Harry Reid Considers It His Duty To Spend Your Grandchildren’s Money
Harry Reid think it's his Constitutional duty spend other people's money and bring it home to Nevada. His constituents seem to have other ideas this year.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a rather odd view of what his job as a Senator actually is:
“Part of my constitutional duty is to do congressionally directed spending,” he said, pulling out a copy of the Constitution given to him by the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd. “I am vigorous in going forward with congressionally directed spending. I fight for it.”
In a jab at Angle, who thinks the federal government should be dramatically scaled back and fulfill only those duties expressly enumerated in the Constitution, Reid argued it is his “constitutional duty” to spend federal money.
At a campaign event here Wednesday, Reid paraded local elected officials — Republicans and Democrats — before the assembled media to support his argument that essential federal funding for infrastructure and social programs has flowed to their communities because of his position.
As Jason Pye puts it:
So, it’s your “constitutional duty” to spend money that we don’t have, putting the burden on the backs of future taxpayers, on unconstitutional programs and pork?
That seems to be what Reid is saying here, and on some level it’s not all that surprising to hear him saying it. After all, it’s the same kind of bring-home-the-pork message that has worked perfectly well for incumbents such as himself in the past. This year, though, there seems to be something different going on and, while there’s much about the Tea Party movement that I find frustrating, I do welcome the fact that voters are paying attention to issues of fiscal responsibility even when it may not be in their short term interest. How long it will last, I don’t know, but any small effort to turn back the tide of deficit spending is a good thing.
I’d also note that Reid’s comments are a pretty good example of why the Nevada Senate race has been particularly frustrating. There are few Congressional incumbents whose downfall would be more appealing than Reid’s, but, for some reasons, the Nevada GOP decided to react to his obvious electoral problems by nominating the one candidate he actually has a chance of defeating, not to mention a candidate that I probably wouldn’t be able to vote for myself if I lived in Nevada. I will still be happy to see Harry Reid go down if it happens, but the idea of Senator Sharron Angle doesn’t thrill me in the least. Nonetheless, if Nevada voters reject Reid, I’ll take that as a good sign overall.
“his year, though, there seems to be something different going on…”
RCP has Reid leading the wacko..so, maybe not.
The RCP average has Reid ahead by .2 points right now. That’ s a tie.
Nate Silver is currently giving Angle a 66.3% chance of winning, which appears to be based largely upon intangibles such as anti-incumbent sentiment, fundraising and political orientation of the state. The polls look pretty even.
The essential difference between Reoublicans and Democrats? We don’t support Alvin Green, you guys do support Sharron Angle. Which neatly proves my point that Democrats have nuts, but Republicans are nuts.
Congress has power to tax and spend, film at 11.
(You deduce from that that he feels a need to spend too much. Unfortunately neither of you got down to the nuts and bolts of appropriate spending.)
“That seems to be what Reid is saying here, and on some level it’s not all that surprising to hear him saying it.”
I don’t know, Doug….Pye’s paraphrasing seems to be incredibly uncharitable. It’s like if you said you liked to eat meat and Jason Pye said, “So you’re saying you want to kill all the animals and ruin the planet.”
Not accurate, and not really fair. I think we would be better served trying to understand what Reid was actually saying.
Whose money was Bush spending when he doubled the public debt in eight years Doug?
The point of this piece is to pave the way for the dwindling number of rational Republicans to embrace Angle. It’s important to slander Reid in order to justify a vote for a person Republicans know is unfit and quite likely mentally unbalanced.
It’s the standard GOP moderate two-step. Start by talking like a sane person who might just conceivably do the right thing. But then find an excuse, however absurd, to quietly fold your tent, sell out, and do what you’re told.
“This year, though, there seems to be something different going on and, while there’s much about the Tea Party movement that I find frustrating, I do welcome the fact that voters are paying attention to issues of fiscal responsibility even when it may not be in their short term interest. How long it will last, I don’t know,”
Doug, I am the one who is always derided here for his naivite. This time it is your turn. Nothing different is going on. They don’t give anymore of a rat’s ass about fiscal responsibility now than they did 6 yrs ago. Let a repub say, “I can cut your taxes without cutting your SS benifits…” and they will follow that banner to the gates of hell.
Wake up and smell the roaches
It would be nice to see some posts related to the billions upon billions of dollars in cash that the Bush administration lost in Iraq. I would think the fiscally responsible, self-proclaimed honorable folks on the right would demand it, seeing as how the taxpayers are the ones who got robbed.
Oh wait, no political hay to be made there…
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It would be nice to see some posts related to the billions upon billions of dollars in cash that the Bush administration lost in Iraq. I would think the fiscally responsible, self-proclaimed honorable folks on the right would demand it, seeing as how the taxpayers are the ones who got robbed.
Oh wait, no political hay to be made there…”
Actually there were plenty of those while Bush was in power … just saying.
Everyone seems to have a long memory concerning the other side’s errors, and a very short memory of their own, while simultaneously having a long memory of the bad press they got and a short memory of the bad press the opposition got.
Which goes to explain why so many people don’t bother voting – both sides seem to be largely composed of liars and hypocrites.
The sad point is that neither Reid nor Angle should be elected to anything past dog-catcher, and yet looks who’s running? Both parties have much better people than that, what is it about the political process that leads to those two being chosen by their parties?
And yes, Angle is the worst of the two. She’s incredibly bad, while Reid is just very bad. But how in the world are either even in the conversation?