You may have heard that Harry Reid called the Senate to some business on Sunday to vote for cloture on S.22 — an omnibus public lands bill. Reid won this round — the vote was 60 – 12, with 17 repubs AWOL. Why AWOL? Well, it was a Sunday vote and everyone is pretty much over the shenanigans of Tom Coburn from Oklahoma who has been holding up many of the individual bills in this omnibus over the past year. The 150+ items in this bill are leftovers from previous sessions and last year Senate Dems pulled them all together into one bill. The bill did not come up for a vote before the Senate adjourned for the year, so Reid brought it back now to get it passed.
Today’s talking point about this bill is that “no one had a chance to read it” before it was brought to a vote early in the session and on Sunday. Of course, that is quite wrong, since this Omnibus has been in existence much of the last year with obstructionist Tom Coburn holding up the works. Which means, of course, that those whining about not being able to read the bill are also lying, too. Shocking, right?
The new Dem majority along with several Repub defectors are moving this bill to its “up or down vote” where the business gets taken care of one way or another, rather than just subject to the tantrums of one wingnut.