Friday, April 03, 2009

The Ever Spending Story

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
The Ever Spending Story
comedycentral.com
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Stewart takes apart Republican reaction to Obama's budget. But nowhere is their hypocrisy clearer than in their reaction to the process of reconciliation, where a simple majority is enough to pass legislation.

Here we see Judd Gregg denounce reconciliation as an affront to democracy, but Stewart has also managed to find a video clip in which Gregg defends the Bush administration's use of reconciliation with the words, "Reconciliation is a rule of the Senate set up under The Budget Act. Is there something wrong with majority rule? I don't think so."

Of course, once Bush used reconciliation to push through his tax cuts for the wealthy, it was only a matter of time before the Democrats realised that they too could do this. Which makes Republican outrage all the funnier.

One of the things which always amazed me about Bush and Cheney's claims of expansive executive power is that one day this power would reside in the hands of the Democrats.

Of course, I was unaware that the Republicans - having spent eight years arguing for something - would simply U-turn and claim that they very things which they spent eight years defending were now illegal again.

It's as if they didn't know that we have things called TV's and that we can record and replay stuff which they said before...

2 comments:

daveawayfromhome said...

Dont forget the Republicans and their threat to use the "nuclear option" to end Democratic fillibisters a few years ago. They were going to change the rules. At least the current situation works within the already established framework.

And by now, should anything the Republicans say surprise you?

Kel said...

Dave,

Not only does nothing they do surprise me, but I am convinced that they think no-one is paying any attention to the extraordinary U-turns they appear to be making on a daily basis.

It's becoming impossible to take these guys seriously.