Friday, December 20, 2013

Obomination: Harry Reid and the Democrats Broke the Senate and They're Not Done Breaking

As usual the Democrats are trying to blame the Republicans with what is going wrong instead of trying to fix things.  Actually in this case it is because of something they broke. 

Senator Chuck Grassley has a unique perspective on this matter.  He has served long enough to be in the Senate in all control scenarios.  A Democrat or Republican President with both a Democrat and Republican Senate.  He knows how the Senate works and it is not working now. 
The reason is simple:

The Senate Majority Leader has effectively become a one man version of the House Rules Committee, dictating what amendments will be debated and which ones will never see the light of day.

This strips the ability of individual senators to effectively represent their state, regardless of party.

It also virtually guarantees that any legislation the Senate votes on will be more partisan in nature.

I would ask my colleagues across the aisle, isn’t your first responsibility to the people of your state, not your party leadership?

Unfortunately the answer to Grassley question is many of the Democrat Senators no longer care about the voters or the people of their states.  All they care about is the party and advancing President Obama’s regulatory agenda through appointments now. 

The situation is only getting worse.  It has spread to the committee level, where Patrick Leahy is once again making things up.  As Senator Grassley stated in response to Senator Leahy latest persecution fantasy:

There's no doubt that after the Democrats broke the rules to change the rules, it’s going to be harder to get things done.  There is only one party that voted for the irresponsible rules change.  And, the fact of the matter is that given the atmosphere the Democrats created by invoking the nuclear option, nominations are going to be given added scrutiny.

It’s interesting that Democrats are blaming Republicans for not being at an executive business meeting last month.  They must have a short memory.  That was the very day and time that the Democrats decided to ignore two centuries of Senate history and precedent to break the rules and invoked the nuclear option with a simple majority vote, thereby disrupting the committee mark-up.

The so-called obstruction of nominees is a figment of the Democrats’ imagination.  They are blatantly misleading the public.  We have confirmed 44 judicial nominees this year alone.  To put this number in context, the Democrats allowed only 21 of President Bush’s judicial nominees to be confirmed in the fifth year of his presidency.   The only thing being obstructed is the rights of the minority.

Now, they are resorting to new threats at the committee level.  It’s a sad commentary on the Democrats’ rule of the Senate and the Obama administration.  They are slowly but surely taking the world’s greatest deliberative body and moving towards a majoritarian body, all in the name of rubberstamping the President’s extremely unpopular regulatory agenda.

The only solution is a Republican Senate for Christmas in 2014. 


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