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Republicans: No Secret Meetings
GOP pols urging leadership to conduct budget negotiations in public
Republicans understand their political leverage is significantly diminished following their electoral drubbing earlier this month, but some fear the secretive, high-level nature of tax and spending negotiations underway risks undermining the GOP position even further.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, last week issued a strong rebuke to the “closed-door meetings” and “secrecy” that have characterized recent efforts to produce a bipartisan agreement.
“Secrecy cements the status quo: more spending, more debt, more runaway government. It is the enemy of accountability, change, and reform,” Sessions said in a statement. “We cannot simply rush through some secret deal that no one can amend, alter, review, scrutinize, or dispute.”
He called on party leaders to guarantee that any agreement on the fiscal cliff be placed on the Senate floor for a full week of open debate with amendments before a final vote.
President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist echoed the call for transparency.
“If Republicans are being unreasonable the whole world will see it; if Obama’s being unreasonable the whole world will see it,” Norquist told the Washington Free Beacon. “Let’s have an actual honest, transparent discussion, and not have to wait a year for Bob Woodward to write a book about it.”
One concern about the prevalence of closed-door talks and last-minute deals is that they validate the Democratic Party’s strategic refusal over the past several years even to propose a viable budget document.
More than 1,300 days have passed since Senate Democrats formally approved a budget resolution as required by law. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has maintained it would be “foolish” for them to do so.
Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the incoming Senate Budget Committee chair, appeared poised to continue that dubious tradition.
Murray declined last week to commit to passing a budget this year and suggested an agreement on the fiscal cliff could preclude the need to do so.
Wraith
November 24th, 2012
So, anyone still think that the GOP leadership isn’t boning us just as much as the Dems?
kevin in troy
November 24th, 2012
like that’s gonna happen
ANY body that thinks the fuggun DEMS are going to OWN anything….are as fuggun NUTS as the libtards pulling the shit in the first place
serfer62
November 24th, 2012
Hey GOP RINO Leadership…we already know you’re giving The Punk (POTUS) everything he wants so what does it matter?
Vote Tea Party
Tim
November 24th, 2012
Boehner and the boys are looking forward to taking it up the ass on C-Span and then licking Obama and Reid clean to prove how ‘moderate’ they are.
Czar of Defenestration
November 24th, 2012
FORGET IT.
Like Bill Whittle said so eloquently, the Republicans only need to believe in what they *claim* to believe, and the rest will follow:
http://www.therightscoop.com/must-watch-bill-whittle-on-what-it-would-be-like-to-have-a-candidate-who-really-believes-in-conservatism/
Ain’t gonna happen. Tea Party 2016.
Ten Megaton
November 24th, 2012
Fuck em