(Posted last week) Reid wants '08 candidates to be available for votes

So the lack of candidates at the vote last night was NOT due to poor planning, except perhaps on the part of the candidates.


Reid wants '08 candidates to be available for votes
By Manu Raju
November 02, 2007

In anticipation of a bruising week ahead, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants the Senate’s four Democratic presidential candidates to call off campaign events to help thwart Republican objections in the escalating budget battle on Capitol Hill.

“I’m going to leave here and go call our presidentials and let them know that they better look at their schedules because these are not votes you can miss,” Reid said of Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Barack Obama (Ill.), Joseph Biden (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.). He warned senators to prepare for possible weekend work ahead.

The rhetoric over domestic spending priorities is heating up on Capitol Hill with only two months until the first votes are cast in the presidential nominating contest. After expected House passage, the Senate will take the final step and attempt to clear the package that would provide $215 billion in discretionary funding for the departments of Veterans Affairs, Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS) and Education.

Reid, who held a long meeting Thursday evening with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders and appropriators, said the Senate will soon act on a short-term, stopgap measure to keep the government operating past Nov. 16, a vote to override the president’s veto on a water projects bill, and a bill funding the Defense Department.

more...

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reid-wants-white-house-candidates-to-be-available-for-votes-2007-11-02.html

:kick:

They're still duly-elected senators, and they have to go vote just like their colleagues.

...and I have to fit that in around my current duties. Why should these yutzes, whose job performance has far more impact, on more people, than mine be held to a lower standard?

:thumbsup:

It's not that difficult to show up for such an important vote. I'm mad at every single one of them.

who don't even show up to vote on what may have been the most decisive appointment confirmation of their careers.

I say Feh!

..Reid called the vote with insufficient time for them to return (only a few hours). Now, if they blow off a crucial vote where they have 24 hours' notice or so, I'll be pissed.

To continue my earlier analogy, let's say I take a day off and leave town to job hunt. Boss calls a last-minute meeting on that day. He'd better not jump on me for missing it. "Lack of planning on his part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

There is no excuse.
How about this analogy? If your boss told you to be at work and you decided not to show up, how long would you have your job?

He knows they're campaigning, and if he wants a Dem Prexy he knows it isn't realistic to tell them to cancel all of their events and sit in DC waiting, just in case he decides to schedule a vote on three hours' notice. He do not have to set up that vote on such short notice.

If my boss were to tell me, "Be here all week", I'd ask what was scheduled, make sure I was present for what required physical presence, set up conference calls for the ones where my participation was called for but not my presence, and delegate the lower-tier tasks.

If, after all that cooperative scheduling, he called a meeting on a whim when I was out of the office, he couldn't fire me. I could sue for wrongful termination and win.

I understand Reid saying to be available but if he knows they are out of state why would he schedule it with 3 hours notice.

Why did it have to be scheduled at this time?

so it will be easier for them to plan ahead and be there.

Remember when the repubs were playing these games while Kerry and Edwards were campaigning? Those two would come all the way back to Washington to vote and the repubs would reschedule it at the last minute just to be assholes. Then they would say these two weren't there to stop them from cutting veterans benefits.