Blood feud: Senate leaders can’t stand each other

[WestVirginiaRebel]

McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Four minutes after the Senate returned from its Fourth of July recess this week, Harry Reid laced into Mitch McConnell.

 

Senate Republican leaders were throwing a “temper tantrum,” Reid told the Senate. Their conduct was “outrageous.”

 

Once uncommon, it was another ugly yet routine day in the dysfunctional United States Senate. Reid and McConnell can barely stand each other.

 

Their feud echoes America’s political mood: Polarized. Angry. Untrusting. And it’s a key reason Congress doesn’t work.

 

Routine spending bills are caught in the maelstrom, stalled in a standoff that could trigger another showdown in September over funding the federal government. In one pivotal dispute, Reid is making it harder for McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, to pass a proposal that would help would his state’s coal industry.

 

Also hanging in the gridlock: the highway trust fund, which might run out of money as soon as next month, and talks to help the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

Traditionally, Senate leaders take the lead in ending these conflicts. Yet Reid, the Senate majority leader and Nevada Democrat, and McConnell, the minority leader, have met just once since December. They instead engage in public, often personal spats on the Senate floor. And their exchanges feature bile-rich dialogue rare in modern times from the chamber’s most powerful figures.

________

 

Yes, it was so much more civilized in the olden days:

 

[Valin]

McClatchy

 

WASHINGTON Four minutes after the Senate returned from its Fourth of July recess this week, Harry Reid laced into Mitch McConnell.

 

Senate Republican leaders were throwing a temper tantrum, Reid told the Senate. Their conduct was outrageous.

Yet one more reason I want Mitch to win.