Reid Kills Baucus-Grassley Jobs Bill

Reid kills Baucus-Grassley jobs bill - James Hohmann and Lisa Lerer - POLITICO.com

Members of the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a long-awaited bipartisan jobs bill Thursday morning — only to have it scrapped within hours by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The Nevada Democrat killed the bill after hearing complaints from members of his own caucus, who argued that Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had gone too far beyond the core goal of job creation in order to win over Republican support.

It was a major rebuke for Baucus, who’d spent weeks working with Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on his committee, trying to come up with a bill that Republicans would support.

Reid told reporters that the Baucus-Grassley bill wouldn’t do enough to show voters that the Senate was serious about addressing the unemployment problem.

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Some comments:

1. Object lesson in how NOT to govern.

2. Such low hanging fruit, a JOBS bill, in times like these.

3. Except it's perceived as a STIMULUS, that obscene s-word.

4. AS YOU KNOW, his entire ambitious agenda is out of reach---health care, cap and trade, financial reg reform.

5. Now, even his post-Massachusetts menu, which requires a microscope it's so small, is comprehensively off-limits, too---his bank tax, his debt commission, his "jobs" bill.

6. Never has so much been squandered by someone so simple minded so swiftly.

7. BOTH houses of Congress, a SIXTY seat supermajority, a self confessedly THRILLED media, an entire world high fiving, an American electorate proud of its choice and eager for it all to succeed.

8. All gone.

9. And almost all of it, the mandate, the goodwill, was lost BY SUMMER.

10. America gave him his HUNDRED DAYS and already had enough.

11. Obama LOVES to talk about the bad economy he "inherited."

12. But what about the POLITICAL LANDSCAPE he smilingly strode in upon?

13. 2008 was the BLUEST year of my lifetime.

14. And just LOOK at our politics today.

15. Not RED so much as the tawnier tincture of TEA.

16. Strong BREW, indeed, almost BLACK.

17. You need to know: never in my extensive political experience have I ever observed MY SIDE---politically, ideologically---so energized, so combative, so determined, so informed, so large.

18. Worry.

19. Fear.

20. A Reagan is coming.

21. Like physics, like a vacuum seeking its fill.

22. This is what Obama has created, his LASTING legacy.

The Prof