Recently-reelected Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is no fan of the Senate. He has griped about it to the national and local press. He hates the lolly-gagging, the arcane rules, the posturing and, apparently, the bad planning of his Democratic colleagues. During a break in the lame duck session Tuesday, he was telling Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar that the Party leadership blew the session by failing to regroup as a conference and ask for input and, in effect, prepare to meet the enemy.
“It’s all rigged,” he said. “The whole conversation is rigged. The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck. It’s just rigged.” Bennet is aghast with Washington. Although tea partiers in Colorado didn’t vote for Bennet, surely they can get behind him on that.
Gawker is reporting that Bennet‘s staff played down the incident.
“Michael was telling the same truths on the Senate floor that he tells folks back home in Colorado.”
That’s true. Bennet made no bones on the stump about his disgust with the Senate and the politics of posturing. He also seems right that more planning for the lame duck would have benefited Democrats.
Republicans have been bolstered in their opposition by their midterm election victories and seem determined to put off all voting until the new Congress begins next year. Today Democrats face an uphill battle trying to pass an overdue unemployment insurance extension for millions of Americans, and conservative Democratic Senators like Ben Nelson are already voicing strong opposition to Democratic priority bills like the DREAM Act, which would grant citizenship based on certain military service and education achievements to illegal immigrant young people brought here by their parents and raised in the U.S.
Gawker also has the video/audio.
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