Posted on 07/24/2015 7:52:53 PM PDT by VinL
Senior lawmakers and staff from the House and Senate armed services committees are hammering away on the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that keeps the military up and running. But there are fewer chairs at the negotiating table this time. And committee member and presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) isn’t in one of them.
GOP leadership was worried that the notorious grandstander would tank the crucial spending bill, two sources familiar with the process told HuffPost. In an effort to keep him out of the room, they cut the membership of the conference committee -- the panel responsible for hammering out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill -- to a smaller number than it’s been in years.
“The number of Senate conferees was cut from previous years. Typically, all members of the [Senate Armed Services Committee] are named as the Senate conferees, but that is not the case this year,” said one congressional source familiar with the process.
Both sources said they were told the conference panel was slashed in an effort to keep Cruz out of the room.
But the motive for boxing Cruz out of the end stages of the NDAA process isn’t entirely clear. After all, bombastic freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) landed an appointment. Cruz voted against the bill when it passed the Senate last month, but so did several other committee members who were eventually appointed to the conference panel.
“You’d have to ask Senator McConnell. That was his decision,” Armed Services Committee Chair John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, adding that the conference process was ongoing.
There’s certainly no love lost between Cruz and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
After hearing that he called MM a liar, I sent another $500.
As often as he says stuff like that, it is going to get expensive.
McConnell is a petty, little worm. I am not sure who I dislike most...him or Harry Reid.
Is it simply the money they get from the crony capitalists?
Is it something in their past they don't want anyone to know about?
Have they and their families been threatened?
Or are they just happy being Democrat Party lickspittle just to stay in the ruling class?
So McConnell wants to show that he is not just a liar, but a corrupted coward. He is demonstrating himself to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing that will fight against his own party when they are not compliant and obsequious to his own ambitions.
It’s beyond time to find dirt on Mitch. Get the word out. Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. Wherever. Someone knows something he doesn’t want known.
Cruz is one of the top 20 litigators in the entire country. Yertl will regret this.
The Empire Strikes Back
***************
Actually, I think it’s “Return of the Jedi”. It looks like McConell first eliminated Cruz from the committee, and then Cruz launched the counter-strike today.
Conservatives in the senate need to be strategizing now on how to thwart another certain end-run around the voters in the lame duck session after the 2016 election by McConnell and his band of thieves.
Good question. The article seems to indicate it was a reprisal, but my sense is McConnell took the first punch.
I just watch the video. I can almost feel the sting on McConnell’s face. Makes me feel all warm & fuzzy inside. :)
You and me both. That video of him calling out McConnell-all of the congressional liars, the whole DC whorehouse-was epic and statesmanlike.
Ali and Akbar, reporting da nuz, on the Huffington Post. Okay.
But the motive for boxing Cruz out of the end stages of the NDAA process isn’t entirely clear. After all, bombastic freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) landed an appointment.
Typical leftist propaganda outlets. That's something else conservatives might need to do more often, attach extreme labels to leftist politicians. Rush does it some and a few others, but it needs to be more common.
You know, far left radical Chuck Schumer. Massachusetts extemist Elizabeth Warren. San Francisco leftist firebreather Nancy Pelosi. Etc., etc.
And the general story sounds like Mitch showing his ass again and trying to be dictator of the senate majority.
And what’s even more pathetic-if Cruz had had a D next to his name, and said everything he said, perhaps minus the stuff about Hussein-the ‘rats, at least the rank and file ‘rats, would have given him a standing ovation, because they have been nattering on about corporate welfare for years. Finally a senator gets up on his hind legs and says what they’ve been saying, and just because he’s an R, they decry him. If Sanders had said the same things, they’d have cheered. They are so blind to even their own interests by partisanship, it’s pathetic.
Our money couldn’t be invested in a better way. At this point, he’s carrying the torch practically alone, and he must be smart enough to know that there may be a cost, if he can’t ride out the coming dishonest lapdog media campaign.
Yup.
Another donation going out by the end of next week.
I cannot think of another candidate with whom I’d like to sit down and talk to over a beer or two.
I think we’d agree on damned near everything.
Our Nation is in mortal danger. Absolute peril.
We’re in worse shape than we were in 1979 / Jimmuh Carter.
We cannot - CANNOT - survive another Democrat in the Oval Office.
Go, Cruz. We have your back.
Hey Mitch!
Does it enhance your credibility to have the HuffPo fishwrap defending your Reid like tactics?
McConnell, by all means. Reid was being no better than he was supposed to be, and loyal to his party all the way. McConnell is knifing his party (the rank and file) in the back, after lying to get re-elected. They perhaps should probably have known better, but the man just outright lied.
Huh? Who is Yertl?
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