Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell

Greatest Deliberative Body

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The national press corps held its collective breath on Monday night as members of the United States Senate wrangled over whether the holiest of holies – the filibuster rule – would be changed or scrapped altogether by the 55 Democrats in the majority.

This is known as the “nuclear option” and it is generally threatened by the Majority Leader – Republican or Democrat – when the Minority Leader – Republican or Democrat – successfully uses the existing filibuster rules to slow progress on legislation or nominations to a crawl.

The modern version of a filibuster can be broken if the majority can muster 60 votes. As the AP’s Dave Espo wrote: “While a simple majority vote is required to confirm presidential appointees, it takes 60 votes to end delaying tactics and proceed to a yes-or-no vote.” Continue reading →

The Traffic Cop

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Unlike the House, where the Speaker is expected to expedite the will of the majority, the person charged with running the Senate is not expected to exert his will.

Instead, he or she is more like a glorified traffic cop, making certain that all of the highways of the upper chamber are cleared of obstructions and moving smoothly.

It’s a tough job because the Senate is necessarily full of obstructions and rarely moves smoothly.The Senate majority leader, unlike the Speaker, is not named in the Constitution. Nor is the majority leader the top Senator in the line of succession to the White House. That title goes to the president pro tempore — usually the longest serving senator. Continue reading →

A Missed Opportunity

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I actually don’t blame some Members of the Senate for threatening to filibuster the still-mysterious gun bill.

Who knows what they have come up with in the back halls of the Congress and who know what they will end up with once this bill gets to the floor.

Mitch McConnell had it exactly right when he held out the right to support a filibuster until he actually got a glimpse of the bill.

I think the whole process has pretty much stunk. Continue reading →

Tag Teaming Obama

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Don’t tell the Tea Party, but the tag team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are currently mopping the floor with Barack Obama.

The president convincingly won a second term in November, but since that time, the congressional Republican leadership has outfoxed, outmaneuvered and plain out-strategized him on just about every issue. Continue reading →

American Republicans, Democrats

BY MICKEY EDWARDS

Reprinted from Atlantic Monthly and Iconoclast

Angry and frustrated, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to “take back” their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn’t get better. They won’t this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes.

If we are truly a democracy—if voters get to size up candidates for a public office and choose the one they want—why don’t the elections seem to change anything? Because we elect our leaders, and they then govern, in a system that makes cooperation almost impossible and incivility nearly inevitable, a system in which the campaign season never ends and the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations.

Continue reading →

Earmarks and The Power of The Purse

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the feeherytheory.com

Mitch McConnell bowed to reality with his statement on earmarks yesterday.  It couldn’t have been easy and it shouldn’t have been.

Earmarks are essential part of our Constitutional process.  For any member of Congress (House or Senate) to willingly give power away to the executive branch in such a haphazard way is troubling.

Continue reading →

Republican Demise A Bit Premature

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feehery Theory

In many ways, it was the best-case scenario for the Republican Party.

They swept the House in dramatic fashion, and while they didn’t quite win the Senate, they got the next best thing: Harry Reid is still going to be the chief spokesman for Congressional Democrats.

Continue reading →

The Party of Debt

BY Gary Andres

 Reprinted from Weekly Standard

 Two seemingly unrelated news stories unfolded in Washington last week — developments that could further stoke the flames of voter discontent across America. Taken together, these reports could also label the Democrats with an ugly and hard to erase moniker heading into the November elections:  They are now the Party of Debt.

 The first piece of news concerned Congressional Democrats’ plan to forgo passing a budget blueprint this year – an unprecedented display of fiscal policy malpractice.

 A January 2010 Congressional Research Service report demonstrates that only four times in the past 35 years have lawmakers not adopted a concurrent budget resolution (a document projecting long term spending and revenue goals). And even when the two legislative bodies have failed to reach an agreement, in every year since the enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, at least the House has produced its own blueprint and given members a chance to vote on it. How do we get our fiscal house in order if lawmakers can’t even develop a plan?

 Democrats might still reverse course and produce a budget this year.  But as recently as yesterday, Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad told the Washington Post the chances of doing so were “fading.”

Continue reading →