written by Jennifer Rubin
December 16, 2010
After exposing his party, the White House and himself to an avalanche of bad press and bipartisan criticism over the earmark-stuffed omnibus spending bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a sort of political Dunkirk moment, gave up and fled. Just moments ago, he fessed up that he did not have enough votes for cloture on the omnibus spending bill. So instead, as the Republicans had demanded, there will be a continuing resolution, and the Republicans will get their shot to manage the budget next year.
Think about it for a moment. Reid, for no good reason, forced the president out on a limb (recall that President Obama endorsed this mess of a bill) and helped the Republicans to cement their image as the more fiscally disciplined of the two parties.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell worked the phones throughout the day urging members to hold firm against the pork. He took obvious pleasure in speaking from the Senate floor. "There is only one reason cloture is not being filed," he announced. The Democrats "don't have the votes" he said. And he went on to lambast them:
This is the first time in modern history -- the first time in modern history -- that not a single appropriation bill went across the floor of the Senate. Not a one. And so the Appropriations Committee members on a bipartisan basis did, indeed, do their job. The problem was the full Senate didn't do its job. And so what we ended up with, Mr. President, was this, this almost 2,000-page omnibus appropriation bill which we only got...Yesterday.
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) who had been tweeting about the worst of the earmarks all day, called it a "seminal moment."
It is also a major win for the opponents of ObamaCare, who halted a billion dollars in funding for the legislation that they aim to repeal.
It is also, of course, a defeat for the earmarkers, the business-as-usual crowd and Harry Reid.
1 comment:
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