Harry Reid stuns the White House by killing the bipartisan jobs bill

  Democrats and Republicans have been working on a bipartisan jobs bill– a bill the president supports– for several weeks. Max Baucus and Charles Grassley have been working together with some input and apparent support from Harry Reid. But after the bill was completed, and an announcement was set to be made,  Harry Reid blindsided Democrats, Republicans, and the White House by scrapping the bill and replacing it with a cheaper, less bloated bill.

  I am not going to sit here and pretend I am outraged at a big, expensive bill being scrapped in favor of a smaller bill. I am not upset that this bill was scrapped, but I do question Harry Reid’s manner in doing so.

  Harry Reid let Baucus and Grassley work on this bill for several weeks, while giving input and apparently supporting the bill only to scuttle it after the work was done. How long did he know he wasn’t going to support the bill while he was deceiving the authors and both parties, along with the White House? It doesn’t seem to me that this would have been a last minute decision, he had to have been thinking about it for awhile. The only reason I can see for Reid waiting until the bill was finished, would be that he wanted to time his announcement so that it would make the biggest splash. He suddenly wanted to show fiscal discipline, and this would give him the biggest stage to do so. 

  This certainly seems like an underhanded move. Hasn’t the biggest complaint from the Democrats and the White House been the fact that Republicans are not willing to work with Democrats– that the only position Republicans had was to oppose whatever the Democrats proposed? That whole party of no thing? Here we have an issue in which Republicans and Democrats were working together only to have Harry Reid scrap the bill at the last minute and without warning stunning members of both parties.

  How are Republicans supposed to take Harry Reid and the Democrats at their word anymore? How can they trust that the Democrats are really willing to work with the Republicans after Harry Reid pulls off a stunt like this? It seems that this will just set back party relations which were already strained to begin with.

  So what was Harry Reid’s ultimate motivation in finally showing a little fiscal restraint? Why, the 2010 elections of course. He was afraid that “Republicans would have beaten the living shit out of us,” during the 2010 election cycle because the bill was too big and too bloated. Imagine that, Harry Reid afraid of a bloated spending bill.

  While I don’t begrudge Harry Reid or the Democrats for worrying about the 2010 election– they should be worried– I find it interesting because Harry Reid is ignoring one of the demands that Barack Obama made while he was scolding congress at his State of the Union address. Barack Obama said that the era of “perpetual campaigning” had to end and that Democrats and Republicans had to stop worrying about what was best for themselves– their re-election– and start worrying about what was best for America. I am not arguing that this jobs bill was best for America, I am simply stating that Barack Obama’s support for the bill leads us to believe he does think this bill was best for America and Harry Reid has ignored what Obama thinks is best for America to serve his own selfish purposes. This is in direct contrast to the demand that Barack Obama placed on congress at his State of the Union address.

  It seems to me that the recent election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts may be having an effect on the mindset of the Democrats after all. Does anybody think that if Martha Coakley had won the election that Harry Reid would have been motivated to kill a spending bill that the president supported? I don’t think so, it would have been business as usual. Maybe Democrats are taking that stunning Massachusetts election result to heart. Maybe they have finally realized that Americans are fed up with all of the spending in Washington.

  This could be the beginning of the Scott Brown effect as re-election campaigns begin to kick off all across the country. If we are seeing the beginning of the Scott Brown effect in Washington, than we have already won, but the victory is not complete. We have won the debate on the issues and it will be time to reenforce that victory at the polls in November. If we do not vote them out now we will be giving them free reign and licence to do whatever they want for the next two years.

  We may be winning the battle, but we can never let up. We must remain firm and resolute. We are on the verge, but we must push forward until final victory has been achieved.