One year when George W. Bush was president, there was talk of
his making recess appointments when Congress would be on holiday.
Senate Leader Harry Reid countered by keeping the Senate
technically in session by having one or two members show up each
day. Bush, with the Constitution in mind, dropped the recess
appointment idea.
Barack Obama, by contrast, went right ahead with a recess
appointment last month, despite the fact the House Republicans
stayed in session for the same reason — to prevent such a
move.
This time, Harry Reid said it was right and proper for
Obama to do what he did. Reid saw neither the irony nor he
inconsistency in this, for he lives in a parallel
universe.
The other day he returned to Washington with a warning to
House Republicans to eschew Tea Party “extremism.” The Tea Party
movement was driven by a desire to stop the government’s profligate
spending and the rapidly growing national debt. In Harry’s
universe, this is “extremism.”
In December, the Senate Democrats and Obama wanted a
two-month extension of the payroll tax rate holiday and
unemployment benefits. The House Republicans said it didn’t make
sense to come back after two months and re-argue the issue, so they
proposed a 12-month extension. Reid wouldn’t budge and ultimately
the House blinked before the two items ran out on December
31.
About this Reid said, “I hope that the Republicans will
understand, as they learned in the last week of last year, they
can’t be led over the cliff by this extremism.”
Saying that Senate Democrats had “bent over backwards” to
work with House Republicans, Reid declared that all he
was asking for was a spirit of compromise. His version of
compromise is, you give, I take.
Since January 2007, Harry Reid has been Senate Majority
Leader. Speaking of bending over backwards, one thousand days have
now passed since the Senate last passed a federal budget — an
all-time record, thanks to Harry Reid. By stalling over and over
again, he and his Democrat colleagues have not had to make tough
choices about cutting the government’s bloated spending. Instead,
the government operates on “continuing resolutions” that have kept
existing spending in place, plus automatic annual increases. The
result? Spending grows apace and the national debt is now over $16
trillion.
No wonder House members supported by Tea Party groups are
upset. Harry Reid — living off in space — thinks uncontrolled
spending is normal and fiscal responsibility amounts to
“extremism.”
Harry has brought some of his colleagues along into his
parallel universe. Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, for example, recently said, “I have noticed the tone take
a very precipitous turn toward edginess and a lack of civility with
the growth of the Tea Party movement.” (Translation: Anyone who
disagrees with the Democrat playbook is uncivil.) Vice President
Joe Biden, who takes frequent trips to the parallel universe, has
likened Tea Party members to terrorists.
These are the same folks who have extolled the “Occupy”
people as earnest exercisers of First Amendment rights. House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was one who cooed over the Occupy
movement. It is useful to compare its record in recent months to
that of the Tea Party groups. For example, arrests: Occupy 4,149,
Tea Party 0; rapes Occupy 12, Tea Party 0; anti-Semitic diatribes:
Occupy 12, Tea Party 0; murder: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0; head and
body lice infestations: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0; scabies outbreaks:
Occupy 1, Tea Party 0; suicide: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0. Now if you
live in the Harry Reid parallel universe, as so many Democrat
office holders and operatives do, that is clear evidence that the
Tea Party members are extremists.
Most people would say they are extremely well behaved, but
the parallel universe people would like you to think they are a
danger to the nation.
