Jesse Taylor reads Townhall so we don't have to, and spots this headline-grabber from Bob Novak:
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is being urged by colleagues to threaten to close down the Senate for the rest of the year unless Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle ends his disruptive tactics.Brush off Novak's partisan dish, and the story you find is that Bill Frist wants to close Congress until America no longer has this annoying two-party system. I initially questioned with wisdom of this approach, but it occurred to me that President Bush won't really need his rubber stamp until after November anyway, since the executive branch has also put off all policy actions until after the election. (November will be a busy month!) For a minute there, I was concerned that the majority party was behaving in an excessively partisan manner or something. Posted by Kriston at April 26, 2004 1:23 PMIn addition to menacing all judicial nominations, Daschle is now preventing legislation from being sent to Senate-House conferences to resolve differences in bills passed by both Houses unless the outcome is guaranteed.
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, and other conservatives want Frist to counter Daschle by bringing the business of the Senate to a halt. This would mean passing an omnibus appropriations bill and then awaiting the outcome of the elections. Democrats could not offer their pet amendments, but it also would prevent passage of a budget resolution and, therefore, kill any chance of making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
They ought to close for 9 months out of the year anyway, ...the windbags.
Do you not believe Daschle is exceeding, in scope, any previous obstructionism by a minority party in the Senate history?
Posted by: J.Scott Barnard at April 26, 2004 2:33 PMDaschle's only hitting the ball farther because the Republicans are pitching it faster. Perhaps the majority party ought to recognize that it does not have the mandate it thinks it does, hm?
Posted by: Kriston at April 26, 2004 3:00 PMAt Pandagon I also found a link to Michael Tomasky, who reports that last week Republicans suspiciously held a roll call vote to break up a rare Q&A session Condi Rice was having with Democratic Senators. The timing was suspicious because there have been so few votes at all lately:
This bespeaks another quiet Capitol Hill outrage -- Republicans are sitting on legislation, trying to pass as little as possible so that they can head into the election and charge the Democrats with being obstructionist. They're calling as few recorded votes as they can get away with. Except, of course, at the exact moment that the national-security adviser is just settling in to face her first grilling from Senate Democrats in ages, at a time when Americans are dying left and right in Iraq and the situation looks worse every day.
That's enough to make one wonder who the real obstructionists are.
Posted by: Dimmy Karras at April 26, 2004 3:52 PMIsn't there something our Congress could be doing right now? Perhaps if they close down I'll pitch the idea of Simple Life 100, and we can see our favorite Senators building houses, planting fields, and selling hot dogs. Hell, we could probably throw in a few affairs with the local yokels.
Now that would be efficient use of taxpayer money.
Oooooooh, those DEMO-CRATS.
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