Tag Archives: Harry Reid

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Cruz making more enemies daily

Sen. Ted Cruz cannot possibly understand what he’s doing.

The Texas Republican seems to be doing everything possible, all within his power, to alienate the leadership of his party, not to mention the elders of the U.S. Senate where he has served all of nine months.

As Dana Milbank notes in his Washington Post column, Cruz has done what was thought to be virtually impossible, which is create a massive amount of wreckage in record time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-in-debt-limit-and-shutdown-defeat-ted-cruz-is-one-sore-loser/2013/10/16/d896d180-36b4-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_story.html?hpid=z7

McConnell brokered a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reopened the government and staved off a default of our national debt obligations. That wasn’t acceptable to Sen. Cruz, who said the Washington “establishment” caved in. To whom he wasn’t entirely clear.

Cruz then stormed in front of a bank of TV cameras at the very time McConnell was making his own statement about the deal. I am quite certain the Senate’s chief Republican is not going to forget what Cruz said and did any time soon. As McConnell was trying to put some kind of positive spin on what he and Reid accomplished, Cruz was turning the spin in precisely the opposite direction.

Team player? All for one and one for all? Neither of those notions has a place in Ted Cruz’s vocabulary.

Cruz said the Senate should have “listened to the American people.” My hunch is that the 81 senators who voted for the McConnell-Reid deal were listening to the people — who were telling them to end this madness, to get the government operating fully and to avoid plunging this nation into default.

It’s Ted Cruz who needs to have his hearing checked.

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Self-awareness has gone AWOL in Senate

The Huffington Post has taken note of a patently hilarious reaction to the deal struck by the Senate to end the government shutdown, which also increases the national debt limit.

It is that the U.S. Senate comprises 100 individuals who have next to zero self-awareness.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/16/senate-budget-crisis_n_4112253.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

There they were, applauding themselves for all the hard they did in getting the deal done. The applause seems to ignore the reality of what brought us to the brink of fiscal calamity — which was the senators’ role, along with the House of Representatives, in creating the problem in the first place.

Indeed, watching Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pat each other — and themselves — on the back for all that work will present late-night comedians plenty of grist for the foreseeable future.

None of this needed to happen. None of the federal employees who were furloughed without pay needed to suffer. The nation did not need to endure this drama. Americans did not need to wonder whether their retirement accounts were going to evaporate because Congress and the White House couldn’t reach a deal sooner.

The deal struck, let us remember, provides only a short-term relief. More drama is just around the corner.

And for this the Senate is congratulating itself?

Give me a break.

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Senate moves ahead; House stumbles and bumbles

Can this actually be happening? The U.S. Senate is close to a deal that would forestall a default on our nation’s obligations while the House of Representatives cannot even reel in all the members of the party that runs the lower chamber?

And is the result going to be that the United States actually defaults and sends investment accounts into some abyss?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/15/politics/shutdown-showdown/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

What in the world is happening to our legislative branch of government?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said late Tuesday that “we’re in good shape,” meaning that he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have been talking to each other, along with their parties’ leadership teams. They’re trying to reach a deal that is acceptable to all members of the Senate.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Capitol Building, Boehner is trying to fend off the insurgents within his own party. So far, he’s failing badly.

If this whole thing explodes, I am thinking the clock will start ticking down the time Boehner will remain as speaker. Either his own party will throw him over, or the voters will do so in November 2014 when they hand control of the House over to the Democrats.

Senators, who believe bipartisanship still seems to matter, need to persuade their House colleagues of the disaster that awaits them all if they cannot get a deal done … now.

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FNGs making their mark on D.C.

The new breed of congressmen and women who have taken over the Republican caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives intended to change Washington for the better.

Their obstructionism has done the reverse. It has created a poisonous atmosphere in the nation’s capital.

I want to introduce a time-honored term to describe these folks, comprising mostly the tea party wing of their party.

Let’s call them FNGs.

Vietnam War veterans known the term well. It was used — often disparagingly — to describe the “new guys” who cycled “in-country.” They would walk off their plane wearing dark green jungle fatigues and shiny new boots. You could spot an FNG a mile away. The “NG” stands for “new guy.” The “F”? Well, it stands for arguably the most functionally descriptive term in the English language. I’ll leave it at that.

The FNGs who now populate a segment of the GOP have accomplished one important goal of their overall mission. They have made their mark. They’ve changed the debate in Washington. They have made their presence felt, just as they promised they would when they campaigned for their congressional offices in 2010 and 2012.

Perhaps the most well-known FNG has been Texas’s own Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican pistol who blabbed for 21 hours in a faux filibuster to protest the Affordable Care Act and who has scolded his colleagues publicly for failing to demonstrate the proper commitment to bringing change. He’s been scolded in return by his party elders, such as Sen. John McCain, for impugning the character of current and former senators — such as Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

The FNGs now have taken us to the brink of default on our national fiscal obligations. It would be the first time in history that the nation has failed to pay its bills. The gray eminences of both parties know what’s at stake. The FNGs don’t have a clue. They’re about to find out if they stand in the way of a compromise reportedly being hammered out by two senior senators — Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell.

Here’s some good news. They won’t be FNGs forever. It’ll take some time for them to get some seasoning. They’ll have to learn how to compromise and understand that other public officials represent constituencies with different points of view. Not everyone shares the FNGs’ world view.

I just hope they don’t contribute to the destruction of our government before they wise up.

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Will House of Reps take Senate deal?

Here’s my gazillion-dollar question: Suppose Sens. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell strike a deal that the entire Senate can endorse to reopen the federal government and extend the nation’s debt ceiling a few months, will the House of Representatives follow suit, or will the tea party — aka wacko — wing of the party sink it?

The Senate has taken the lead on negotiating a deal to end this madness — at least for now. The House leadership tried and failed to reach an agreement with the White House.

House Speaker John Boehner is being held captive by the insurgents within his own Republican Party. He cannot control about 30 of them, the so-called tea party wing. They’ve been able to stall just about everything in the House.

If the Senate approves a deal and sends it to the House, will the House then dig in its heels simply because it can, and then risk the economic futures of millions of Americans — a majority of whom blame Congress for this mess in the first place?

The House comprises 435 members, most of whom are Republicans. Of those Republicans, most of them comprise the so-called “establishment wing” of the party. The tea party cabal consists of a small minority. However, they’re calling the cadence in the people’s chamber.

It’s past time for the speaker to exert the authority he has to get a deal done. Now. Before it’s too late.

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Insanity may result in government shutdown

The insane wing of the Republican Party is having its way, or it would appear, as the government inches toward a shutdown.

Will someone ever be able to slam some sense into those thick tea party skulls?

House Speaker John Boehner, one Republican who doesn’t want to shut the government down over objections to the Affordable Care Act, is now hamstrung by the conservative cabal that has hijacked the once-great political party. They’re insisting on defunding “Obamacare,” and are willing to risk shutting down the entire federal government to do so.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has adopted an apt term for the tea party wing. He calls them “anarchists.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/year-end-tax-cuts-have-nearly-doubled-projected-size-of-national-debt-cbo-says/2013/09/17/cda802d2-1f9c-11e3-94a2-6c66b668ea55_story.html

The Washington Post reports: “None of the Republicans are willing to stand up to these anarchists,” Reid told reporters. Of the law known as Obamacare, he added: “They’re obsessed with a bill that passed four years ago, a bill that was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. They can’t get over that.”

I keep waiting for some leading Republicans, the folks who’ve been around the nation’s capital for some time, to talk some sense into these yahoos. I’m thinking of, oh, people like Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, who’s been through a government shutdown and knows the political price his party will pay if they go through with this idiotic notion.

Thornberry, though, doesn’t raise a ruckus. I know it’s not his style to be drum-thumper. I’m kind of wishing he’d rethink his back-bench mentality and take the lead on this one.

If he doesn’t, or if someone in the leadership doesn’t wrest control back from the GOP’s insane wing, there will be hell to pay.

Guaranteed.

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Senator’s past may haunt him

I love it when high-and-mighty U.S. senators try to throw their weight around and then find out their own misdeeds may be used against them.

David Vitter, R-La., may be the latest lawmaker to learn that harsh lesson.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/david-vitter-obamacare-democrats-secret-weapon-96744.html

Vitter is pushing a tad too hard to abolish the Affordable Care Act to suit some Democratic senators who are infuriated with his tactics on the Senate floor. So, in the spirit of hardball Louisiana politics — with which Vitter no doubt is familiar — the Democratic caucus might resurrect Vitter’s admitted prostitute solicitation to derail his effort to defund the ACA.

POLITICO reports that Vitter is insisting on a vote to repeal federal contributions to pay for lawmakers’ health care coverage. Democrats are angry enough at the conservative Republican to consider their own amendment which would include senators who solicited prostitutes, a la David Vitter.

“Harry Reid is acting like an old-time Vegas Mafia thug, and a desperate one at that,” Vitter said in a statement to POLITICO, referring to the Senate majority leader. “This just shows how far Washington insiders will go to protect their special Obamacare exemption.”

It seems a bit weird for someone such as Vitter — who consorted with hookers — to throw around terms like “Mafia thug” when talking about a leading Senate colleague. The Senate Ethics Committee didn’t take any action on Vitter’s extracurricular activity back in 2008 because it occurred before he became a senator. Vitter did apologize profusely for his behavior.

Still, I am inclined to invoke the old adage about the common color of kettles and pots.