There will be no negative
consequences for Harry Reid’s abuse of Senate procedures. These abuses
include refusing to allow hundreds of House-passed bills to come to a vote and
his infamous change requiring only a bare majority to approve most judges,
which enabled President Obama to pack the bench of the federal judiciary.
Instead Senator McConnell plans to
turn the other cheek. If you think this noble example will inspire Democrats to
behave themselves the next time they get control of the Senate, I have a bridge
in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. “Please sir, may I have another!”
Neil Lesniewski writes an article
titled “McConnell Plots a Functional, Bipartisan Senate” in Roll
Call:
Sen. Mitch McConnell wants to hit
the ground running in January — and he thinks Democrats are ready to join him
in crafting a more open, functional Senate.
In an exclusive interview in his
Capitol office suite, the incoming majority leader told CQ Roll Call he’s been
preparing his would-be chairmen to move quickly since spring.
“The worst experience any majority
can have is that you convene and you look around and nothing’s ready to go. So
what I said to the members who hoped they would be chairmen [was], ‘Let’s don’t
have that problem. Be thinking now about legislation that you have, preferably
that enjoys some Democratic support, because we certainly didn’t think we were
going to have 60 and we don’t,’” the Kentucky Republican said.
McConnell pointed to conversations
he’s had with Democrats, whose cooperation will be required to get the Senate
functioning as he would like.
“Up to half the calls I got after
the election were from Democratic senators. I’m not implying that they were
happy I won, but they were awfully curious as to whether I really meant it
early last year when I pointed out that we needed to run the Senate in a very
different way,” he said. “I think there’s going to be bipartisan gratitude for
having a chance to be relevant, to not be marginalized.” This is as hardball as
McConnell plans to get:
McConnell wasn’t saying he would
never use procedural tools, such as the Rule 14 process, to bypass committees
or filling the “amendment tree” to block amendments, but he certainly wants
those tools to be far more rarely used than in recent years under Majority Leader
Harry Reid, D-Nev.
At least he didn’t follow Hillary
Clinton’s lead and vow to have empathy for Senate Democrats.
Source:http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/mitch_mcconnell_plans_a_bipartisan_senate.html
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