The Hill: McConnell Fails To Deliver

According to The Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is failing to deliver.

After just over a month, McConnell is reportedly on the brink of breaking his promise to avoid shutting down government agencies, according to The Hill.

At the same time, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) continues to lash McConnell and Republicans in the Senate for failing to ram through a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that blocks the White House plan to halt deportations.

Just last December, McConnell claimed: “We don’t intend to engage in rhetoric nor actions that rattle the public.”

McConnell has already had to break his pledge to return the Senate to “regular order.”

He celebrated getting more votes on amendments on the Keystone XL bill than had been allowed in all of last year, but he shut down Democrats seeking to debate the pipeline.

“That led to complaints that he was in a hurry to help several Republicans get going to California for a weekend retreat with billionaire donors Charles and David Koch,” says The Hill.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told reporters that McConnell went “Right back to a process of shutting everything down, even stopping people from having 60 seconds to speak about their amendments.”

“There is no sign that McConnell intends to reverse the ‘nuclear option’ rules change made by Democrats when they held the majority. McConnell had complained bitterly when Democrats made that shift but now shows no sign of wanting to switch the rules back again,” says The Hill.

“Sen. McConnell promised the moon but delivered a box of rocks,” said Adam Jentleson, the spokesman for Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate Minority Leader.

“The Republican Senate has started off as the least productive, most partisan, most contentious Senate in recent memory,” said Jentleson. “From bypassing committees on every single bill so far to trying to silence senators who dared to disagree with him to failing to hold a single Friday vote, Sen. McConnell is running a closed and partisan process that is extremely unproductive for the middle class.”

http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/233365-juan-williams-mcconnell-fails-to-deliver-in-senate

Remembering A Week In The Media

CNN reports on a week that news personalities Bob Simon, Brian Williams, Jon Stewart, and David Carr became the story in U.S. media.

CNN

MSNBC: Ed Schultz And Montel Williams On Veteran Suicide Prevention Bill

MSNBC

For the second time in five weeks, House lawmakers unanimously passed veterans mental health legislation designed to launch new community outreach efforts and recruit more psychiatrists to slow the nation’s estimated 22 veterans suicides each day.

And, for the second time in five weeks, supporters will have to wait and see when — or if — the Senate will move ahead on the measure.

House lawmakers called passage of the bill a critical need for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which estimates as many as 22 veterans a day commit suicide.

“Since we last passed this bill … 750 veterans have taken their lives,” said bill sponsor Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn. “We cannot wait another day. We cannot pass this problem forward.”

Last December, Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, single-handedly stalled a bill in the Senate, saying that it carries too hefty a price tag for authority that the Veterans Affairs Department could, in most cases, already exercise. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, tried to pass the bill by unanimous consent, but Mr. Coburn objected.

Veterans groups say the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act , which would require a report on successful veteran suicide prevention programs and allow the VA to pay incentives to hire psychiatrists, is desperately needed and must pass.

Last December, Mr. Coburn, who is retiring from the Senate, said the bill wouldn’t accomplish much new.

“I object, not because I don’t want to save suicides, but because I don’t think this bill will do the first thing to change what’s happening,” said Coburn.

Paul Rieckhoff, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the that despite his reputation as a budget hawk, Mr. Coburn should have recognized that the $22 million cost of the bill is worth the lives it would have saved.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/15/tom-coburn-stalls-veterans-suicide-bill-senate/#ixzz3OoIvPCcv