More Republican game playing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rment-shutdown
"...in a terse e-mail sent to all 100 Senate chiefs of staff Monday evening, Steering Committee Chief of Staff Bret Bernhardt warned that DeMint would place a hold on any legislation that had not been hot-lined or been cleared by his office before the close of business Tuesday..."

Why does the Senate even have such a rule? When has a Democrat ever been so irresponsible as to threaten to shut down the government for any reason let alone no reason like DeMint?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42795.html
"...

Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wants to keep the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming alive so it can investigate climate science and police President Barack Obama’s green policies...

Maybe when they blew off handling the tax cut extention / elimination because it was a political hot potato?

Issa told POLITICO last week that he would use his panel to conduct inquiries into the stolen “Climategate” e-mails that global warming skeptics say show collusion among prominent scientists, although independent reviews have found nothing of the sort. And he would pay closer attention to the Environmental Protection Agency to make sure it follows proper administrative procedures when crafting regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions..."

Wouldn't want the EPA doing too much work. No one could accuse the EPA of working too hard under W.

Maxx, all politics sucks. All politicians suck. Live with it.

SO you don't think Michigan is well-represented in the Senate?

http://buysafeeatwell.org/posts/1851...mula#more-1851
"...Despite broad bipartisan support, as well as backing by major industry and consumer groups, the [food safety] bill did not move forward last week due to the objections of Senator Coburn from Oklahoma. .."

Congress just went home without doing it's job. It passed a resolultion funding all government operations until after the election rather than addressing any appropriations for next year. This way, no one had to go home to angry voters and distastful decisions can be made after the election so Americans will have two years to forget what their congress critters did. The resolution was passed along party lines.

Congress Passes Stopgap To Fund Government; Goes On Recess

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395
"...I still remember going over to the Republican caucus to meet with them and present our ideas, and to solicit ideas from them before we presented the final package. And on the way over, the caucus essentially released a statement that said, "We're going to all vote 'No' as a caucus." And this was before we'd even had the conversation. At that point, we realized that we weren't going to get the kind of cooperation we'd anticipated. The strategy the Republicans were going to pursue was one of sitting on the sidelines, trying to gum up the works, based on the assumption that given the scope and size of the recovery, the economy probably wouldn't be very good, even in 2010, and that they were better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve the problem..."

maxx, If you read the post #4 link, it was the Democrats who kicked the can down the road and shut down Congress to put off difficult decisions until after the November election. I wonder if Republicans had proposed to cut Federal budget 30%, if Democrats would have counter offered to reduce Federal spending by 10% to solve the deficit problem.