{"id":5856,"date":"2011-09-15T00:02:14","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T07:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5856"},"modified":"2011-09-15T00:02:14","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T07:02:14","slug":"republican-terrorist-holds-80000-jobs-hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/15\/republican-terrorist-holds-80000-jobs-hostage\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican terrorist holds 80,000 jobs hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Senate reconvened last January, Democrats had an opportunity to change the Senate rules, altering or eliminating the filibuster and individual holds.  Fearful that a few DINOs might goose-step with the Republicans, Harry Reid (D-NV) had no spine for the floor fight and backed down in exchange for a gentlemen’s agreement from Republicans to stop their obstruction.  It lasted almost a week.  Now Tom Coburn (R-OK) is holding the jobs of 80,000 workers hostage to blackmail the Senate, an act of economic terrorism.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"15CoburnHat\"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admonished Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Wednesday, suggesting that he was acting like a \u201cdictator\u201d in blocking transportation legislation and that his action could put 80,000 people out of work by this weekend<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

While Reid did not name names in his floor speech, Coburn is unhappy about a provision of the House\u2013passed bill that temporarily extends funding for the Federal Aviation Administration and highway projects: a requirement that states set aside some surface transportation money for bike paths, museums and other such projects.<\/p>\n

Coburn denied Wednesday that he\u2019s filibustering the bill<\/strong>, but his spokesman has said the senator will use \u201call the tools at his disposal\u201d to strip the provision from the bill.<\/p>\n

The Senate must pass the measure and send it to President Barack Obama by Friday to avert another partial shutdown of the FAA, similar to the one earlier this summer that furloughed 4,000 FAA workers and froze 75,000 airport construction jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty good way to legislate around here, be a dictator and say, \u2018Either take this or leave it.\u2019 That isn\u2019t how things work around here,\u201d said Reid, a Nevada Democrat. \u201cWe have to have votes on issues to find out how people feel. I\u2019m convinced his issue would lose overwhelmingly, but he\u2019s holding this legislation up. And we are in a position that \u2026 we cannot get to this bill prior to Friday when the FAA expires.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s unfortunate that\u2019s the position we\u2019re in,\u201d he added. \u201cOne senator is holding this up \u2026 and if this continues, we will have about 80,000 people out of work by Saturday<\/strong>.\u201d\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Politico<\/a>><\/p>\n

The natural instinct is to blame Tom Coburn, but we need to understand that he is just an actor playing a roll.  This is not his individual doing.  It is the policy of the Republican Party.<\/font><\/p>\n

Harry Reid should have known that a promise from Republicans is worthless.  When the opportunity to change the rules comes again, if Democrats still hold a majority in the Senate, I hope they will replace Harry Reid with a senator that has a pair.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Senate reconvened last January, Democrats had an opportunity to change the Senate rules, altering or eliminating the filibuster and individual holds.  Fearful that a few DINOs might goose-step with the Republicans, Harry Reid (D-NV) had no spine for the floor fight and backed down in exchange for a gentlemen’s agreement from Republicans to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}