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Reid Warns Democrats Will Block Spending Bill Over Flint

Reid Warns Democrats Will Block Spending Bill Over Flint

Will the two sides bicker about everything and anything?

The fight over the short-term spending bill continues to grow as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) warned that his party will vote against the GOP bill if it doesn’t include funding for Flint, MI. He said:

“Democrats have been clear that Congress should not leave Flint and other lead-tainted communities out of any (stopgap spending) negotiation that includes emergency disaster funding,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other top Democrats in a Tuesday morning letter to McConnell. “Our request is simple: include both bipartisan disaster relief packages for consideration in the CR. We urge you to include bipartisan Flint legislation in the CR.”

Flint has remained on the radar since the town’s water contamination stormed into the headlines. However, President Barack Obama recently drank a glass of water in the town to show an end to the crisis and urged people to use the free filters given to them.

But the federal government still wants to do more and Reid claims the GOP have made a “manufactured crisis” right before the vote, which occurs on Friday:

“Would it be asking too much for the Speaker of the House … [and] the Republican leader of the Senate to stand and say we’re going to get that thing done, we’re going to pass it?” he asked.

The Senate will vote on its spending bill on Tuesday. Reid has two GOP senators on his side to vote against the bill, which means Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) needs “at least eight Democrats to support moving forward with the bill.”

If the Democrats decide to filibuster the spending bill, McConnell could remove the $500 million in aid to the victims in Louisiana due to massive floods.

The GOP senators also said they will deal with the Flint crisis in a separate bill:

Republicans say the Flint issue will be handled in a separate measure to authorize water development projects. That measure — without Flint money — is set for a House floor debate Tuesday, but Republicans are telegraphing it will be included in any final measure handled in a post-election session.

“We are going to deal with Flint,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

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Comments

FreeMarketMaven | September 27, 2016 at 1:44 pm

According to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, “…the Senate has already passed—95-3—a $9.4 billion bill called the Water Resources Development Act, which the House will pass this week, with at least $100 million earmarked specifically for Flint and $50 million for lead poisoning and public health.

So Democrats have gone from demanding no vexatious riders to opposing the bill because of the lack of a multiyear policy rider that is about to become law anyway. Their calculation is that a gridlock scenario will heighten voter antipathy to incumbents and changes the subject from the issues that Republicans are winning on back home. Democrats also figure the press corps won’t blame the true perpetrators of the dysfunction, as they didn’t with Zika.”

Why are the Republicans STILL so clueless about Reid’s M-O? He wields as much power as minority leader as he did when he was Senate Majority Leader — runs rings around McConnell, and I generally like McConnell.

    Even if you have a veto proof majority, you will always lose if the press doesn’t back you.

      Arminius in reply to gwsjr425. | September 29, 2016 at 10:12 am

      I disagree, especially with the rise of the alternative media, that it’s vital to have the support of the dinosaur media. Besides, since it’s been like this for decades the GOP has had plenty of time to figure out a more effective communications strategy. The fact that the GOP hasn’t forces me to conclude they just don’t want to. They can tell me when they’re running for election about all the great things a GOP majority will accomplish, then they have a built in excuse for why they just couldn’t get it done. Because they never meant a word of it when they were trying to get my vote.

      It’s just a game, and we’re being played by all sides. If it wasn’t Flint, Dingy Harry would have invented some other poison pill. We all know it. McConnell knows it too. But he never prepares for it. Since the GOP never updates its failed playbook I have to consider this enemy action.

Why in the (censored) doesn’t the House simply take the gargantuan monster bill and simply chop it into the eighteen or so budgetary categories it covers. Pass them individually, and if the Dems throw their fit over one of them, chop that into individual agencies and run it through the same process. If the Dems oppose *all* of them, point out their duplicity… Yeah, like that would happen.

    That’s how spending bills are supposed to go, and historically how they have always gone.

    It’s a relatively recent development to pass “omnibus” (literally: “for all”) spending bills instead of individual approval bills.

    The trouble with omnibus bills, though, is that there’s a lot of room for pork and unnecessary riders, and almost no accountability. You can’t support it without supporting all the crap, you can’t oppose it without opposing the necessary funding, and nobody ever faces adverse consequences for inserting questionable pet provisions.

    They were a bad idea when they first got started, and it’s only gotten worse over time.

It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we stopped spending money for a while.

What about the funding for “Cowboy Poetry” ?

So, what (or, more properly who) else is he trying to get funded, in addition to Flint?

Democrats…the real party of no!

The Republicans really aren’t very good at this game, are they?

No wonder the voters have seemed unimpressed of late.

    DieJustAsHappy in reply to tom swift. | September 27, 2016 at 4:49 pm

    Unimpressed? Embarrassing is more the case. Never have so many promised so much to so many and yet delivered so little to so many and so much to so few.

harry needs to work out on his “gym equipment” more.

“Will the two sides bicker about everything and anything?”

Yes.

Next question?

I don’t buy it that “Everyone” will know it is the fault of the Republicans. It is just like the war on women that the dims ran with for years and no one bought it but the ugly feminists. Go public with the final offer and then let the dims and the msm have a field day with it. It will inconvenience some and that’s a shame but for most of us, it will not be much of a bother.