Harry Reid calls transportation bill talks with GOP ‘like the Charlie Brown football’

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 | 6:33 p.m.

The long and winding road to a highway bill will keep wending and weaving its way through Congress for a while, after Nevada Sen. Harry Reid’s attempt to jump-start the legislative process sputtered and failed in the Senate Tuesday.

Senators failed to give the measure to authorize funding that will go toward highway repairs along I-15 and various Nevada Department of Transportation projects Tuesday, after Republicans objected to the way Reid was blocking some of their amendments from consideration — even though many of those who voted against it actually supported the transportation bill.

“I’m for lack of a better word, disappointed. These amendments are going to do nothing to advance the work product of almost 3 million Americans,” Reid said Tuesday, his frustration palpable as he emphatically shuffled papers and fidgeted with his microphone. “Break this impasse. Do something that is good for the American people ... stop the filibuster, enough of it.”

Reid accepted a package of about three dozen amendments of nearly 100 amendments proffered by both Republicans and Democrats for consideration as part of the highway bill last week, in an effort to end the procedural standoff blocking progress on the actual legislation.

On Friday, Reid focused his blame most acutely on Sen. Mitch McConnell.

“Sen. McConnell said we’re not going to deal with trying to repeal health care for the rest of this year. That only lasted an hour — I assume he’s been taking instruction from Romney and flip-flopping,” Reid said, complaining of the near-singular focus Republicans had had on a measure to repeal the new health care law’s coming mandate to cover birth control, presented as an amendment to the transportation bill.

“It’s like the Charlie Brown football, we get there and man the ball’s not there, somebody’s moved it,” Reid said.

Other Democrats tried what has become a winning tactic for the party — pointing to the most vulnerable divisions between the party’s factions.

“You have to feel sorry for Mitch McConnell,” said Sen. Charles Schumer. “He’s being forced to go ahead with what he knows is a bad political strategy to save his position.”

Democrats painted a picture of McConnell as the rational, moderate broker, forced to cover for both Tea Party-affiliated members and House Speaker John Boehner, whose own transportation bill ran aground late last month. On Tuesday, Boehner seemed to acknowledge the disintegration of the legislation when he tasked Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Bill Shuster to play point on the legislation instead of Transportation committee chairman Rep. John Mica of Florida.

Reid and Shuster’s father, Bud Shuster, used to serve on the House Transportation committee together in their younger years as lawmakers -- Reid praised the elder Shuster Tuesday.

The divide-and-conquer tactic that worked during the recent payroll tax debate: then, Republicans in the Senate parted ways with their colleagues in the House, maintaining their supportive rhetoric but voting with Senate Democrats to pass a bill despite the House Republicans’ protesting.

This time though, it was a bad strategy.

If McConnell was covering for his House colleagues, neither he nor anyone from his caucus — save for Sen. Susan Collins, the Republicans’ most moderate Senator, and Sen. Scott Brown, whose votes like a moderate tend to help keep him ahead in the Massachusetts polls — seemed tired or strained by it Tuesday.

“A ‘no’ vote on cloture is not the end of this bill, but the beginning,” McConnell argued Tuesday. “We’re very close to getting an agreement on a list of amendments and should be able to finish this bill by the end of the week.”

That is, of course, if everyone can agree.

Reid, who has complained that letting Republicans vote on one set of non-germane amendments — be they related to the environment, birth control, or something else — is like opening up a Pandora’s box of opportunity, didn’t seem very optimistic Tuesday.

“I’m gonna look at what Senator McConnell gave us to see if there was a way forward...I don’t know at this stage is there is or there is not,” Reid said. “It’s been — we’ve been — on this bill for a month already.”