's the first time that same sex marriage has been granted from a legislative body and not "legislated from the bench by activist judges."

I know, Vermont's (republican) governor doesn't support same sex marriage, he's said that before. He officially announced today that he will veto this bill. He made the announcement today to stop speculation and to focus attention on the economy.

Can't we do two things at once? Vermont has 30 senators (26 of whom voted for this bill). Do all 30 of them have to spend all of their time fixing the economy? I'm a software developer by trade, and if my application has a critical, all 100 developers don't stop what they're doing to fix the problem. People still have progress to make in other parts of the application. Similarly, just because the economy stinks doesn't mean that we can ignore human dignity and civil rights, it doesn't mean we can ignore the environment, it doesn't mean that no other progress can be made until the recession is over. Does it?

And even so, how does vetoing a bill that has already been debated and already passed both houses of congress help to focus on the economy? Seems to me that it detracts from the economy, because now the bill has to go back to the house and senate and get the two thirds majority to override your veto (a majority that it currently already has).