Congressional Republicans give Lip Service to BiPartisanship

Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas and close enough to the OC) is a big time hypocrite.   

I have a press release from his office expressing distress that the 100 hour agenda by Speaker Nancy Pelosi “pushes Republicans aside.”

Dreier must have forgotten how he regularly ignored Congressional Democrats when he chaired the House Rules Committee; This comment from a 2003 Washington Post article:

On many high-profile issues, Dreier, whose committee decides the rules for each debate, has refused to allow Democrats an opportunity to offer a substitute amendment on the House floor. He has infuriated Democrats by denying them votes on their plans for everything from unemployment insurance to tax cuts.

IN a 2004 Washington Post article, Dreier is quoted as saying “…Democrats are crying about the process because they are losing policy debates over job creation and progress in Iraq.”  His mission as chairman, he said, is “to move our Republican agenda and to do it in the fairest and most responsible way possible.  And I do it in that order.”

As head of the Rules Committee, Dreier carried Tom DeLay’s water on the rules so much  to stiffle debate and input from the Democrats, I am surprised the man has any spine left.

So now Dreier is bitching about a lack of Republican input and bipartisanship. 

Allow me to give him a clue: if you want bipartisanship on the Hill, if you truly want it, why did Pelosi’s election as speaker, a formality really, split down a party line vote?  While I believe that the new Democratic leadership will be far more inclusive of the minority party than the GOP does, I would not blame Ms. Pelosi and others on the Hill if they tell Rep. Dreier where to stick it.

The vast majority of the nation is now looking to Congress for leadership, not the Oval Office and not the Republican Party.  Time to remind the American people that the Republicans are responsible for our massive deficit.  The Republicans are responsible for our astronomical national debt (to the communist Chinese no less), and the Republicans are responsible for the erosion of privacy and civil libertiies including new rights that allow the feds to oepn personal mail without a warrant.

Time to rename Rep. Dreier “Congressman Crier.”