Marathon Pundit: Victory for taxpayers: Reid bails on omnibus bill's earmarks--McConnell reacts

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Victory for taxpayers: Reid bails on omnibus bill's earmarks--McConnell reacts

Just breaking this evening. Reuters is reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is abandoning the Democrats' omnibus bill with its $1.1 trillion spending and will instead extend current funding.

This is a major victory for taxpayers.

His Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky gave these remarks a few moments ago:

And so what we ended up with, Mr. President, was this, this almost 2,000-page omnibus appropriation bill which we only got, it was yesterday? Yesterday. And so the point here is the work that the Appropriations Committee did in many respects was squandered because the full Senate didn't do its job. And this is precisely the kind of thing the American people have gotten tired of. And so I think the message we ought to take out of this is that next year we're going to listen to the American people, we're going to do our work, do it in a timely fashion.

And if that is not enough, McConnell also said:

Now, there's only one reason why cloture is not being filed and the majority leader, to his credit, already said it -- he doesn't have the votes. And the reason he doesn't have the votes is because members on this side of the aisle increasingly felt concerned about the way we do business.