Word: baucus
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...made no secret of its fervent desire that majority leader Harry Reid pass some kind of bipartisan legislation. So it was with a bit of fanfare that the White House welcomed Thursday a bipartisan Senate deal on $85 billion jobs legislation forged after weeks of negotiations between Senators Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican. And it was to more than a bit of confusion that Reid hours later threw out the deal, replacing it with a stripped down $15 billion bill that would only provide scaled-back tax credits and help for small businesses, highway...
...measures Reid plans to roll out in the place of a single overarching one. The idea is to force Republicans to take a series of tough votes against generally popular measures like the tax cuts, extension of unemployment and health benefits, and popular business tax credits originally included in Baucus and Grassley's plan. To prevent GOP foot-dragging that has plagued Democratic measures all year, Reid prevented amendments from being filed to his stripped-down bill - a controversial move at a time when the White House is touting bipartisanship...
...that provided payroll tax breaks to companies with new hires co-authored by New York's Chuck Schumer, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican - the process by which Reid yanked the bill made for a lot of bitter feelings. "To squander [the Baucus-Grassley bill] is partisan politics trumping everything else," Hatch told ABC News Friday...
...While Reid's office says he pulled the Baucus-Grassley compromise because of opposition from GOP leaders, his left flank was also unhappy with the deal. Reid's No. 2, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, led a group of progressive Senators against the bill, saying it gave too much away to Republicans and focused too heavily on tax cuts that had little to do with job creation. "Durbin was just trying to curry favor with the liberals," says a senior Senate Democratic aide closely involved in the process. "Reid is hampered by Durbin and Schumer picking over his corpse right...
...wall," fumed Dave Obey, the famously volatile chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has suggested - and not in a nice way - that Elmendorf's presumption is such that "maybe what he should do is run for Congress.'' And Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus has felt the need to inform him, "You might be Moses...