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By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 | 3:07 p.m.
Harry Reid
Sun coverage
WASHINGTON — Sen. Harry Reid’s attempt to play ball with the House on an upcoming budget deadline is being stymied by a small band of Senate Republicans, and the majority leader is not pleased.
“Just when you think it can’t get worse, it gets worse,” Reid said Tuesday. “Here we are on the eve of doing something together...and just one or two people do everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into everything we do.”
Reid was in a meeting between Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama — the first of four meetings the president is holding with members of Congress this week to talk about plans about how to approach the deficit, the budget and offset sequestration — when he heard that Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., had put a hold on legislation to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year.
“Who else?” Reid said exasperatedly to reporters, emerging from the meeting.
Coburn has been known to place holds on bills before.
Coburn single-handedly prevented several public lands bills from moving through the Senate at the end of last year — including a handful of measures to green-light land swaps in Nevada — because “I just don’t believe we should be giving the federal government any more land,” he said at the time.
This time, Coburn’s objection is that the Senate is moving too quickly through a budget to keep the government funded past March 27, the date when the government’s spending authority runs out and across-the-board sequestration cuts fully kick in.
Cognizant of that approaching date, Senate Budget Committee leaders drafted a bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government, largely based on a bill the House passed to do the same last week.
When they presented it to Reid on Monday, he tried to expedite the legislation through the Senate, promising lawmakers they would have ample time to present amendments to the bill.
Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, for example, said he planned to introduce an amendment to make the so-called No Budget, No Pay Act — a measure that cuts lawmakers’ pay if they miss budget deadlines — permanent. Congress included it in a short-term funding bill it passed earlier this year.
Coburn objected to the process continuing Tuesday afternoon.
“We got this bill last night at 9 o’clock, a 500-page bill,” Coburn said. “One of the reasons we’re $17 trillion in debt is that people don’t read the bills.”
Coburn said he wanted more time.
But Reid retorted that if the Senate waited much longer, lawmakers wouldn’t have enough time to present their amendments, or he could take away their scheduled two-week vacation around Easter.
“The vast majority of this bill is identical to what the House already passed. He and his staff and the senator from Oklahoma have had days and days to look this over,” Reid said, repeatedly pausing for dramatic effect and throwing up his hands. “The senator from Oklahoma seems to have a problem...It’s not our fault we’re trying to get a bill to fund the government.”
truthserum.. you should try taking some! Calling people Communists is neither true or credible. So no one takes you seriously after that..
Also, your Republican friends must have turned Communist as well.. did you miss the part of the article where it says:
"largely based on a bill the House passed to do the same last week" ?
I guess its convenient to misrepresent the facts...maybe read the article before commenting on its contents.
Tom Coburn for President!!
Any article that mentions Harry Reid brings out the crazies to comment.
500 page bill and Harry says it must pass now! Harry is the problem. A bill should never be more than 2 - 3 pages.
Of course the bill was loaded up with pork.
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Tuesday blocked the Senate from proceeding to debate on the bill, arguing they were not given enough time to read the 500-page legislation.
The two also said they had already found "pork barrel spending" in the measure, negotiated by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and ranking member Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).
"What we have found is egregious pork barrel spending," McCain said. "I hope in next few hours we'll be able to finish examining the bill, but what we've found is so egregious ... frankly it's beyond anything I have ever seen in my years in the United States Senate."
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/ap...
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
@vc: You're right, can't think of one reason to actually read whats being proposed before passing it. Heck $17 Trillion in debt doesn't seem to be an issue with this administration.
A key part of the bill ..
"... there was a $15 million provision in Shelby and Mikulski's amendment that would direct the Department of Defense to spend up to 5 percent more on a defense contract if the bid came from a Native Hawaiian."
So if you're a native Hawaiian you will win govt. work even if your bid is higher than a similarly qualified vendor, perhaps even one from a member of another minority group? Wow.
You have stuff like that going on all day and night on a Federal level, moving all the way down to things like having firefighters here in our hometown clocking half a million a year in compensation on a local level.
Any question about how we got into the mess we're in, and how we'll never, ever get out of it?
The Senate is moving too quickly? Someone should tell Coburn that the current CR expires in two weeks and the Senate bill will still need to be reconciled with the House bill, if the Senate bill passes. Of course, Coburn probably thinks they can vote on a CR on the 27th.
@dickerjd: Reids Senate hasn't passed a budget in over 4 years and you think that 2 weeks is enough time to move on something like this? 4 years add it up.
"Social Security is not in crisis" -- Harry Reid
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nR7-NJVwN4
Who rational thinking human being believes anything this ***-clown has to say anymore?
@dickerjd: There is no hurry. We have been without a budget since FY2009. Why do we need to rush things?