Don't Forget Your Day Job
About those day jobs in the Senate...
This morning, Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) put the four presidential candidates in his Democratic caucus on notice that they may be seeing more of Washington in the next few weeks than they had planned, as the Senate tries to resolve a series of controversial spending disputes.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden had all planned to barnstorm the early primary states next week, in particular Iowa, where Obama has scheduled a five-day bus tour, and where he and Clinton are planning to deliver big speeches.
Hope they're near landing strips.
"Next week is going to be a very difficult week," Reid said on the Senate floor. "The following week is going to be very difficult."
On Saturday, all the Democratic '08 candidates are schedule to attend the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines. Reid warned that he too has a busy weekend planned, "but I am not sure I'm going meet the obligations." Other senators, he added, should "understand they may be in the same predicament."
Clinton, Dodd and Obama were all absent Thursday when the Reid abruptly scheduled a vote on the latest version of the children's health insurance bill, a huge Democratic priority that Reid had tried to delay until next week, to no avail. For a few hours, Democratic leaders worried that they would not be able to muster the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. In the end, they found the votes. But Reid can't take chances as he tried to push through the huge spending agenda that must be completed before the year's end.
-- Shailagh Murray
Posted at 11:23 AM ET on Nov 2, 2007
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Comments
Posted by: julieds | November 2, 2007 12:23 PM | Report abuse
The comments to this entry are closed.
Why does Reid have to hold the votes spontaneously?
Reid did the same short-notice-vote crap with the Leiberman/Iran bill, scheduling it right after Obama left Washington.
I definitely think the senators running for Prez should be casting their senate votes, but it's a little ridiculous that Reid can't stick to a schedule.