When the U.S. Senate next convenes, they will have little more than two weeks to tend to business before heading home in late September. Naturally there is a lot to address, whether it's the continued barbaric killings of Americans by ISIS, a National Debt drawing ever closer to $18 trillion or the multiple jobs bills passed by the U.S. House, which are piling up on Reid's desk.
Apparently all of the aforementioned pressing issues take a distant second to Reid's continued obsession with Charles and David Koch.
Reid has decreed that the Senate's first order of legislative business will be a proposed constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to regulate every dollar raised and every dollar spent by every political campaign in America.Ah, but this isn't any majority leader. This is a vapid, insufferable hack who essentially calls citizens liars when they convey testimonials of disastrous results due to Obamacare. Reid is also someone who has made racially insensitive remarks about President Obama as well as a bad joke about Asians when in the presence of the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce.
Put aside the merits — or lack of them — of this particular proposal. Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both House and Senate, plus ratification by three-quarters of the states. This particular amendment, supported mostly by progressive Democrats, won't even get past the first step. So why would Reid devote precious time to an entirely futile exercise?
Because the Senate's brief two weeks in Washington are all about the campaign to come.
In recent months, Reid has used the proposed amendment as a way to bash the Koch brothers, the billionaires who fund a number of conservative and libertarian political causes. Some strategists believe villainizing the Kochs will allow Democratic candidates not only to associate Republican opponents with the villains, but also to use the Kochs as a symbol for economic inequality and blame Republicans for the nation's economic woes.
But because of the special nature of constitutional amendments, the coming Senate debate could play out more as a time waster than a serious policy discussion.
Unlike an ordinary bill, a constitutional amendment requires 67 votes to pass. So far, the campaign finance amendment doesn't even have the support of all of the Senate's 55 Democrats, and no Republican has come out in favor of it. Even if every Democrat voted for it, it would fall far short of passage.
It's rare for a Majority Leader to propose a measure he knows has zero chance of passing; that alone suggests the fundamentally political nature of Reid's strategy.
With all that said, why should it come as any surprise that Reid (who has been Senate Majority Leader for nearly 8 years now) would attempt to use the upper legislative chamber to preserve his stature as Majority Leader? The Republicans have a legitimate chance to seize control of the Senate this November, thus giving the GOP complete control of Congress. That has to have Dingy Harry sputtering in his Metamucil.
It's no coincidence that President Obama rarely (if ever) refers to the Senate when speaking of a dysfunctional Congress given that said body is controlled by his own party. But perhaps the more prevalent reason Obama steers clear of mentioning the Senate is it would shine a light on the droning septuagenarian leader who whines about not being able to go home to enjoy his pomegranate trees in Nevada because of that pesky legislation he was elected to enact.
It may not be the worst idea in the world for the National Republican Senatorial Committee to buy TV ads which merely play Reid's incessant buffoonery on an endless loop.
------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment