Harry Reid should stop pointing fingers and pass a budget | Washington Examiner

Harry Reid should stop pointing fingers and pass a budget | Washington Examiner

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a novel conception of his job priorities. One recent day, the Nevada Democrat took it upon himself to lecture Republicans on how they should conduct their business. Claiming Republicans practiced "obstructionism on steroids" in 2011, Reid said he hoped "that they understand that everything doesn't have to be a fight. Legislation is an art of working together, building consensus, compromise. And I hope that the Tea Party doesn't have the influence in this next year that they had in the previous year."
It's no surprise that Reid hopes the Tea Party has less influence in 2012. After all, the Tea Party provided the spark that powered Republicans to an historic 2010 election victory, retaking the House of Representatives with a 63-seat gain, electing more than a dozen new GOP governors and upwards of 700 freshmen state legislators across the country. It was the GOP's biggest off-year election victory since Silent Cal was in the White House. What Reid is likely even more worried about, though, is that Tea Party muscle will give the GOP a Senate majority in November and boot him out of his comfy job.

In those same remarks, Reid offered this laugher about his party's purported efforts in 2011 to break the legislative deadlock between President Obama and Senate Democrats on one side and House Republicans on the other: "I don't think ... anyone can question or they should question our having reached out to Republicans. We've done everything we could to work with them. We're going to continue to do that. In spite of the obstructionism, we have been able to accomplish a lot of good things in the last Congress."

Let it be noted, however, that the most prominent missing item among those "good things" Reid claims to have accomplished was fulfilling one of the Senate's most basic constitutional duties -- approving an annual federal budget. In fact, Reid and his Senate Democratic colleagues couldn't even do that two years ago when Nancy Pelosi was House Speaker and Democrats controlled the lower chamber.

If Reid is serious about working with Republicans and getting some constructive things done for America, the place to start is the federal budget. But nobody should hold their breath waiting for the Senate Majority Leader to think about anything but partisan politics this year. National Journal reports that Reid told a meeting of his Democratic colleagues earlier this week that "the party is positioned to dictate a congressional agenda designed to get most of its congressional members -- and President Obama -- re-elected. Working with the White House, Senate Democrats are plotting a 2012 floor agenda driven by Obama's re-election campaign and the fight for control of Congress. The year will see an intensified version of the course Democrats pursued this fall through votes on the president's jobs bill." In other words, while blasting Republican "obstructionism," Reid is plotting systematic obstructionism throughout the coming months. This is spelled h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y.



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2012/01/harry-reid-should-stop-pointing-fingers-and-pass-budget/2106356#ixzz1jqLbQYnj