Posted on 12/15/2014 10:00:23 AM PST by Dave346
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid pulled out one of his most familiar threats during perhaps his last week as majority leader, pledging to keep the Senate in session through the weekend to get 23 of President Barack Obama’s nominations confirmed and pass bills extending billions in tax breaks and providing terrorism risk insurance to commercial buildings.
The Senate already worked one Saturday this month, so why not another?
While the Nevada Democrat is not yet warning senators that the chamber could work on Christmas, his remarks on Monday morning were clearly aimed at getting Republicans to relent on procedurally fighting him and wrap up the Senate’s business as soon as possible.
Now that Reid has set up votes on nominees including Vivek Murthy to be surgeon general, White House adviser Tony Blinken to be deputy secretary of state, Sarah Saldana to be director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and a dozen lifetime judicial appointments, he is now trying to use the inevitability of their confirmation to speed up the Senate’s work and allow its lame-duck lawmakers to finally join House members and head home for the year.
Though Republicans will take over the Senate in January, as long as Democrats hold the majority and can keep their members in town ahead of the holidays they can unilaterally confirm all these nominees due to last year’s “nuclear option” rules change.
“Everything is scheduled now for moving forward. We could finish it today. So I hope that everyone understands we can move forward but we’re going to be here until we finish our work, whether that’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday. So everyone should understand you can’t be leaving,” Reid said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Oh dear.
The open-minded and tolerant left do seem to make a lot of threats.
ya...nobody cares if we install more COMMUNISTS, as long as we can go on vacation on time.....
God forbid they actually do some work...weekend or otherwise.
Weekend work? Whoever heard of such a thing? That’s nothing short of SLAVERY.
Since the voters have spoken so plainly, wouldn’t the decent thing be to let the next Congress deal with these important nominations? Nothing much gets done over Christmas anyway. :-)
Yeah. Because none of us unwashed ever has to do weekend work. Say, to pay our taxes...that pay their salaries and benefits...
Elections have consequences!
Heard of a Bill recently that would prevent a lame duck Congress from meeting.
On its face, I am a fan.
Harry lives in a high rise DC Hotel. He could care less if these guys get home for Christmas. By the way, these nominees wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Ted Cruz and his political BS.
Yes they do and one of those consequences seems to be to set fire to the building on the way out.
Unfortunately these people are about as indecent as can be.
Let me guess....Murthy is the richest abortionist (sorry..."women's health care" provider) in California.
If I were making $174,000 per annum, plus Rolls-Royce benefits & pension and a car allowance, I don’t think I’d have a fit when asked to work an occasional weekend.
How about telling us who your candidate is, so we can see where you’re coming from?
I haven’t got a candidate yet. I would like to see some of the Republican Governors compete. What I DON”T want is a Democrat or another Senator who has never run anything.
And warnings. I'm so sick of them warning us about this and that phony issue.
Oh, and also "wake up calls." And "perfect storms."
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