Petty Is As Petty Does

The Senate is working overtime this week.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) is working through the backlog of presidential nominees, calling for votes at all hours and forcing Senators from both parties to stay close to the Senate chamber long past their normal schedule.

Republican Senators are complaining that the Senate is wasting time on mid-level nominees when they should be working on substantive issues.

what eye thynk:  Maybe Republican Senators should have thought about those "substantive issues" when they were filibustering everything in sight for the past five years.  The majority of the nominees now being considered would already have been voted on months, if not years, ago.  Even now, in the midst of their complaints about wasting time, they continue, in fact, to waste time.  

Many of the nominees now being considered by the Senate have the support of both parties and it is acknowledged by both that these nominees will easily win confirmation.  In those cases, the Senate's unanimous consent rule would allow a vote without debate. Instead, in order to show their displeasure with the way the Democrats eliminated the filibuster for judicial and top level presidential nominees, Republicans are insisting on using the allotted 30 hours of debate time--not to talk about the nominees, but to whine about the filibuster change.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) told Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper that he didn't believe anything would be approved by unanimous consent "until hell freezes over," adding, "Let's be really frank.  Senate Democrats have for petty partisan reasons taken away the power of Congress, taken away one of the checks and balances on a rogue presidency." 

If Mr. Paul wants to throw around the petty epithet, he need look no further than his own party.  

• Petty is filibustering in order to hold up President Obama's nominees to fill his Cabinet.  
• Petty is refusing--for five years--to confirm nominees to the D.C. Circuit in order to maintain your conservative majority on that bench. 
• Petty is, once your bluff was called and your delaying tactics where taken out of the Senate toy box, continuing to insist on 30 hours of debate, even on nominees that you agree are going to be easily confirmed, in order to give your fellow party members time to stand at the front of the Senate chamber and complain that Democrats have hidden your remote controlled filibuster truck...and then complain that the Senate is wasting time!

"I can't imagine what folks think," said Senator Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska).

Well, I can tell you what I think:  I think you created this problem and should acknowledge that some members of your Party should have been restrained a long time ago--long before Democrats saw that the only way to return the Senate to a functioning part of our federal government was to change one of its basic rules.

It's time your party realized that governing is a team sport and it doesn't work unless both teams get to play.   It's time to suck in your bottom lip, unfold your arms and govern.  Pouting is petty.