Who says one man’s voice in the Senate can’t alter history? Or at least delay unemployment checks for 400,000 people?

The bill before the Senate was a stopgap measure designed to keep highway funds and unemployment benefits flowing for another month until Congress passes more comprehensive legislation. For five days all that prevented it from passing was Republican Senator Jim Bunning from Kentucky. But he stood firm. Finally yesterday the Senator, caving to mounting pressure from both parties, withdrew his opposition and the bill passed 78 to 19.

Bunning used one of the Senate’s more obscure procedural processes to block the bill. Democrat and Republican leaders had passed the bill to the floor without vote, asking that it be approved by unanimous consent. But Bunning, who is retiring at the end of this year, withheld his consent.

Bunning objected to the bill because it would have added $10 billion to the federal deficit without including a payment mechanism. On the floor of the Senate, Bunting said, “The debt of the United States will be unsustainable… We cannot allow that to happen. Because I have got too many young grandchildren that want America to be the same America that I grew up in. And I’m worried to death that that’s not going to be the case.”