Tag: Senate GOP hypocrisy

GOP blocks infrastructure debate as negotiators near deal

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Republicans on Wednesday blocked the Senate from debating a bipartisan infrastructure proposal as negotiators say they are near finalizing their agreement. 

The 49-51 vote fell short of the 60 needed to advance what is effectively stand-in legislation that senators will swap the bipartisan group’s text into once it is finished.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) changed his vote late in a procedural move that allows him to bring it back up for a second vote quickly. Continue reading.

Senate Republicans take step to revive debt ceiling brawls with White House

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The non-binding vote is a sharp pivot from their hands-off approach during the Trump administration

Senate Republicans on Wednesday signaled they might oppose any future increase to the debt ceiling unless Congress also couples it with comparable federal spending cuts, raising the specter of a political showdown between GOP leaders and the White House this summer.

Republican lawmakers staked their position after a private gathering to consider the conference’s operating rules this session, issuing what GOP leaders described later as an important yet symbolic statement in response to the large-scale spending increases proposed by President Biden in recent months.

“I think that is a step in the right direction in terms of reining in out-of-control spending,” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told reporters after the meeting. Continue reading.

Biden’s pick for HHS sued the Trump administration, not a group of nuns

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It does seem like, as attorney general, you spent an inordinate amount of time and effort suing pro-life organizations, like Little Sisters of the Poor, or trying to ease restrictions or expand abortion.”

— Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), in a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Xavier Becerra’s nomination to be secretary of health and human services, Feb. 24, 2021

“By the way, I have never sued the nun — any nuns. I have taken on the federal government, but I’ve never sued any affiliation of nuns. And my actions have always been directed at the federal agencies, because they have been trying to do things that are contrary to the law in California.”

— Becerra, at the confirmation hearing

Becerra was often in court with former president Donald Trump’s administration, filing numerous lawsuits as attorney general of California that won the backing of other Democratic states.

Now he’s up for the top health position in President Biden’s Cabinet, and Republican senators want to know why he supposedly sued a group of nuns back in the day.

In hearings on Becerra’s nomination to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Thune and others brought up a case involving California, contraceptives and a group of Catholic nuns. Continue reading.

Journalist pinpoints the ‘uncomfortable truth’ behind the GOP effort to sink Biden nominee Neera Tanden

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With so many Republicans railing against Neera Tanden — President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget — and centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia having announced that he won’t vote to confirm her, Tanden’s chances of heading the OMB aren’t looking good. At issue, Republicans say, are tweets Tanden posted in the past that were highly critical of Republicans. Journalist Jill Filipovic slams Tanden’s opponents in an op-ed for the Washington Post, stressing that GOP senators are total hypocrites in light of all the inflammatory tweets that former President Donald Trump posted during his years in the White House.

“By wringing their hands over her supposedly mean tweets,” Filipovic argues, “congressional Republicans have attempted to don the mantle of civility while remaining stooges to Donald Trump, the most boorish president in history, on Twitter and off. Their disingenuousness, and their apparent belief that they are very special snowflakes who deserve special deference, is at the heart of the movement to prevent her confirmation. But tweets really aren’t what has put her nomination in peril — and it’s not just Republicans imperiling her. Tanden, a highly qualified candidate to be Biden’s budget director, is being swamped by a perfect storm of bipartisan hypocrisy.”

Tanden, Filipovic notes, is the “kind of bootstraps personal story that conservatives usually cheer.” She was born to immigrant parents and went on to attend Yale Law School before going on to head the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank — and Republicans, according to Filipovic, should admire Tanden’s drive and ambition despite their policy differences with her. Continue reading.

Opinion: The people concerned about Neera Tanden’s incivility sure didn’t seem to mind the Trump era’s

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It has become a rite of the modern presidential transition: The gods of politics demand a human sacrifice, the Senate torpedoes a nomination, the new administration takes a hit, and everyone moves on.

But the case of Neera Tanden, President Biden’s embattled choice to direct theOffice of Management and Budget, presents a new twist.

Tanden is amply qualified for the job. She is not accused of failing to pay her taxes or hiring an undocumented household worker. She is not on the ideological fringes. There has been no scandal in her personal life. Continue reading.

Biden budget pick sparks battle with GOP Senate

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Joe Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden to head the White House budget office is setting the stage for the biggest confirmation battle of the president-elect’s first weeks in office.

Senate Republicans are vowing to oppose Tanden, a close ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who has often slammed GOP lawmakers on Twitter and referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “Moscow Mitch.” 

She also hit McConnell on Twitter for not telling President Trump to wear a mask at his daily press conferences and has deleted tweets that appeared to be critical of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key moderate, GOP aides pointed out. Continue reading.

Can Trump and McConnell get through the 4 steps to seat a Supreme Court justice in just 6 weeks?

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Sept. 18, thrusting the acrimonious struggle for control of the Supreme Court into public view.

President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have already vowed to nominate and confirm a replacement for the 87-year-old justice and women’s rights icon.

This contradicts the justification the Republican-controlled Senate used when they refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s pick for the Court after the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Continue reading.