Democrats Threaten Nuclear Hypocrisy with Filibuster Rule Change in Senate

Dems vs. GOP: Leaders nuke it out in fight over voting rule change 

 By Ramsey Cox - 07/11/13 10:38 AM ET

Senate leaders exchanged fire on Thursday as Democrats headed behind closed doors to make a decision on whether to trigger the "nuclear option."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday warned the "nuclear option" would be the "end of the Senate" and accused Democrats of creating a "phony crisis" to move through President Obama's nominees.

Changing Senate rules through a majority vote "would violate every protection of minority rights that have defined the United States Senate for as long as anyone can remember," McConnell said.

“This Pandora’s Box, once opened, will be utilized again and again by future majorities — and it will make the meaningful consensus-building that has served our nation so well a relic of the past," McConnell said on the Senate floor.

  
 Democrats in 2005 on the 'nuclear option'

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Republicans have broken their promise, made earlier this year, to work with Democrats on Obama’s second-term Cabinet nominees. 

“Republicans have turned advise and consent into deny and obstruct,” Reid said. “This gridlock is not only bad for the Senate, it’s bad for the country.”
Reid said he planned to file cloture on some of Obama’s nominees later Thursday, setting up a final showdown next week. 

Liberal groups and labor unions are pushing Reid to change Senate rules on presidential appointments, arguing a limit on the use of the filibuster is needed to counter Republican obstruction.

Reid and McConnell spar.

Harry Reid- No nuclear option as long as he is the leader.

 
Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the problem in the Senate.

Senate Republicans say the move would trigger a meltdown in relations and trample the rights of the minority.

The issue is coming to a head on Thursday at a meeting of Senate Democrats where they plan to make a decision about whether to "go nuclear."
Republicans on Thursday seemed to make an attempt to lower the temperature and dissuade Reid from changing the rules.

McConnell said Republicans would not prevent two of Obama’s nominations — Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy and Labor Department nominee Tom Perez — from moving forward.  

“Both of these highly controversial nominees already have enough votes to clear a 60-vote hurdle,” McConnell said.

And Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) suggested to Reid that the parties hold a joint caucus lunch next week to try and resolve their differences.

Read the rest at 'The Hill"
Dems vs. GOP: Leaders nuke it out in fight over voting rule change

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Harry Reid as Minority Leader Opposes filling the amendment tree 

Tyranny in the United States Senate

Harry Reid calls Sen. Ted Cruz a ‘schoolyard bully’- Video

 Reid calls Sen. Cruz a ‘schoolyard bully’

 By Erik Wasson

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called freshman GOP Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) a “schoolyard bully” during a contentious exchange Monday on the Senate floor.
The two senators bickered as Cruz rose to object to Reid’s motion to appoint conferees to a House-Senate budget committee. Cruz said he was concerned that the conference report—which cannot be filibustered—would be used to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. He asked that Reid amend his motion to go to conference to make out of order any provisions raising taxes or raising the debt ceiling. Reid said Cruz had a chance to amend the Senate budget—which raises $975 billion in new tax revenue from tax reform—when it was considered on the floor.
He said Cruz’s request to eliminate all taxes in a final House-Senate budget was absurd.
“The senator from Texas was on the losing side…now he wants us to adopt the losing side’s view or we cannot go to conference,” Reid said.
“My friend from Texas is like a schoolyard bully,” Reid added.

"He pushes everybody around and is losing and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him, but he changes the rules that way no one wins except the bully who tries to indicate to people that he has won."
Cruz, a Tea Party darling whose rhetoric has sometimes raised eyebrows among Republicans, shot back that “I wasn’t aware we are in the schoolyard.”
Reid cut him off saying “enough.”
Cruz is a rising GOP star whose speaking engagements have some thinking he is plotting a presidential run in 2016.
This is the second time Republicans have blocked an effort to go to conference on the budget.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) last month objected to a conference on behalf of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee.
“Why are my Republican colleagues so afraid?” Reid asked Monday in making his request. “We have our differences but Democrats aren’t afraid to work out those differences.”
Reid accused the GOP of “whining” about the Senate not producing a budget for four years and then refusing to bring about a conference.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said that he wants a framework agreement before convening a conference committee. Such a framework could facilitate a down payment on the debt, he said.

Ramsey Cox contributed to this story.

Harry Reid on Raising the Budgets and the  Debt Ceiling 2006

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid- The Obstructionist